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

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