Adoption Assessment Tool

Twitter as Learning Tool -- Levels of Educational Use

Twitter is defined in a course context as a light-weight micro blogging platform used to support micro interactions and social
networking in the service of student community building, discussions, tracking & reporting, metacognition and a variety of
spontaneous learning activities. [As David Pogue said, “Twitter is whatever you make of it.”]

In-class Back Channel for
Discussion
Active Used to support ad hoc class
discussions or lecture commenting
(use hashtags to categorize real-
time, on-task chatter/texting
(M.Sample)
Good for monitoring key points in a
discussion, collating viewpoints
Lightly Structured Activities
(low threshold)
Follow some instruction and Tweet
about it
• gather course feedback
• ambient office hours
Passiv • poll class (e.g., identify an
object (D.Cohen)
e
Institutional communication
channel (outreach, alerts etc.)
Outside of Class Discussions
Used to collate classroom views
• Setup topics with separate
twitter accounts or hashtags
• Students initiate and/ or follow
topics and participate in
discussion per instructor
protocols asynchronously.
Good for community building,
discussions, assignments
Tracking Activities
• find and follow instructor,
experts, topics
Feedback Activities
• language or writing practice
Instructor communication channel
(e.g., announcements, reminders)
In-class Directed Discussion (Rankin
style)
Open question/topical discussion format
1. Use semi-anonymous Twitter stream
of comments to lead discussions
(requires TweetDeck screen refresh)
2. Twitter aggregates and collates
student responses to separate
webpage
3. End of class large group processing
4. Optional step to analyze aggregated
content (could be used as makeup
assignment for missed class)
Good for engaging all students in
discussions in large lecture classes
(monitoring key points, collating
viewpoints)
Metacognition/Self-regulation
Student activity to share resources and
report on self learning events like difficult
topics, interesting applications etc.
- Muddiest point
- One thing I learned most (S.Klein)
Broadcast course links and share
resources

Prepared by Rick Reo on behalf of DoIT/LSS, 9/09

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(Implement only, assessment not factored in here)

Prepared by Rick Reo on behalf of DoIT/LSS, 9/09