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Twitter for Teaching & Learning
Dr Katy Vigurs (TEF)
School of Education
@drkatyvigurs
Tell me about your teaching…
1. What subject/s do you teach?
2. What level/s?
3. Are your students full-time or part-time?
4. How many students in your modules/classes?
5. Most common format for teaching? Lectures, seminars, practicals, online, etc.
Tell me more…
1. What is great about the students you work with?
2. What aspects of your approach to teaching and learning do you students like the most?
3. What are the main issues you face with your students at present?
4. What improvements do you want to make to your own teaching and learning approaches?
Make a list of the social media sites you use at the moment (for personal and professional use)…
EXAMPLE: Social media used
YouTube
Google Drive
WordPress
How do you use social media now?
Frequent userInfrequent
user
Personal use
Professional use
TwitterTrello
Evernote
WordPress
YouTube
SlideShare
Google Drive
Google Hangouts
Skype
GoodReads
What do you do to develop professionally? 1. What sorts of things do you currently to keep up-
to-date with developments in:a. Your subject area / research field?
b. Approaches to teaching and learning?
2. How do you learn as a professional?
3. Have you developed your own Personal Learning Network (PLN)?
What does your PLN look like?
How networked are you? What role does social media play?
(Source: Edu Toolkit via Flickr)
PLN changes over time
Know how it works for you
Focusing on Twitter for T&L
Using Twitter for your own professional development and networking
Using Twitter to engage learners and enhance learning
The goal is to connect and collaborate with others
I started with this
This came later
Setting up a Twitter profile:communicating your digital
self
Include photo or image
How do you want your name to
show?
Include a background
image
Include a mini blurb about you & your
professional interests
What will be your Twitter handle?
Where are you based?
Include a website
Number of tweets you have sent Number of
followers & followingKeep profile up-
to-date
Beware the incomplete profile: Who are you?
How do I know whether to follow
Valerie back?
Lack of mini blurb
Comes across as impersonal
& amateur
Avoid ‘The egg’
Example individual profiles
Compare the style & info in these three academic
profilesWhat does/will yours
say?You CAN change it!
Organisation profiles
Twitter accounts can also be held by organisations,
departments or courses. I chose not to do this (yet), but many do. Think about
who will manage the account. Are there University
rules/policies to follow?
Who to follow?Follow a
minimum of 100 Twitter accounts
Example of an
anonymous tweeter
Your Twitter ‘feed’ will be
made up of their tweets
Look at who other people
follow
Search Twitter for people you
know
Keep it professional.
Limit personal ‘follows’.
Will you follow your students? Or do you just want them to follow you?
Follow me!!@drkatyvigursHow do I use
Twitter?
Example Twitter feed (& tweets)
When the tweet was sent
Your feed updates every time someone
you follow posts a tweet or retweets
You are unlikely to see
everything in your feed,
especially if you follow many
active tweeters
Have to find ways to manage
your feed
I’ve taught myself to scan my feed 2-3 times a day
FollowersAs soon as you start following people, you’re
likely to get ‘follow backs’.
Though not everyone does
this.
Remember that you don’t have
to follow everyone that
follows you. Ask yourself if they’ll be good for your
PLN.
If you like the look of
someone’s profile who
decides to follow you, you can follow them back. If you
don’t like what they tweet you can unfollow.
Building up followers is
important as they are the ones who will
see your tweets when you start tweeting. Avoid
the echo chamber.
How do you write a tweet?A tweet is a
small burst of information to
share with your followers.
Maximum of 140 characters in
total (including spaces)
You can include web links in your tweets. Eg blog
post, journal abstract, event
page, news item.
Make a list of what types of
information you could routinely share with (a)
other professionals
and (b) students
When you’ve got something to say or ask or share. Tweet it. I didn’t write my own tweet until 3 months into
using Twitter! I was learning
through lurking.
Remember your followers can
choose to RT your tweet to their
followers
Things to consider when tweetingDon’t make your profile private.
