Social Networking is an increasingly incorporated web tool that is currently used in higher education. Twitter is a social networking craze that is either loved or hated. It is used extensively by a group of people or declared too complicated by people that just don’t want to accept or understand it.
My research came from the Faculty Focus, Twitter in Higher Education, Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty, a special report survey conducted in September 2009 of 2000 higher education professionals. 36% of the educators that were surveyed used Twitter currently as opposed to 56% who do not. Another 13% have tried it but didn’t take the interest to further use it in the classroom. More than half of the people that were surveyed did not use Twitter. Their reasons include a whole combination of factors including: don’t know how to use it, don’t have time to use it, question its educational relevance, and unsure of whether students use it.
In higher education, many of the first adopters were professionals involved in marketing, admissions and alumni relations. Today a growing number of professors are using Twitter to connect with colleagues from around the country (or world) as well as in the classroom as a way of keeping students engaged. In the survey of those that use Twitter, a small percentage were Deans and Department Chairs who keep in contact with other universities to keep updated on current news and trends as well as just social networking.
The biggest strength going for Twitter is it keeps its user updated with the news and trends. It also allows them to interact with their colleagues even if they have never met before. Another advantage of Twitter is that it provides instant feedback on assignments from either the instructor or other students. It can also start group discussions on subjects initiated by the instructor.
One of the biggest impacts of Twitter and other social networking resources such as Texting, Face book, Iphones and DROIDS is that you can reach out to an entire campus within seconds with a notification. A great example of this was the gunman on the Kansas University campus in April 2010. Once the Campus Police Department and Public Safety Office was alerted to the danger, a message was sent to every student, employee, and professor on campus.
The biggest weakness that Twitter has is that most of the professors or instructors are not willing to give it a chance and explain it as a faddish gadget.
Whether you like using Twitter or other social networking tools or not, it is the future of educating students. The greatest advantage of technology is that with some ingenuity from the teacher and the imagination of the student, it can be a wonderful environment to learn.
I, for one, have never used twitter. I send text messages only occasionally. However, at the American Society for Traning Development conference, twitter was used to summarize discussion group findings. they were twitted to a panel on stage who used a larger screen to project the findings to the entire audience. All was done through twitter. I found it fascinating that it worked so efficiently.
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ReplyDeleteTwitter is great because it is real-time. That being said, I still struggle on how to leverage it in the classroom. My husband is an instructor at KSU and has considered using it to tweet homework and exam reminders, but hasn't quite taken the plunge. There have been other uses of the software in the classroom, if you get a chance, watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8 - it is a great video of Dr. Rankin, a history professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, who invited real-time Twitter talk back in her lectures. It gives another view of how Twitter can be used in the classroom. She used it similar to how it was described by Buddy at the Development conference. Very innovative way to bring technology to the classroom.
ReplyDeleteSince I wrote this I should set up an account. I facebook alot so hopefully i can balance it out. I am trying Skype on my phone, its not that bad.
ReplyDeleteI found the statistical results interesting. I think in the near feature this will change drastically as teachers move into a different teaching perspective. Twitter is becoming an increasing tool utilized throughout the classroom and professional world when it comes to immediate feedback and notification techniques. While I have personally never utilized Twitter, I can see the benefits to the classroom throughout all levels of education. The notification and reminder aspect alone is advantageous as we all look at the concept of load and balancing multiple demands daily. It allows one individual the ease of sending out mass information to a large group simultaneously with minimal effort or time investment (imagine if we still had to call over 100 people or send a letter for notification).
ReplyDeleteOn a personal note, even though I have not used Twitter I have used mass text messaging to notify key leaders of changes in meetings, reminders of appointments and deadlines, and other key items of note. I found that if I limited notification to only email and personal reminders, results were only about 60% even if I put a read receipt on the email. However, if I sent a text message and inserted the information into their office calendars results were about 95% effective. From my perspective, the success was attributed to 1) Many coworkers received over 100 emails a day and had limited amounts of time to shift through all of the information and get their daily work done and still remember the item of note at the end of the day (prioritization challenges) and 2) The ease of the electronic reminder feature as it relates to something that the individual almost always has with them -- their cell phone.
My only worry with tools such is Twitter is that a saturation point will be reached where we have to find yet another information tool as people will go so much information minute to minute that the notifications are no longer effective.
Misti, I agree with the concept of a future saturation point. Right now I keep my cell on vibrate; however, if I were tweeted with any regularity I'd have to turn it to silence and then spend my breaks going through it.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I was thinking that Twitter could be used in English as a Second Language to send out a new word every three hours during the business day, especially if those words were work related. Perhaps on Saturday words for recreation could be tweeted. For those of you unfamiliar with ESL, it tyically meets once or twice per week - not really enough for most, however, it's run by volunteers.
Great video! I had not thought about Twitter being used in this manner. I am not sure about incorporating it into CGSC, but definitely a possibility for other teaching opportunities. Hmm...
ReplyDeleteMisti and Vince may be correct regarding the saturation piece, but I am not sure how many tweets one would receive outside of class. It may not be an issue.
I agree with the saturation issue--by the time you get done with email, voice mail, facebook, blog, twitter, when do you have time for face to face? There seems to be over reliance on electronic media to me. It often is used as a means to not do face to face coordination. It does provide a written record in most cases--but has limitations--characters--and now has its own language--because of limitation. May have some utility but I don't know about pushing all to do what some want to do.
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