In part 2 of my interview with Royal Roads Assistant Professor Gilbert Vanburen Wilkes IV, I ask about the social media courses he teaches.

Wilkes teaches a hands-on digital communications class requiring learners to reproduce the role of an online community manager. They must to maintain a community and develop metrics to monitor their performance as well as that of their communities. They must cultivate and hold an audience:

1. Develop a personal manifesto, creating a research trajectory

2. Use tagging engines to discover content

3. Evaluate the quality of findings using  BlogPulse, Google Analytics and PostRank

4. Sort and share the information in a way that provides value to followers.

Wilkes says that developing problem solving skills are key to success in this area. Learners must analyze and diagnose problems on the fly in order to manage communities.

He also teaches a rhetoric class whereby learners must organize a messaging campaign for a social media environment. They must develop a communications plan consistent with how social media operates and use performance metrics consistent with their audience.

About the interview subject:

During my Master’s degree in professional communication at Royal Roads University, I took a course called Human-Computer Interaction. To make a long story short, it’s what got me involved in the systematic exploration and use of social media.

On August 26, 2009, I sat down with my professor from that course, Gilbert Vanburen Wilkes IV, PhD. He is an Assistant Professor in RRU’s School of Communication and Culture and Program Head for the BA in Professional Communication. He holds a BA in English Literature from Butler University in Indianapolis, IN; an MA in English with a concentration in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA; and a PhD in Rhetoric also from Carnegie Mellon.

You can follow him on Twitter (@casuist) or read his blog, liber.rhetoricae.

Look for part three in the series next week.

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