Using Twitter as an Instructional Tool: A Case Study in Higher Education (original) (raw)
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Using Twitter in higher education : what are students’ initial perceptions and experiences?
2016
Of the range of recent technological developments, social media have become the most widely adopted by the current generation of students (Evans 2014). Next to this, the digiMeter (iMinds 2015), which reports on a yearly base the ownership and effective use of (social) media among the Flemish population, revealed that the number of people with an account on a social media site is still increasing. However, despite the widespread use and the potential of social media to enhance teaching and learning in higher education, research on students’ perceptions, actual use, and the effectiveness of Twitter as a learning and teaching tool is still lacking. The purpose of the current study was to determine higher education students’ expectations and experiences about the use of the microblogging and social networking platform Twitter for educational purposes. For this reason, an intervention in the course Instructional Strategies taught at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ghent Universit...
Twitter Usage in Higher Education
2012
Social media tools allow people to connect and share information with others. With limited empirical evidence concerning the impact of social media use in educational settings, this paper provides a review of literature and recommends practical instructional strategies on how to adopt Twitter to enhance the learning process. The strategies include using Twitter to emphasize social interaction among instructors and learners, enhance the collaborative learning environment, and promote and practice metacognitive strategies. This paper also proposes a preliminary study to investigate the use of Twitter at a regional university in the southeast. Introduction The use of social media tools in education is relatively new. Many people are skeptical and perceive social media tools, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as merely for the purposes of communication and entertainment. Even though social networking technologies were developed for purposes unrelated to education, they have been ...
Curriculum and instruction: pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning with Twitter in higher education, 2019
Purpose-While the ubiquity of social media as a mode of communication, collaboration, connection and creativity has been widely adopted in journalism, entertainment, healthcare and others, the field of education has been more reticent to integrate social media for teaching and learning purposes. This paper aims to summarize research on how social media may support educational aims with specific reference to large classrooms. In addition, the authors provide practical tips on using Twitter from the experience teaching in a typical higher education setting: a large, undergraduate course in a public university. Finally, the authors offer conclusions about how instructors can use social media to support increased engagement, professional development and digital literacy skills. Design/methodology/approach-This paper presents a real-life ''case study'' of using Twitter in an educational context common to many in higher education: a large, undergraduate lecture class over the course of one semester. This course focused on the foundations of educational technology and was a requirement of receiving a teaching credential at a large public institution in the Midwest. As a required course, students from a number of different majors were enrolled in the course, including biology, chemistry, mathematics, English, history, world languages, physical education and many more. While these majors were grouped by content-area groups (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; the humanities; and physical education), for this paper the authors will focus on the part of the course where students were all together in lecture format. Guided by the research above, and pedagogical practices discussed elsewhere (Greenhow and Gleason, 2012), it was decided to use Twitter for a number of different pedagogical purposes, including in-class discussion, increase student engagement with course material, expand student interaction and develop student presence. Findings-The use of Twitter was found to increase student participation, help facilitate conceptual understanding, to foster students' ''social presence,'' and to increase interactions with ''real world experts.'' Twitter provided a way, for example, for students in a large lecture course to participate, and roughly 90 per cent of students did so with Twitter. Likewise, instructors used Twitter as a way to bridge learning across different experiences (i.e. lab activities, lecture and online lesson), while also providing a way to support social presence (letting students share humorous pictures). Finally, Twitter facilitated interaction with content experts including historians, during a lesson on global collaboration. Research limitations/implications-Overall, integrating Twitter into a large, lecture course seemed to suggest a number of positive learning outcomes, including presenting opportunities for student voice and expression, visible participation, the development of social presence and tools to connect different course activities (e.g. lecture, in-class activities and lab activities). For example, much research in this field has begun to explore the educational outcomes associated with social media use, and this study contributes to this emerging field. Here, the authors advocate for using social media to support interactive, collaborative and social learning.
“Pedagogical tweeting” in higher education: boon or bane?
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
Social media have become widely adopted by the current generation of students. Yet, not every social media tool is as popular as others; for instance in 2016, 74.4% of Flemings ever had an account on Facebook, only 34.1% were once active on the microblogging platform Twitter. However, Twitter might have advantages over Facebook as a didactic agent in higher education. To date, research results on the added value of Twitter as a learning and teaching tool are still ambiguous. Therefore, this paper describes two interventions, which are evaluated using a mixed methods approach, to determine higher education students' expectations and experiences about using Twitter for educational purposes. Results indicate that although students had moderate to high initial expectations about using Twitter in higher education, they were rather skeptical about this tool after using it. The most critical obstacles formulated by students were competence frustration, (information) overload, and extrinsic motivation; that were taken into account by designing the second, follow-up intervention. The results of both interventions are presented and discussed. This study also highlights practical implications regarding the educational use of Twitter as well as suggestions for further research.
