Using Twitter to Hear Student Comments and Questions when

Teaching Large Classes in Convocation Hall

Jason Harlow

Senior Lecturer,

University of Toronto

Department of Physics

October 2012

How do you answer a question from this?

• The spotlight is in your eyes. • You have a microphone, but the students do not. • In a large class (>600 students), unusual students

with strange questions can sometimes dominate.

Starting a Hashtag • A hashtag on twitter is a search term that begins with

the # symbol • For example, when you search on a hashtag such as

#uoft, you find tweets by anyone anywhere that include the word “#uoft”

• If you announce that the class hashtag is #phy131, then when students tweet with that phrase in their tweet, you can display it on your screen

• The problem is that anonymous people can tweet inappropriate things, and these will show up on the screen

Trolling on Your Hashtag • Here is an example of a tweet you might rather not

display on the screen:

• You have no idea who “Sean Svatos” is; he is not on your portal list, and may or may not be in your class.

• If you knew who “Sean” was, you might speak to him outside of class and discuss his concerns.

• This student is a “troll”, hiding behind anonymity and saying whatever rude thing he thinks with impunity.

Starting a Handle • A “handle” is simply a twitter account, identified by a

preceding @ symbol; mine is called @utconhall • Every handle has “followers” and people you are

“following” • It is possible to limit a hashtag search to display only

people you are following • After inviting students to use the #phy131 hashtag,

you can also invite them to tweet their UTORid to your handle

• If you see a tweet to your handle and notice it has a UTORid that is on your class list, follow that handle

• You can keep track of which handles correspond to which UTORids

You only want to display these on the main screen during class

Tweets of students you

are “following”

Tweets with class hashtag

@utconhall Must be maintained..

#phy131

The “cleaned up” twitter feed

Advantages of using twitter in Con Hall

• Allows student comments/questions in real time in a very large room

• Allows fairly easy sorting of questions into ones you really want to answer

• Easy to keep the feed going in the background, and to check occasionally during the lecture

• Easy to “unfollow” students you no longer want to see questions from; and to use portal to contact them if you wish

Disadvantages of using twitter in Con Hall

• Extra work to maintain a “following” list composed of current students

• Only a small fraction of the class participate (After 1 month in a class of 850 students, I am “following” only 47 current students)

• Yet another distraction for students who are playing with their phones instead of listening or thinking