Teaching 200 Students How to Tweet: The Challenges

For three semesters I have attempted to incorporate Twitter into the college classroom, even once relying on the service to arrange a win-a-free-textbook contest for my Film Noir students. But overall, these attempts have failed miserably as the majority of college students — at this point in time anyway — do not automatically take to Twitter; it’s Facebook or texting they prefer. As a result, this semester I have required my students to tweet. Yes, that’s right: I have required roughly 200 undergraduate film students to sign up for and interact with each other (and me) on Twitter. Here’s my report from our first two weeks. I’ll begin with the challenges and will follow up in a subsequent post with the rewards.

The Challenges

Resistance! When I introduced Twitter on the first day of class, I was met with a few eye-rolls and sneers. “Aggh, I hate Twitter!” some griped. “Why can’t we just have conversations on Blackboard’s discussion boards?” others asked. This resistance, I have since discovered, derives from two things: first, the students don’t quite understand the popular microblogging service and what it can do, and second, they are way too attached to Facebook, which they presume is the be-all and end-all of online communication/connections. But, I’m hopeful that this mindset will change over the next few weeks. (Actually, I’m already seeing a shift in attitude, which I’ll address in the next post…)

So How Do I…? Over the past two weeks, I have received copious emails (and tweets) from students asking me how to sign up for Twitter, how to create a hashtag, how to check their tweets, and how many times per week they should tweet. These queries would be fine and dandy had I not explained this information in class several times as well as via multiple emails and step-by-step directions, the latter of which are now housed collectively at Student Resources: Twitter on my website. So should you choose to embark upon this journey, be prepared for a slew of questions even if you’ve (felt that you’ve) explained things thoroughly. Advice: just keep directing the students to those directions and the like; they’ll get it. They will.

Where Am I?! Each one of my classes is assigned a specific hashtag (e.g., #introfilm, #introfilmDL, #critapp), which the students are required to insert somewhere in their tweet and then follow. But there has been a major problem with this function: at least 60% of my students’ tweets are not showing up in their course’s hashtag search. They can see their tweets within their own accounts, and I can see their tweets if the student is included in my student list. But their classmates who view the #critapp search, for example, cannot see them. And that’s no way to tweet.

After a conversation with a Twitter employee, I’ve learned that nothing can be done about this. Keep tweeting, he says; they’ll show up eventually. So that’s what I tell my students: keep on tweeting. In the meantime, however, we have found a workaround. If a student @replies to another AND includes the course hashtag, s/he will appear in the search. I have to say that this has been the most frustrating part of this process so far. But again, I’m hopeful that all will smooth out soon.

Well, those are the major issues we’ve encountered so far. Next time, the rewards of tweeting with 200+ students…

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