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