Twitter in the online classroom

Case study report
By Steve Corbett, Kevin Mace, Gretchen Regehr

This case study is to explore how Twitter can be used in online distance course for academic purpose as to improve social presence in Second Life.

Contextual Factors
The data
- by the class based on instructions using Twitter.
- by the requirement of posting a certain number of Tweets per day

Methodology
⑴ Participants
- enrolled students in an online English course at the online college of Shanghai Jiao Tong Distance University
- spring 2008 term
- using Twitter - participants’ homework accounted for 20% of grade
- one update (Tweet) per day to the question “What are you doing?”
- from Feb. 19, 2008 to Mar. 7, 2008
- a non-random purposive sample

⑵ Instrument; a content analytic framework (by Hechman and Anabi, 2005)
Framework;
i. Intellectual content of messages (cognitive presence)
ii. Instructional role (teaching presence)
iii. The interaction among the members (social presence)

Three levels of the model (to classify and analyze discourse)
i. the 1st level ; cognitive, social, teaching, and discourse processes
ii. the 2nd level ; sub-categories
iii. the 3rd level ; specific indicators or codes

Framework;
integrated Hechman & Anabi’s framework with a 7 level taxonomy of engagement by Lim, Nonis & Hedberg (2006)
Seven level of taxonomy was used to classify the type of engagement behavior.

Three interdependent process dimensions
① Social presence
② Cognitive Process
③ Academic Process

Nine sub-categories
① Affective response
② Cohesive response
③ Interactive response
④ Exploration
⑤ Analysis
⑥ Integration
⑦ Tutoring discourse
⑧ Engagement
⑨ Academic discourse

Forty-five classification indicators (Hechman & Anabi’ 2005)

Collecting Data
-The 591 Tweets were collected using the coding scheme.
-The Tweets were colleted and numbered in a Excel file along with twitter screen names, update, and time.
-Individual raters were given specific sub-topics.
-Tweets were coded by the three raters.
-The results were entered into the cells.

Finding
The use of Twitter enhanced the online classroom, especially the areas of engagement, academic use, and social use.

Twitter Use
-The large portion of the class was not very active with Twitter.
-The low users less engaged than active users when using it.
-Actively using Twitters gave the largest contributors to social and academic indicators.

Engagement (interest, cognitive effort, attention of students)
-The engaged students comply with minimal requirements of a given task, but disengaged ones do not.
-Self-regulated interest greatly increased over time than the structure dependent use

Academic Use
-Discussion of course content was the highest whereas providing tutoring was the lowest.
-Social and academic discourses were similar throughout and both gradually increase over time.

Social Use
-Students used the tool to expand social connection to their peers.
-External self-disclosure got the highest percentage of 24% whereas phatics and salutations got the lowest of 7%.
-In cognitive process, rote factual response got the highest of 73% whereas resolution got the lowest of 9%.

Conclusion
1. Twitter was used for both its asynchronous and synchronous feature.
2. As students began to show more self-regulated engagement, they tended to follow synchronous feature.
3. For structure-dependent engagement and simply set out a message without intent, they followed asynchronous feature.
4. There was not very much cognitive use of Twitter.

In sum, Twitter can be used for building community and supporting learning in the classroom.

http://www.kevinmace.net/media/artifacts/ED690_case_study_Twitter_Group.pdf

A translated corpus of 30,000 French SMS

By Cedrick Fairon, Sebastien Paumier

This article presents a corpus of 30,000 French SMS with its uniqueness in quality, size and the fact that the SMS was translated into “standard” French. As well it shows the collection process and the detail of the translation process.

Sociologists and linguists started to describe how the new language of new forms in the written form such as chat, forums and SMS is adapted and how users play with each to “make sense” faster with fewer words and characters.

The shortage of reference corpora, especially with SMS due to the difficulty in collecting it made the researchers be hard in studying the new forms of written language. However recently, the collection was carried out by students and messages were manually copied from phone screens.

