Turning Twitter into an asset
May 20, 2009 by Tom D'AgostinoPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Tech News
Determined to make student use of Twitter more of an asset than a distraction, some professors have come up with a unique approach to the social networking phenomenon.
They’re incorporating Twitter into their courses.
For example:
A professor at the University of Minnesota makes Twittering a must for students in her public relations class. It’s a tool they’ll need in the professional world, she says.
At the University of Wisconsin-Stout, another professor requires students in her English composition classes to post 200 tweets for the semester. She touts it as a way for them to talk about class materials and share information about assignments.
Is encouraging students’ use of Twitter a good idea? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Tags: classroom instruction, twitter
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May 21st, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Why not if it engages them and there is some basic learning outcome involved. Five years from now, there may be an entire new set of communication tools that students will need to know. The upshot is it can’t hurt to keep current with information technology if for no other reason than to understand that lifelong learning is tied directly to its tail feathers.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Sounds like a good idea, assuming there is discussion about appropriate and inappropriate ways of using these tools.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
Students find out quickly enough how to “tweet” (and use Facebook and other social networking devices) in order to communicate. We do not need to teach them this or pretend to be “cool” by using these means in our classes. Besides, do we really want to cater to Millennials’ narcissistic desire to be on constant display anyway? What students need to learn from us is how to communicate with the world beyond their peers. Don’t get me wrong–I maintain a Facebook page and have many students as “friends.” But that is outside of class and serves the two purposes of reminding them that I am a real human being and of my observing what is important to them. In the class (online or F2F), wegive attention to the standards, not the lazy spelling and grammar, not to mention the transience, of instant messages.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:27 am
Personally, I have very little experience in using Twitter as a learning asset but I can see a couple of instances where Twitter or a similar microblog (such as quaiku.com) could be put into pragmatic use:
1. Ad-hoc communication tool in student projects: Daily tweets by each project member could be aggregated in one place using RSS/Atom feeds. This would enable the project manager and the tutor to quickly see the big picture of what everyone is working on.
2. Communication tool during internships: Managers supervising students who are doing their internships in companies do not usually have a lot of time to communicate with the professors at the university about how the student who is doing her internship in a company is performing but a microblog would enable them to quickly post a short message about the student’s recent performance. Similarly, the student doing her internship could post messages on what she has been doing and reflect on what she has learned in the process. In my opinion, it is better to have these short messages posted daily than only have a lengthy report written in the end of internship when there is little use for extra guidance.
If the students are forced to tweet on material given by the teacher it depends largely on students’ motivation how engaging (or tedious) the experience will be. Social media services are not, in general, very good for teacher-initiated communication and they work best when the students themselves find out about the pragmatic ways they can use them.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
For the past year, I’ve incorporated Twitter into several of the public relations courses I teach at Georgia Southern.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Recently, I was required to use Twitter in a course. It was entirely helpful. My classmates and I were able to bond and help each other out. Our professor was available to help facilitate discussion on course materials, and we developed a stronger relationship with him. Then we began to discover Twitter as a tool for our personal needs. It was a wonderful experience, and we are all still connected.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Twitter is an important social networking tool that can be used very effectively in the classroom. This summer, my colleague, Dr. Liza Potts, and I will be incorporating it into the Summer Doctoral Institute at Old Dominion University. We will both be teaching media-focus classes and we have created a Twitter group and hashtag for our students to use across the classes. We are both requiring at least 1 tweet per day, but our hope is that as students begin to interact via Twitter conversations will start and connections between our two classes will be found by the students, not by our direction. In addition, I’m requiring my students to use Twitter for their reading responses. It is my hope that limiting a reading review to 140 characters will require students to more deeply consider the readings and their responses to them. It all an experiment at this point, but I think this is an essential tool for graduate students to become aware of and use. It has become an invaluable tool for me as colleagues in my field have begun to turn to Twitter for conversations rather than using listservs and other tools.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Effective online marketing is so much more important in a recession, much more so that it was during the boom of the past few years. Good post, keep it coming!
June 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Very interesting post to read
June 29th, 2009 at 10:24 am
good good