A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience with Twitter in the undergraduate film classroom. In brief, it did not go as planned. While nearly 100 students signed up for the social networking service, I received only a couple of real-time tweets from my large Introduction to Film class and only about 20 from my smaller film classes — and this was over the course of an entire 16-week semester. But as I stated in my interview with Toledo’s PBS affiliate (WGTE), for the time being, I will press on and continue to introduce students to Twitter and its benefits, no matter how much rejection I initially get.

Case in point: I experimented with Twitter once more during the last couple of weeks of the fall semester, this time with incoming students who were registered for my spring Film Noir course. And once more, I bring bad news, Twitter-lovers: college students are still shying away from Twitter, preferring Facebook instead. Here’s the rundown:

The benevolent publishers of Andrew Spicer’s Film Noir and Timothy Corrigan’s A Short Guide to Writing about Film sent me several desk copies of said books. Although I appreciate the gesture (who doesn’t LOVE free textbooks?!), I don’t think I need three copies of each; so I thought it best to offer them to my poor, struggling college students. However, there would be a catch; the undergrads would have to do a little work for their textbooks.

First, on Wednesday, December 9, I emailed each Film Noir student the following flyer along with detailed directions on how to sign up for Twitter.

I’m sorry to report that despite the FREE TEXTBOOK headline and accompanying images from Fight Club and Pulp Fiction (the millennials just can’t get enough of those movies, I tell ya’), only two students signed up for Twitter (thanks, @calebhuger and @Marcus_Willis). Surely, over the next 10 days, more will register, I assured myself. After all, these are FREE books, right? But, nope, nobody else did.

Then, December 18 arrived; and as promised, I needed to inform my incoming class how they could earn free books. The plan was simple: students could take a picture of themselves either carving the words FIGHT CLUB into a bar of soap or holding up a carton of orange juice (with pulp!) and their favorite work of fiction. Then, they were to post those images to Twitter. After some thought, I decided to include links to both Twitter and Facebook in the directions. Although it’s not what I wanted, maybe that would do the trick. Here’s the revised flyer including instructions:

Sure enough, adding a link to Facebook got ‘em moving. Within 30 minutes of emailing my directions, students posted their Fight Club pictures to my Facebook Page and won their textbooks (see examples below). One student, as he wrote on my Wall, even “had a little fun with [the project]” by giving himself a black eye. Gotta’ love that.

Oh well, at least it worked.  The students are happy and saved some money in the process; and thankfully, there’s now a little more free space on my bookshelf. Maybe next time it’ll work with Twitter…

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