Two important limitations; i. corpora by restricted SMS users
ii. typing mistakes or voluntary corrections

“Give your SMS to Science”
A SMS collection in the French-speaking part of Belgium was organized;
- to facilitate the data collection, a toll free short code was made
- a call for participation was broadcast
- participants were invited to send copies of their SMS & to fill in online sociolinguistic form
- from Oct. 2004 to Dec. 2004, more than 75,000 SMS by more than 3,200 people
- 2,500 people answered the form, aged from 12 to 65, divided into 1200 men and 1500 women

Goal; to build a reference corpus as a solid base for linguistic studies

Preprocessing the corpus
73,127 raw SMS was received.

Two operations
1. the first - to reassemble messages of more than 160 characters that were split into several SMS and to remove SMS (non-French SMS, graphical SMS, duplicated, etc)
2. the second - to remove personal information

Translating the corpus
Why translate? (Motivations)
- “translate” or “transliterate” the corpus into “standardized” French (called a bilingual corpora)
- Both SMS and its translation in standardized French

1. readability; the difficulty in reading due to without spaces, mix upper case & lower case letter, non-standard abbreviations & text transformations, codes, usages and habits of SMS writers, and sequence errors
2. usability; facilitation for exploration of messages

Translation protocol

Translation rules
1. IdSMS – Index of the SMS in the database
2. User – number standing for a GSM number
3. Sex – to check gender agreements, in particular for past participles
4. Flag – message annotations
5. Message – Original SMS(already anonymised)
6. Trans. - translation in “standard” French

Two general rules;
1. original SMS – not modified
2. protocol – strictly observed in both “standard” French and the original messages

Subset rules; about foreign word, punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, abbreviations, smileys, spaces & new lines, acronyms & sigla, letter repetitions, phonetic transformations, onomatopoeia & interjections, proper names, numbers, neologisms, obvious errors, unexpected or incomprehensible symbols, character case, typing errors, and missing words, accordingly

The corpus
The translation of 30,000 SMS was finally made.

1. randomly selected messages with a sociolinguistic profile – from 1,736 authors
2. 11% of SMS with no associated profile to avoid any bias – from 799 authors

Published; in CD-Rom

The corpus; distributed as a database linked to a graphical interface for searching and sorting original and translated messages as well as author profiles

Conclusion
This SMS corpus is unique in its size and accuracy, the number of contributors and the amount of meta-data. It has also translated manually for a bilingual corpus allowing both standard French and the SMS variants.
It opens new perspective for studies of SMS languages as well as providing a high value to the corpus.

http://www.sms4science.org/userfiles/A%20translated%20corpus.pdf

Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence

By Janna C. Dunlap & Patrick R. Lowenthal

This article shows that the use of Twitter (a Web 2.0, microblogging tool) encourages free-flowing, just-in-time interactions and the way in which these interactions can boost social presence in online course. Furthermore, it provides instructional benefits of Twitter and guidelines for incorporating Twitter.

Social presence and Twitter
Compared with LMS;

LMS
1. Scheduled based
2. a moment to login in to LMS leading to lost opportunities
3. Loose informal

Twitter
1. Free-flowing, before or after class
2. Immediately, just-in-time banter, chit chat, freely accessble
3. Informal

The main intention of people’s participation into Twitter
- daily chatter
- conversations
- sharing resources/URLs
- reporting news

How do users contribute to Twitter?
Through Twitter website, mobile phone, email, instant messaging
→ making Twitter a powerful, convenient, community-controlled micro-sharing environment(Drapeau, 2009) for both professional and social networking(Drapeau, 2009)

Twitter in Action
How to use Twitter in the “classroom”?(Parry, 2008a)
In 2008, Twitter was incorporated into online instructional design and technology courses (of this article)
- students were joined Twitter adventure voluntarily
- instructional potential was tested with students


Students' typical experience using Twitter
1. A student got subsequent posts including comments from practicing professionals (about multimodal learning)
2. A student could arrange a time to consult with a twit outside regarding a difficult situation with a team member.
3. Students posted their comments on Twitter while watching a political debate, etc.

Results; Twitter provided a tool with which students enabled just-in-time communication with the local and global community leading to sharing, collaboration, brain-storming, problem solving, and creating. That is from persistent presence of social interactions naturally and immediately.

