Twitter and the College Classroom

Academic Excellence in 140 Characters (study): “Analyses of Twitter communications showed that students and faculty were both highly engaged in the learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities. This study provides experimental evidence that Twitter can be used as an educational tool to help engage students and to mobilize faculty into a more active and participatory role.”

Harnessing Social Media: “But a new study, scheduled to be released next week by the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, suggests that using Twitter in class might in fact lead to greater engagement and higher grades — as long as professors harness their students’ urges to Tweet for “educationally relevant activities”: class discussions, asking questions, getting reminders from instructors, organizing study groups, and so on.”

Twitter Increases Student Engagement: “In addition to showing more than twice the improvement in engagement than the control group, the students who used Twitter also achieved on average a .5 point increase in their overall GPA for the semester.” Infographic below.

Twitter Can Help Students Get Better Grades: discusses the benefits of Twitter in the classroom, which are realized when certain conditions are met: Twitter should be required (not optional), frameworks must be in place to make the use of Twitter structured, and professors must participate.

Five Reasons to Use Social Media in the Classroom and 5 Unique Uses of Twitter in the Classroom (US News and World Report)

Twitter Goes to College: US News column explaining how professors in various fields (history, marketing, emerging media, sociology, education) are using Twitter in the classroom

Video on Twitter in the Classroom (mostly excerpts from Monica Rankin’s class at University of Texas at Dallas, the school from which I received the PhD).

Teaching to the Text Message: NY Times piece arguing for shorter college writing assignments, Twitter included.

Twitter and the High School Classroom (NY Times): “The real-time digital streams allow students to comment, pose questions (answered either by one another or the teacher) and shed inhibitions about voicing opinions. Perhaps most importantly, if they are texting on-task, they are less likely to be texting about something else.”

Infographic via: Master-Degree-Online.com. See also Online Graduate Schools to find a graduate program that suits your interest; the site “provides prospective, current and past graduate students with the resources they need in order to make informed decisions.”