Some general comments on
the “Twitter Experiment”
by Monica Rankin (UT Dallas)
There
has been a lot of interest in the “Twitter Experiment” video
posted by Kim Smith chronicling my U.S. History class at U.T. Dallas and
our use of twitter in the classroom. I
have fielded a number of inquiries from educators across the United States and
even overseas who are interested in finding ways to use social networking in an
educational setting. This write-up is
intended as an informal summary of my use of twitter in the classroom. I hope it will help to clarify my experience
and I welcome additional questions and commentary, particularly suggestions for
how to improve this type of classroom interaction.
The class:
I
used twitter in the basic U.S. History II survey course at U.T. Dallas in the
spring 2009 semester. This is a “core”
course requirement in the state of Texas.
It generally enrolls students from all majors across campus. At the beginning of the semester, there were
90 students enrolled in my class. The
class met in a large auditorium-style classroom on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday from 11:30-12:20. I had one
graduate student teaching assistant to help with grading and other
administrative duties for the class.
Most
educators would agree that large classes set in the auditorium-style classrooms
limit teaching options to lecture, lecture, and more lecture. And most educators would also agree that this
is not the most effective way to teach.
I wanted to find a way to incorporate more student-centered learning
techniques and involve the students more fully into the material. As the semester was starting, I considered
how I might use the technology available through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others to create a more integrated
classroom. I was primarily interested in
finding a service that students could use IN the classroom in place of the
standard classroom discussion (which would have been impossible with 90
students). I had heard of Twitter, but I
had not used it myself. I did know that
(unlike Facebook and others) Twitter users had the
option of posting updates or comments either through the twitter website or by
text messaging on a mobile phone. This
caught my attention immediately. While
many students bring a laptop computer to class and connect to the wireless
internet service available in our building, not all students had access to that
technology on a regular basis. But
nearly every student in the class had a mobile phone and used text messaging
features regularly. Twitter’s texting
and internet options seemed to offer more students the opportunity to
participate.
The plan:
With
a 90-student survey I still needed to lecture in most classes in order to lay a
foundation for more productive student participation. I set up a course schedule that followed a
standard formula most weeks. On Mondays
and Wednesdays I delivered traditional lectures covering important terms and
concepts. Fridays were reserved for the
“twitter experiment.” The idea was to set up all of the students on twitter
while they were in class and have them post discussion ideas/questions and
respond to each other using twitter. Students
were required to complete a reading assignment prior to class every
Friday. The readings included historical
essays and primary documents that related to the lectures I had given on Monday
and Wednesday. I provided a list of
reading suggestions and questions on my website to help students read
effectively and take helpful notes on the readings. At the beginning of class on Fridays, I gave
an open-note quiz based on the assigned readings and the web questions. After the quiz, our twitter discussions
began.
The set-up:
Since
I was new to twitter, I enlisted the help of Kim Smith, who is currently
enrolled as a graduate student in the U.T. Dallas Emerging Media and
Communications (EMAC) program. Kim was
instrumental in helping me to understand how twitter works and how I could best
incorporate it into the classroom.
First, I set up a twitter account for the class called ushistoryII. Then I
introduced the idea to the students in the class. Many of them had never heard of twitter and
only a few were actually using twitter at the time, so this was new technology
to them as well. But nearly all of them
used Facebook, My Space, and other similar services
so they were familiar with the concept of social networking. I asked them to set up a twitter account and
to follow the class. I posted
instructions on my website for those who needed them and Kim Smith made an
introductory “how-to” video that I also posted on my website. I set up the ushistoryII
account to follow all of the students and we were reading to start having
“discussions.”
Following
Kim’s suggestion, I gave the students special hash tags to use on all of their
comments. The hash tags were organized
by week so that all of the comments posted in a given week would appear
together. This also allowed students to
search by the hash tag for a given week and pull up all comments to use as a
study aid before exams. Also following
Kim’s suggestion, I used tweetdeck as a central hub
to track our weekly discussions. Tweetdeck allowed me to search for that week’s hash tag and
it created a special column dedicated to comments using that hash tag. Tweetdeck is also
designed to refresh automatically at regular intervals (about every 12 seconds
I believe). I would run a search for
that week’s hash tag, pull up the tweetdeck column,
and a running stream of comments would appear.
I loaded tweetdeck on the classroom computer
and projected it onto the large screen at the front of the room so students
could watch the stream of comments.
The “discussions:”
Overall,
I was quite pleased with using twitter in the classroom for facilitating
discussions. Of course, it did take some
trial and error. I had asked students to
set up their twitter accounts prior to coming to class, but very few of them
did this. So during the first two weeks’
discussions, most students used class time to set up their twitter accounts and
most comments posted during that discussion included things like: “test” and
“how does this work?” There were a few
constructive comments based on the reading material posted toward the end of
the class, but those first weeks were primarily spent getting used to the
technology. But college students are a
very technologically-literate generation and it did not take them long to
figure out how to get the most out of our twitter discussions. Many of them loaded tweetdeck
onto their own computers so they could follow the discussion on their own
desktops instead of having to rely on the information projected onto the screen
at the front of the classroom. Tweetdeck was not designed to project and be visible on a
large screen, so many students (especially those in the back of the classroom)
found it difficult to follow the comment stream on the big screen and they
preferred to use their own computers.