A comparison of students’ twitter use in a postsecondary course delivered on campus and online
Education and Information Technologies, 2019
Social media's reach has extended into our personal, professional, and educational lives. Related to the latter, research has examined how technologies, such as Twitter, can be used as communication and evaluation tools in postsecondary settings. No known studies have considered students' experiences using Twitter in different course delivery formats (e.g., on campus compared to online courses), yet this can inform instructor decision-making on whether Twitter can be more effectively incorporated as an instructional tool in one format over another. This study sets out to examine whether differences existed between students' perceptions and use of this social media platform as a device for learning and "classroom" connectedness. As students' perceptions can reveal the effectiveness of pedagogical strategies given their position at the center of the learning process, the present study relied on anonymous, voluntary online survey results from 37 students enrolled in an upper-level Sociology of Deviance course delivered by the same instructor both online and on campus to ascertain students' use of Twitter and their perceptions of using Twitter in learning, as a course evaluation tool, and in connecting students. Our findings suggest there are interesting differences in the social networking platform's use between the two course formats. These differences were used to recommend strategies for how instructors can integrate Twitter into their courses, both online and on campus.
Taking social media to a university classroom: teaching and learning using Twitter and blogs
Social media has taken many sectors including the higher education by storm. However, with wide spread fears that social media may be a distractor to pedagogy, this paper investigated how social media facilitates teaching and learning. Unlike most prior studies which relied much on soliciting mere views from students and lecturers about their intentions to use or not to use social media, this study incorporated Twitter and blogs into two undergraduate courses offered in the Department of Library and Information Science at Mzuzu University which is a public university in Malawi. Data were collected in two ways: first, analysis of blog and Twitter posts by students and second, a questionnaire was sent to 64 students to find out their perception towards the use of blogs and Twitter in a classroom environment. Results suggest that if appropriately deployed, Twitter and blogs are catalysts for the much hyped learner-centred approach to teaching because using these technologies, it emerged that students shared and discussed course materials, posted their course reflections and interacted amongst themselves and with their lecturer 24/7. Challenges faced include cost of internet data bundles, inaccessible Wi-Fi, poor bandwidths and insufficient computers.
The Use of Twitter in Large Lecture Courses: Do the Students See a Benefit?
Contemporary Educational Technology
The purpose of this two-year quantitative study was to determine the usefulness of the micro-blogging tool Twitter in large classes for improving the students' sense of community and belonging. Three instructors of large classes were recruited to test the outcomes of using Twitter as a learning tool, one each from the Departments of Geography and Psychology, and the College of Nursing. Twitter was used as a learning tool to allow students to engage in discussion and ask questions in real time during class as well as outside of class. The method used by the authors included surveys that measured students' perception of their sense of community and belonging, their engagement with the Twitter portion of the course, and their thoughts on the use of Twitter for academic purposes in a higher-education classroom setting. Data about students' use of Twitter was further collected using the Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet tool. The authors conclude this study showed that Twitter, if integrated into the course and supported by instructor and/or assistants who are familiar with the use of Twitter, improved the sense of community reported by students.
Use of Twitter across educational settings: a review of the literature
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
The use of social media across the educational landscape is on the rise. Subsequently, the body of research on this topic is vibrant and growing. In this article, we present findings from a review of 103 peer-reviewed scientific studies published over the last decade (2007–2017) that address the use of Twitter for educational purposes across formal and informal settings. The majority of the studies reported in the literature are descriptive case studies carried out with students in North American and European higher education settings. Analysis of these studies signals Twitter as a useful tool for communication due to high accessibility, novelty, and real-time format. Students, teachers, and other stakeholders use it as a pedagogical tool to gain information, interact and engage with each other, participate in their respective communities of interests, and share their insights about specific topics. Moreover, Twitter has the potential to enhance students’ learning capabilities as we...
Twitter's Capacity to Support Collaborative Learning
Like other social media, the microblogging service Twitter appears to offer affordances for collaborative learning. This study investigated the required use of Twitter as a part of a face-to-face, undergraduate teacher education class. Data included student and instructor Twitter activities, an end-of-semester survey of students’ perspectives on their use of Twitter, and a focus group. Participants noted several benefits to Twitter use in the course, including enabling communication and interaction within the class and with the professional education community. Twitter facilitated connectedness and resource sharing that was collaborative in nature, and functioned as one of several tools students utilised for collaboration. Recommendations are given regarding the use of microblogging in education and future research.