The end of the exam period is fast approaching and I am starting to think about a few projects I have had in mind for a while. One of them is to start using Twitter for the courses in History and Geopolitics I teach at the University of Salford. It will be a matter for me in the coming week to initiate a reflection on the best way to go about it.
My own experience of using Twitter, since November 2008, has led me to believe that micro-blogging has a strong potential to contribute to make teaching a lot more interactive. I hope that thanks to Twitter I shall be able to encourage students to participate more, especially in the courses where I am unfortunately not given the opportunity to give seminars and are therefore by lectures only. Twitter seems to have a significant potential in this respect. It will be crucial to find the right formula to encourage students to participate a lot more, even – or rather especially, during lectures, with their mobile phones. This is what I shall try to do in this series of posts.
Whilst training on the elliptical machine this morning, the idea of a first exercise, or rather a series of exercises, came to me. The idea would be to go about it in the following way and ask students:
- 1) to read the chapter of the manual relevant to the next class.
- 2) to think about the main ideas of the chapter in question.
- 3) to write half a dozen tweets on what are for them such key ideas.
- 4) to vote on the most pertinent ideas, either by using the re-tweet function, or through a poll of the twitpoll type.
- 5) to identify among the tweets sent those which are simply wrong (factual error, error of interpretation)
- 6) to identify among the tweets sent those which without being simply wrong would deserve to be more nuanced or rephrased in a more skillful way.
- 7) to examine, during the class and in groups of three, each of the tweets, and to see if every student has well understood its content. Would it not be the case, it would be the role of other students to help their friend understand the content.
I am only at the very beginning of this reflection, but felt it would be useful to write down my thoughts. What do you think about this first draft of the proposed protocole? Do you have suggestions to make? Are you already using Twitter in your teaching? Do you know resources about the use of Twitter in teaching which could be useful to me?
Many thanks in advance for your comments, criticism, and suggestions, which are always welcome..
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Ciao Pascal, I am excited to read that you will be using Twitter in the classroom. For me it has been a very rewarding application for my teaching of Italian & for my students learning it. My findings were published here: https://calico.org/page.php?id=430. Let me know if you’re interested in reading them and I can get it to you.
A couple of things that I would suggest when you begin using it in the classroom.
*Create another account to keep your “teaching tweets” separate from your “personal” ones
*Request your students create an anonymous Twitter handle (i.e., not use their name). Anonymity helps them feel free to express, comment, etc.
*Have students provide you with their Twitter names and create a list so all your students can use the list to follow class discussions
*I have made the use of Twitter mandatory in my class (worth 5% of their final grade). If it is optional, chances are many students will not participate…mind you, having it mandatory does not guarantee participation either.
*Make sure the tasks are clear. Generally, I have discovered students want to know what exactly is expected in 140 characters or less.
I have also found the “social” aspect of Twitter very helpful in dividing the class in groups. Rather than arbitrarily assigning students to work with people sitting “close” to them, or assigning them numbers and have those with the same numbers work together (my 2 usual techniques), with Twitter I am able to group students to work together because they share common ideas, opinions on course themes. This has proven to be more fruitful when discussions open up to the entire class, as there was more common ground for group/partner work.
Good luck with using Twitter and please keep us updated via your blog!! Bonne chance
That’s a fab idea Pascal.
I actually have a different take on anonymity. I think students like to be ‘known’ and I think at this level it is important to mentor them about their digital Id, so the sooner they start perceiving this as a “real” way of connecting to people and starting their academic digital footprint the better.
although implicit in your ideas – to let them know they can use it as a study tool (connecting to their colleagues)
Even Queen Rania uses her real name
9) use to connect to other scholars and ask them questions?
10) set a challenge – how else could you use twitter in an academic way. They usually come up with pretty good ideas
keep us posted. This is exciting