A historian discovers how to use social media site Tumblr to engage students

by Bianca Murillo

Bianca Murillo is an Assistant Professor of History at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Her research and teaching interests include modern African history, global capitalism, and critical race and gender studies. Her research has been published in Africa, Enterprise & Society, and Gender & History. Her book Conditional Sales: Global Commerce and the Making of an African Consumer Society is forthcoming with Ohio University Press as part of its New African Histories series.

My pedagogy has always been student-centered, participatory, and interactive. While I am excited about the possibilities of digital technology to enhance historical research and reach broader publics, I am also interested in the potential of digital media as a way to engage students. Currently, I teach at a private liberal arts university focused on undergraduate study. While I have long used in-class activities, group projects, and on-line discussion boards, last semester was the first time I considered social media as a method of classroom instruction and historical training.

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_{“Jean-Léon Gérôme – Le charmeur de serpents” by Jean-Léon Gérôme, ca. 1879-80. (The Bridgeman Art Library, Object 339940. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.)}

Tumblr, a microblogging platform and social networking website, was my first choice and I used it to build a collective digital archive with students in my history course Gender, Race & Empire. The course was comprised of an interdisciplinary group of about 20 undergraduates from all class levels. Students learned how to grapple with empire and its effects on sexuality across historical contexts. We studied sources from the age of Orientalism, which produced images like Le charmeur de serpents, through the legacy of racism today. Tumblr allowed students to post shorter, but more frequent reflections on readings and in-class discussions. Because the site compiled posts all in one place, students could read, build on, and revisit each others’ ideas any time over the course of the semester. To ensure a constant flow of fresh material, I designed a strict posting schedule. Combined with posting guidelines, the site laid a foundation for students to begin learning how to think and work collaboratively.

I also chose Tumblr based on its archiving option and its search capabilities. Students could browse each other’s posts as smaller thumbnails, minimizing the need to scroll through dozens of pages. Additionally, the archive option allowed students to view posts as part of a collection rather than as single contributions. Tumblr also provided a convenient way to search and organize posts. By attaching hashtags (#) students could follow the work of specified classmates or view all posts focused on a specific text, offering an easy way to review discussion topics and track ideas over time. These elements were also useful as students prepared for essay assignments and the final exam.

The process of building a digital archive also strengthened in-class discussions about history as an academic discipline and the power of an archive to silence or privilege some voices. In this way the digital archive served multiple purposes. Engaging with it throughout the semester initiated lessons on methodology. My questioning about why certain ideas were missing from the archive, and what inspired students to post about particular issues over others, led to important conversations about the politics of knowledge and the challenges of documenting and interpreting experience. Tumblr’s interface allowed us to quickly identify patterns, but also gaps, in our thinking as a class. ...

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