Other instructional benefits of Twitter
1. addressing student issues in a timely manner
2. writing concisely
3. writing for an audience
4. connecting with a professional community of practice
5. supporting informal learning
6. maintaining on-going relationship
7. possible drawbacks of Twitter; time consuming, addictive, etc.

Guidelines for using Twittter with students
1. Establish relevance for students
2. Define clear expectations for participation
3. Model effective Twitter use
4. Build Twitter-derived results into assessment
5. Continue to actively participate in Twitter

Conclusion
The online course using Twitter gave students a great chance, ”real” way in enhancing social-presence with the synchronous just-in-time nature.
As well, with using Twitter, the faculty of online course could get a few more benefits of cognitive presence and teaching presence.
In sum, Twitter is a powerful tool in building informal, free-flowing, just-in-time communication between students and faulty.

http://www.patricklowenthal.com/publications/Using_Twitter_to_Enhance_Social_Presence.pdf

Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people’s text-messaging

By Crispin Thurlow

This article is about ‘net generation’s uses of mobile phone text-messaging and SMS to examine the linguistic form and communicative functions as a novel, creative means of enhancing and supporting intimate relationships and existing social networks among them.

Main interpretations and preliminary discussion;

1. message length – SMS and mobile phone have longer messages than online chat.
☞ SMS → more interactive written discourse that CMC
☞ Mobile phone text-message → ‘predictive text’

2. ‘New’ linguistic form
① shortening, contractions, G-clippping and others
② acronyms & initialism
③ letter/number homophones
④ ‘misspelling; and typos
⑤ Non-conventional spellings
⑥ Accent stylizations with capitalization(prosodic & personal style)

Primary functional orientation of each message;

1. informational-practical orientation
2. informational-relational orientation
3. practical arrangement orientation
4. social arrangement orientation
5. salutary orientation
6. friendship maintenance orientation
7. romantic orientation
8. sexual orientation
9. chain messages

From the research result, high intimacy and high relational orientation of functional categories (the number of 4,5, 6,7, and 8) occupied higher percentage portion.
SMS and mobile phone text-messaging also offer the users the other functions such as expressing humor, taboo, relative licentiousness or flame-potential and hyper-coordination & co-presence.

The communication imperative;

- Young generation prefers ‘text-messaging’ because it is the unobtrusive and relatively inexpensive mode of communication.
- Young generation’s text-messaging is becoming increasing dialogic like in online chat.

Four gratifications for young people (compared to CMC, Email)

① high transportability
② reasonable affordability(price)
③ good adaptability(voice)
④ general suitability(it is quiet, discrete)
→ need for intimacy and social intercourse; ‘technologies of sociability’

The language of SMS;

‘Re-inventing the (English) language?
;Linguistic & communicative practices of text-messages emerge from a particular combination of
① technological affordances (abilities of technology)
② contextual variables
③ interpersonal priorities

The sociolinguistic maxims of SMS

① brevity & speed
② paralinguistic restitution
③ phonological approximation

Non-standardness in SMS
① ‘new’ linguistic form → incomprehensible
② impenetrability & exclusivity of SMS language
④ quantity & manner; i. abbreviation,
ii. non-conventional spelling
iii. phonological approximation
→ The younger; ‘write it as if saying it’
They think SMS and mobile phone text-messages are intelligible and appropriate to the overall communicative function.

In conclusion
1.text-messaging → ‘folded into the warp and woof of life”
2.new linguistic practices → adaptive & addictive
3.young text-messages manipulates conventional practices with linguistic creativity and communicative competence for their intimacy and social intercourse

Language and the Internet

By Herring, S.C.

Language and Internet refer to human language as they are used in human-like manner through text- based CMC system.

