My older daughter tweets all of time by
retweeting interesting information and resources in her field of wildfire management.
Even though she doesn’t create her own tweets, people follow her from many countries
besides the U.S., such as Canada, Australia, and England. Her curation and
aggregation of these resources has become valuable to her and others. I would
like to introduce the power of Twitter to the students in my university/community
college basic writing courses by adding it to my teaching and learning toolbox.
Since
2006, Twitter, a social networking site, has provided a microblogging service
(Kassens, 2014). Increasingly, scholars have shown that Twitter can enhance and
support college teaching and learning (Andrade, Castro, Ferreira, 2012; Forgie,
S. E., Duff, J. P., & Ross, 2013; Kassens, 2014; Ricoy & Feliz, 2016; Veletsianos,
2012). After reading theses scholars, I see that I might use Twitter to share
resources and facilitate writing practice in my basic writing courses. How and
why I would do this comes next.
At
first, I would provide Tweets consisting of resources and announcements for
students to read. Such Tweets would include credible information sources for
students to use during the research unit. I would also provide supplemental
resources for readings used in class (Forgie, Duff, & Ross, 2013). For
example, when we read an essay by Kent Haruf, a Colorado author, I would Tweet the
link to a Washington Post article written by one of his former students. After the students felt comfortable accessing
and reading Tweets, I would move to having them Tweet or Retweet resources that
they find online. Writing practice would come next. I would like to have my
students use Twitter to summarize resources. For example, each student would choose
a resource to read and summarize, and then tweet the summary to the whole
class.
The
benefits of using Twitter in this way for these
students are twofold. First, the whole class would know about a variety of
resources, and seconds, students would be practicing their writing skills in an
authentic setting. The challenges of this
technology are also twofold. First, the technology would be new to most of my
students, as indicated by an informal poll of them; and second, the technology
would be new to me, so my learning curve would be steep.
Using
Twitter would increase student engagement. By engagement, I mean “interactions
with faculty . . . with peers” (Pascarella & Terenzini; Kuh as cited in Junco,
Heiberger, & Loken, 2010) both inside and outside the classroom. Through
Twitter, students would be interacting with peers and faculty between class
meetings (McArthur, & Bostedo-Conway, 2012). By using
Twitter, students and instructors would be able to continue class-time
discussion outside of the scheduled session (Junco, Heibergen, & Loken,
2011; Kassens, 2014). Not only can microblogging improve student-to-student
interaction, thus creating a learning community (Ricoy & Feliz, 2016), but
it can also enlarge the classroom to become part of a larger community built
around shared interests and activities (Kassens, 2014).
Thus,
Twitter would be a good addition to my toolbox for 21st century skills,
but I most likely won’t start using it until Fall 2016 as I am focusing on
teaching and learning with D2L this semester. I’ll let you know how Twitter works
at the end of 2016.
References
Andrade, A., Castro, C., &
Ferreira, S. A. (2012). Cognitive communication 2.0 in higher education: to
tweet or not to tweet? Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 10(3),
293-305. Retrieved from www.ejel.org/
Forgie, S. E., Duff, J. P., &
Ross, S. (2013). Twelve tips for using Twitter as a learning tool in medical
education. Medical Teacher, 35, 8-14.
Retrieved from www.medicalteacher.org/
Junco, R., Heiberger, G. and Loken, E. (2010). The
effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387.
Kassens, A. L. (2014). Tweeting your
way to improved #Writing, #Reflection, and #Community. Journal of Economic Education, 45(2), 101-109. doi:10.1080/00220485.2014.889937
Ricoy, M., & Feliz, T. (2016).
Twitter as a learning community in higher education. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 19(1), 237-248.
Retrieved from www.ifets.info/
McArthur, J. A., & Bostedo-Conway,
K. (2012). Exploring the relationship between student-instructor interaction
on Twitter and student perceptions of teacher behaviors. International
Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, 24(3),
286-292. Retrieved from www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/
Veletsianos, G. (2012). Higher
education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter. Journal
of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(4), 336-349.
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00449.x
