One of the five #MostFollowedProfessors listed on Rate My Professors is Virginia Tech geography professor John Boyer, who made the list for the second year in a row.
With more than 8,000 Twitter followers, he recently participated in the Semester at Sea program, during which he taught World Regions to more than 2,000 students online.
For 116 days, from Aug. 24 to Dec. 16, 2013, Boyer traveled by boat across the world, visiting cities in Russia, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Ghana and Cuba. All the while, he was tweeting to students about what he was seeing, the wine he was drinking and current events. His Twitter handle is Plaid Avenger.
Boyer, who has an overall score of 4.8 on the website and gets a flaming chili pepper for hotness as well, says he feels honored by the "most followed" title. "It's pretty awesome to be at the inception stage of this intersection of communication and education, and the future potential of these things is quite literally unlimited."
He encourages his students to interact with him through Twitter, and he requires them to tweet as world leaders for an assignment, but he assumes that a lot of his students follow him just for fun. Boyer also has a larger purpose for reaching students on Twitter.
"I hope they'll get engaged in current events and what is happening around the world," he says. "I'm trying to create a global outlook in my students, to encourage them to become global citizens." – By Nicole Cohen
Boyer shared with us some photos from his world travels.
To read about more top professors at Virginia colleges, see Richmond magazine's February 2014 Sourcebook.