Those using tweetdeck commented that it was a
much friendlier user-interface and following their suggestions, I posted
instructions on the website in case other students were interested in using the
software. I had hoped that students
would continue the “discussions” outside of class time and they would tweet
interesting ideas throughout the week.
Some students did post comments class-related comments outside of class
time, but this was the exception.
Our “best practices:”
We
experimented with a variety of different strategies for encouraging the most
constructive discussions through twitter in the classroom. After some trial and error, I found that
putting students into small groups (of 3 to 5) and allowing the group to
discuss the material together stimulated more ideas. I also found that it was best to give them
discussion topics so that most of the comments were based on a common them or
at least related to the same reading.
Depending on the topic, they would tweet for ten minutes or so and then I
would suggest a change of topic. Students
would have mini-discussions in their small groups and each student could tweet
the most relevant comments being circulated in the group. They could respond to comments being posted
by other students or suggest an interesting perspective on one of the
readings. Many students also tweeted comments on how they might use the readings on the
exams.
I
eventually concluded that the “discussions” were more constructive if I
circulated around the room and made myself available for comments, questions,
and other direct feedback. By
circulating around the room, I could respond directly to students and I could
get suggestions from them of other topics they wanted to address. The TA sat at her computer and monitored the
discussion unfolding on the screen. She
would post comments and respond to questions.
She was also responsible for notifying me if there were any comments that needed to be
addressed by me right away or if we needed to change topics. This was an important aspect of our twitter
experiment. With 90 students in one
room, I needed the TA’s participation to make this format work. She was completely on board and energetic
about trying new things and figuring out how to make twitter an effective
classroom tool.
During
the last 5 to 10 minutes of class, I would break up the groups and bring the 90
students back together again to “process” the discussion. During the processing time, the TA and I
could emphasize some of the most useful comments that had been posted during
class. Students could also respond to
ideas they saw and/or ask questions for clarification. With our “best practices,” we found that
twitter was most effective when it was combined with other discussion
strategies (small group discussions, interaction with the instructor, and processing
as an entire class.) Twitter did not
replace more conventional discussion formats; instead it enhanced the
discussions and brought more student interaction.
Since
twitter is a public and open access internet technology, I made twitter participation
optional for students. But I also needed
to provide an option for students who chose not to set up a twitter
account. There were also some students
who either did not have the equipment (laptop computer) to use twitter in class
or who did not have an unlimited texting plan on the cell phone. I encouraged those students to write down
their comments on a paper during class and turn them in to the TA at the end of
the class period. The TA would then post
all of the written comments on twitter after class was over. In this way, all of the useful comments that
students wrote on paper were still accessible to the rest of the class as a
study aid. Eventually, most students set
up a twitter account and used the technology to make their comments. Fewer than 15 hand-wrote
comments on a regular basis.
The
TA would go through all of the comments after class and send a direct response
to any tweets that needed to be addressed—including questions that remained
unanswered or exceptional comments that warranted direct feedback. Twitter also has a “favorites” feature that
we used to mark our favorite tweets to indicate to students which ideas would
be most helpful to them on the exams.
Limitations:
Twitter is somewhat limiting. Tweets have to be less than 140 characters so
students are not able to go into a lot of detail in their comments. But I
instructed them to post more than one tweet if necessary. We also tried to encourage the groups to
elaborate on the brief ideas that were being tweeted and we used the processing
time at the end of class to place some of those ideas in a more complete
context.
It
was also somewhat difficult for students to reply to each other, and the
discussion stream tended to wander. By
the time a comment was posted and students had a chance to respond to it,
several other tweets had gone up and new ideas had been introduced. I suspect that this bothered me more than it
bothered the students. I tend to think
and process information in a much more structural manner. Most of the students (in their world of
intense multi-tasking) seemed completely capable of following several streams
of thought at one time.
Strengths:
Overall,
I think the twitter experiment was successful primarily because it encouraged
students to engage who otherwise would not.
Even in smaller classes, only a small number of students actively
participate in class discussions.
Students knew that their class participation grade would be partially
determined by their involvement in these discussions and most of them seemed
comfortable with using the technology to engage with the reading
materials.
I
think it is absolutely essential that educators consider new approaches and new
technologies in the classroom. I
consider my own teaching strategies to be in a constant state of creation and
re-creation. If there are any questions
that have not been addressed in this brief summary, please feel free to contact
me directly at mrankin@utdallas.edu. I also welcome any suggestions on how to
improve this experiment and incorporate social networking more fully into the
classroom. I am hoping to use twitter or some other similar technology in my
graduate course in the fall semester of 2009, Introduction to Latin American
Studies. I hope that social media will
allow students to have contact with other people around the world who have
similar interests in Latin American culture.
Other Links:
Story
in U.S. News & World Report