Using Twitter for Learning and Teaching

Introduction
Twitter is “a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting” (Twitter, 2011) and currently has around 255 million monthly active users (Twitter, 2014). Twitter allows you to post short messages called tweets, that other users can view and in turn you can view and reply to other users’ tweets. By following other people and sources you can quickly build up a personalised feed that supports a range of academic and personal interests (Mollet at al., 2011). Twitter is predominantly used by people (78%) on mobile devices (Twitter, 2014) and there are a number of free mobile apps that can be used to interact with Twitter such as the official apps.

The following resources give a good overview of Twitter and what you can use it for and will take you through the process of signing up for account, some of the functionality Twitter supports and some general terminology.

Essential Reading

• Twitter basics (article)
• Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities (comprehensive guide)

Recommended Reading/Viewing

• Twitter basics (video)
• The Twitter tutorial (presentation)
• The ultimate guide for everything Twitter (article)
• 10 Commandments of Twitter for Academics (article)
• Twitter for Academics; An Introduction (comprehensive guide)

Be aware that because Twitter changes its layout and design frequently, some of the screenshots/ information in these resources might look different to the current version of the Twitter site/application. The underlying functionality however will be the same.

Use of Twitter at Greenwich
As part of a research project at the eCentre at Greenwich and the work of the Social Media Working Group for the Greenwich Connect Project, we have been investigating potential uses of twitter within learning and teaching by encouraging students and lecturers to use twitter as part of UG and PG study within courses in 3 ways (de Quincey and Hocking, 2012):

1. As an alternative method for posting useful course specific information to students e.g. links to articles, emergency changes to lecture times etc.
2. Enable students to ask questions about courses e.g. clarifying something from a lecture, asking about coursework specifications etc.
3. Encourage students to help one another and create communities of practice by the use of course related hashtags e.g. #COMP1678.

During this study, we produced the following student guide that was developed iteratively with students and lecturers in a number of disciplines that you are welcome to use.

[scribd id=65650862 key=key-8vxsixf2llq1jfstsh3 mode=scroll]

We have made this available as a Word document (.doc) so that you can edit it.

It currently contains references to one of the researchers in this project (@EddeQuincey), their course code (COMP1678) and a list of relevant twitter users in their field (web-design-development) so please feel free to alter these to your own twitter username, an appropriate course code and create your own list of relevant twitter users (but including attribution to the original source).

Hopefully this guide is self explanatory but it is perhaps worth highlighting some of the lessons that we learned and the things that we found that worked, and those that didn’t.

Things that worked

Creating a twitter account and sending tweets
Around 80% of the students involved in the study followed the lecturers account showing that students were willing to sign up for twitter and the majority sent at least one tweet. Their continued use however was very much dependent on whether they were already active users or whether they understood it’s potential uses during and after the course.

2-way communication
Around 31% students used twitter as a way of communicating with the lecturers regarding the course. This enabled for almost real time communication outside of lectures and tutorials and immediate resolution of issues. There is also the advantage that students have to ask concise questions that can be answered within the same limitation. From the lecturer point of view, replies can be quick and to the point, no need for email etiquette and format e.g. salutations and sign-offs. Also students that follow one another and the lecturer can also see questions and replies which could reduce the number of duplicate questions.

Things that partly worked

Course #hashtags
Although a few individuals made attempts at sharing information by the use of the course hashtags e.g. #COMP1678, this was predominantly used by the lecturers and not by the students. Sharing resources via hashtags was encouraged e.g. by visualising them at the start of the lecture via the projector using http://visibletweets.com/ and also by embedding a hashtag search into the Moodle homepage for the course, which did prompt discussions within lectures, but this perhaps needed to be integrated into the assessment to motivate independent usage (which has worked in a similar study investigating the use of Pinterest by students).

Things that didn’t work

Multiple Twitter accounts and personas
Some guides suggest that you should create a separate twitter account for each course e.g. @COMP1678 as the username. Others suggest that you try and separate your personal account from your academic account. For this study, one of the researchers already had a twitter account (@eddequincey) which was used for a variety of purposes, both personal and academic, but decided that they would try and partially separate these 2 “personas” and created an academic account for communicating with students(@DrEddeQuincey) which students were asked to follow. This worked to a certain extent but initial problems were found with accidentally posting from the wrong account and students following the “personal/academic” account instead of the “academic” account (both of which were public). There were also issues with determining which accounts should be used to share specific posts e.g. a post containing a link to an article that might be interesting for followers of both accounts (usually the solution was to post to both accounts simultaneously).

Over a 2 year period, it became clear however that managing these 2 accounts was becoming difficult and in effect was diluting the amount of content and interaction on each account and also became increasingly more difficult to separate these online personas, that were not as distinct as originally thought. The academic only account was therefore abandoned with the following message posted several times:

I will no longer use @DrEddeQuincey so please follow @eddequincey instead. Happy for students to follow @eddequincey and will follow back.

— Ed de Quincey (@DrEddeQuincey) October 6, 2013

Conclusions
Overall, as a method for communicating with students and responding to questions, twitter can be a useful addition to traditional methods such as email. The limitations regarding message length are actually an advantage over email, particularly when using a mobile device. There are also clear advantages for students who are interesting in networking and finding out more information about their subject, which could be encouraged by the use of hashtags and pre-prepared, subject specific twitter user lists. Thought needs to be given to how academic/personal accounts should be used but from the experience of the lecturers in this study, making the decision to have a mixed purpose account that represented a single persona, helped to clarify their own concerns regarding their own online identity.

University Social Media Policy and Guidelines
As part of the Greenwich Connect Project, the Social Media Working Group has produced a Social Media Policy and set of Guidelines which we hope will clarify any questions you might have regarding acceptable use of social media applications like twitter. These will be made available shortly.

References
de Quincey, E. and Hocking, A. (2012) The use of twitter by students and lecturers: the potential impact on feedback and engagement. Educational Development Unit, University of Greenwich, may. 2012. Available at: <https://showtime.gre.ac.uk/index.php/edu/SHIFT2012/paper/view/207> [Accessed: June 2014].

Mollett, A., Moran, D. and Dunleavy, P. (2011) Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities. Available at: <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/files/2011/11/Published-Twitter_Guide_Sept_2011.pdf> [Accessed June 2014].

Twitter (2011) About Twitter. Available at: <http://twitter.com/about#about> [Accessed September 2011].

Twitter (2014) Our mission: To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. Available at: <https://about.twitter.com/company> [Accessed June 2014].