Regarding the issues like ‘What is happening?” and “Why is it happening?” on Internet language, there are two different values between a prescriptivist perspective and a descriptivist perspective;

1. descriptivist perspective – non-standardness effects on traditional language causing decline the quality
2. prescriptivist perspective – non-standard language is playful, creative, performing useful social functions

As for five major areas in language on the Internet;

1. classification – characterize and label of CMC
2. structural features – typography, neologisms
3. discourse patterns
4. lens through which to study human behavior
5. languages and language ecologies

With reference to methodological issues and challenges associated with language and the Internet;

Internet language has –

1. advantages - ① abundance of naturally occurring data for research
② transcription not required
③”Lurk” – for studies of social interaction causing ethical issues
2. weak point – lacking in sound causing questions of phonetics and phonology
3. online multilingualism
4. challenge – constantly introducing new technologies → more study and research needed

In sum, spoken and visually-enhanced modes of networked and mobile communication will be continuously introduced as a new way of communication.

Communication in CMC: Making order out of miscommunication

By Giuseppe RIVA

This article is to explain how CMC users are make order and create relationships out of miscommunication processes. The term, miscommunication is defined as “pare-down” form of conversation in virtual world due to the lack of social cues and rules without real social interactions between. So in CMC environment, personal identities tend to vanish.

There is an explanation about four particular form of miscommunication in CMC.

1.Flaming – offensive conduct like intense language, swearing, negative or hostile communication
2.Lurking – the behavior of the subscribers who rarely give contributions to the community group they are involved in, making their presence known
3.Spamming and bombing – “excess of words” in both synchronous and asynchronous forms
4.Identity deception­­ - ① Identity concealment(hiding one’s identity) ② Category deception(age deception and status enhancement) ③ Impersonation

To make order out of CMC miscommunication, in other words like ‘what are the elements required for creating an interpersonal relationship between CMC users?”, three possible indexes like ①low level of formality ②trust and receptivity ③rate of information exchange are explained.

As for expressing meta-communicative features such as emotions, illocutionary force, etc the CMC doesn’t have, emoticons, social verbs and emotes are used. And the Miscommunication as a Chance Theory(MaCHT), the Positioning Theroy(PT), the Situated Action Theory(SAT), the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effect(SIDE) and the Social Information Processing (SIP) perspective are mentioned are to try to counter CMC vision.

There are a few activities the CMC can perform as a process with which a group of social actors in a given situation negotiate the meaning of the various situations which arise between them. They are instant messaging, shared hypermedia, web-logs and graphical chats.

In conclusion, constantly emerging information technologies are changing the way people interact with computer as a predominant medium not only for interpersonal relationship, but also for the creation and management of information in a new psycho-social space. New selves are formed in this kind of cyber-world as a fluid form of networked communities.

So ‘how people can work with these new technologies in CMC cyber-world’ will be a constant big issue to make better connection with the rest of their lives in real world.

Identity Formation Learning Styles and Trust in Virtual Worlds

By Iris A. Junglas, Norman A. Johnson, Douglas J. Steel, D. Chon Abraham, Paul Mac Loughlin

This article is to describe how aspects of virtual worlds, extracting ‘avatars’, by Second Life will affect the formation of an individual’s identity, the compatibility of virtual environments to existing learning style, and the way trust will be understood by those in this world.

As for Identity formation, there’s discrepancy regarding how much real and virtual identities match. Due to the anonymity in virtual world, individuals can explore new parts of their identities and avatar existence raise the level of real self-disclosure expressing themselves in more open manner from social norms.

As identities come from social actors in real life, exploring one’s beliefs and goals and then invest in a particular belief and goal, those in virtual world will act in accordance with, in the similar manner, the norms in the existing world.

Regarding recognizing the millennial learning style, the young millennials are required to change their learning style based on “seeking, sieving, and synthesizing” with both visual and communication capabilities in Second Life. They are visual and verbal learners at the same time and are fluent in multimedia environment which provides visual, textual, and auditory multiple communication channels where they can choose according to their favors.

With reference to trust, it is best to study trust in virtual world as a social reality, based on the social construction of reality. Trust will exist in a social system with lots of various social activities in real life. Such as, Second Life also can be regarded as a social system with lots of complicated social activities from various channels. So people need to examine the flow of the social interaction which can happen in virtual world regarding this trust issue.