REDDIT FOR ELT

 What is Reddit?

Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are then voted up or down by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called "communities" or "subreddits", which cover topics such as news, politics, religion, science, movies, video games, music, books, sports, fitness, cooking, pets, and image-sharing. 

Reddit is still powered by the same basic mechanism: users, referred to as “redditors”, can publish content, comment on posts and “upvote” or “downvote” content they like or dislike. Well-received content becomes more visible as it moves up in a list of posts, powered by a ranking algorithm that takes into account the amount of up- and downvotes and the post’s time of submission.

Reddit has been around since 2005, but many people are still unaware of how useful it can be. The mainstream media often paints Reddit in negative light due to various “scandals” related to the website. However, the majority of subreddits – Reddit communities organized around a particular interest or topic – are great, positive places where people exchange ideas and knowledge for free.

Reddit consists of thousands of topic-specific subforums called “subreddits”, with topics ranging from obvious to obscure. Subreddits are often referred to with “r/” prepended to their names, inspired by their URLs (e.g. “reddit.com/r/worldnews”). Among the most popular subreddits are r/funny, a collection of a wide variety of humorous content, r/AskReddit, where redditors ask and answer provoking questions, and r/todayilearned, where redditors post intriguing facts. While these are the “mainstream” subreddits, the total variety of subreddits is a never-ending rabbit hole, ranging from r/musictheory to r/BabyElephantGifs and r/LegalAdvice to r/ShittyLifeProTips.

Each redditor can subscribe to subreddits whose popular content are then aggregated on the redditor’s personalised landing page. Opening the page of a specific subreddit serves as a curated ‘mini-forum’ on the wider website.

What differentiates subreddits, apart from their topic interests, is that subreddit moderators can setup a ruleset to regulate commenting and posting. These rules can for instance make sure that adult content is not tolerated, that discussions in the comments remain civilised, or that comments that contest a specific political agenda are not allowed. This makes subreddits a particularly interesting environment for didactic purposes, where teachers can maintain an online environment dedicated to a course. Using Reddit as a didactic platform is quite unusual, but its collaborative features and moderation tools nonetheless make the platform suitable for these ends.

However, to new users, Reddit's interface may appear overwhelming or confusing. To start a thread, also called a discussion, you must locate the appropriate subreddit to create the thread. You must have a Reddit account to post on the Reddit website.

Setting up a subreddit

To make use of Reddit as a teaching environment, you will have to make your own specific sub-forum dedicated to the course: a subreddit. This section will briefly explain how to create one. If this guide does not provide the answers you are looking for, there are many other guides on the Internet that probably will.

Creating subreddit

1. First, create a Reddit account by clicking the ‘Sign up’ button on the top right and following the subsequent steps.

2. Once logged in, go to the front page (reddit.com) and click the ‘Create Community’ button on the right-hand side.

3. On the next pop-up window, give the subreddit a name (like the name of the class), and add a description. With ‘Community Type’, we advise to select ‘Private’. This way, only selected users (i.e. students) can access and contribute to the subreddit.

4. Click on ‘Start’ to create the subreddit. You are now a moderator of an empty subreddit.

Making posts

On the empty subreddit, you can start to add relevant posts, like information on course literature, a welcome message, or an inspiring link.

1. To add a post to your subreddit, click the ‘Create Post’ button on the right-hand sidebar.

2. There are three types of posts: ‘Post’, ‘Image’, and ‘Link’, as shown in the tabs. Posts of the type ‘Post’ consist of a body of text; ‘Image’ will link to a Reddit-hosted image or video; ‘Link’ will link to an outbound website.

3. Give the post a title and insert text, an image, or a link.

4. Click the ‘Post’ button to add the post.

5. The post is now added to the subreddit and can be seen, commented on, and voted on by other users.

*Note: For important announcements, you can make a so-called ‘sticky post’. These are posts that are pinned to the top of the subreddit so they stay visible to all users. To make a sticky post, open the post you want to sticky by clicking the ‘comment’ button underneath the post title.

Inviting users

If your subreddit was set to ‘private’, you will have to invite users (i.e. students or co-teachers) to the subreddit so they gain access and can contribute.

1. Make sure all the students have signed up for Reddit and you know their usernames. Example, you created a Google Drive spreadsheet during the first seminar and made the students list their name, student number, and Reddit username.

2. Go to the ‘mod tools’ page of your subreddit by clicking the ‘Mod tools’ button on the right-hand side.

3. On the mod tools page, click on the tab ‘Approved Submitters’ on the left-hand side.

4. On the ‘Approved Submitters’ page, click the ‘Approve User’ button and insert the username of the student(s) (or co-teacher) you want to allow access to the subreddit.

Use cases and best practices

The usefulness of Reddit to be highly dependent on how it is employed. A subreddit offers many different methods for ‘flipped classroom’ learning, which can be used as seen fit.

1. Subreddit as a source for offline seminar curation.

If the subreddit is filled up with comments, links, and other useful information, it can then serve as a source for discussion in the offline classroom. This can be done in many different ways. For instance, the teacher might go through comments and links posted by the students, or students can ask the teacher to show sources they posted on the subreddit themselves.

They were asked to use the threads on the weekly literature, which contained comments and questions of both the teacher and their co-students, as a basis for offline discussion. They could do so either by making a slideshow or simply by scrolling through comments on the relevant threads on the subreddit itself. For instance, a particular thread might have sparked a discussion on the subreddit, which could then be continued in the offline discussion. In another example, unanswered questions could be answered in the offline seminar. The curators could draw from the voting mechanism to determine what other students found relevant talking points.

2. Subreddit as a helpdesk. 

A subreddit can serve as an online ‘helpdesk’ for students. For instance, students might have questions about the organization of the course, or have practical questions considering assignments. These can then be posed as a ‘Post’ (i.e. text) post on the subreddit. When the teachers answers these before the offline class, more time can be devoted to discuss the course content. This can also be done via mail or other online environments like Canvas, but the benefit of a subreddit is that these questions can be seen by every student, so it keeps everyone on the same page. Additionally, a subreddit allows follow-up questions to be posted and questions to be answered by co-students.

Example of a student question on course subreddit

Answers to student questions as ‘comments’ underneath a thread

3. Subreddit as an archive

The subreddit can form an ‘archive’ of class-related information. This serves as a documentation of all that happened in the class, but it can also be inspiring to students of a next iteration of the class when the subreddit is carried over from one class to the other. Further, it might be extended past the timeframe of the course as a general resource for thematically related information. Note that past students will still have access to the subreddit when it will be used for the next iteration. Of course, if desired, it is also possible to begin with a clean sheet by creating a new subreddit.

Weaknesses

For more traditional course setups, a subreddit might bring in more problems than it solves. For instance, when a seminar mainly consists of literature discussion led by the teacher, a subreddit might be redundant.

As with any large user-driven website, it should further be noted that Reddit is not free of problematic content. While in the minority, certain subreddits display xenophobic, misogynist, and pornographic content. Luckily, subreddits can be used in a fairly isolated way, so these more problematic areas can be avoided when using a custom subreddit as a didactic device. Still, the fact that Reddit gives a platform to a plethora of content should be taken into account when deciding a setup as described here is suitable for the class.