Be interesting (don’t just tweet about the weather). Decide what you will and won’t tweet about.
Tweet regularly – be visible
Be informative (share links & images)
Be interactive with other tweeters (answer Qs, comment, share experiences & ideas)
Be promotional (share the good work that you, your colleagues & students have done)
Be considerate (don’t tweet constantly – flooding followers’ twitter feeds)
How respond to a tweet? Be visible
Reply to it publicly
Retweet it to your followers
Email it to yourself
Click the star to ‘favourite’ it.
Show the tweeter you read
& liked their tweet.
‘Favourites’ are also a way of saving tweets
Take and share a photo
See something you want to
share?Take a photo on
your phone. Share on Twitter.
Add an explanatory note
or question. Include people’s Twitter handles if you want to be sure they’ll see
it.
Take and share a photo at an event
Share images in real time where possible. Here I was tweeting
from a conference
session.
Try tweeting ideas and
questions from events. Engage
a wider audience. Show your students what else you
do!
Share your location?
Tip: If you click here you can add another
image into the tweet. You can
add up to 4 images per
tweet.Do you want your tweet to
show your exact location or not? I
turn this off when I’m
tweeting from home! Privacy!
Importance of #hashtagsHashtags are added to tweets to categorise them.
Hashtags can be searched. Bring up all tweets with the same hashtag.
Lots of useful hashtags already exist: #phdchat #edchat #acwri #highered #edtech – you will see hashtags in others’ tweets. You can click on a hashtag to see who else has been using it. This is a good way to find other people to follow too.
You can make up your own hashtags too. I have three that I use a lot #StaffsPGR, #StaffsTEF and #MAEDSU. They provide a service. Keep hashtags as short and snappy as possible.
Lots of events have their own hashtag. If you attend an event and want to tweet from it, ask the organiser what the hashtag is. Then use it in every tweet from the event.
Hashtag example #phdchatYou can click on
a hashtag in someone’s
tweet. Or you can search for a
hashtag.
You will come across other useful hashtags in people’s
tweets. Try to categorise your own tweets with a hashtag or two. It means more people will
come across them.
Hashtag example #MAEDSUI have made
arrangements for all tweets with the
hashtag #MAEDSU to display as an RSS feed in relevant Blackboard modules using a ready made widget. This is easy to do. Important for students who don’t
set up a Twitter account.
Make sure that colleagues and
students use the hashtag in their tweets
too.
Favourites
I read this tweet in my feed and I want to
show that I like it. The author gets a
notification that I liked the tweet.
I can also look at a list of all my ‘favourites’. It is a crude way of archiving tweets.
Don’t ‘favourite’ everything. Be discerning. Set
yourself criteria for what will make you ‘favourite’ a tweet.
Options for sharing others’ tweets
If I want to share someone’s tweet with my followers, I click
this button.
I then get the option of either ‘Quote’ or
‘Retweet’ the selected tweet.
I use ‘Quote’ a lot so that I can add a hashtag to the
tweet.
Meta-Tweets (MT): Quoting a tweet in a tweet
This happens automatically
when you ‘Quote’
Often takes
you over 140
This means you have to adapt the original tweet. This is called creating a
Meta-tweet or MT. Try not to change the meaning of the
tweet!! How did I do?
Example published MT
Tweet information & reminders
For this to be effective, you need your intended audience to be following you
and/or use hashtags so that people can catch up with the information at a time to
suit them.
Student & tutor interactions
Check hashtags
regularly to see if anyone
needs questions
answering or moral support.
I forgot to use the hashtag! Could others
have benefitted from this advice?
Using the hashtag here means that others will see this response when they search the hashtag. Not just
Paul.
This student has a private account
Live tweet chats
Arrange for a synchronous tweet
chat to take place with a class outside of class
time. Host it with a colleague. 60 mins
works well. Give the tweet chat a theme.
Must use a hashtag to keep track.
Getting support via Twitter
Twitter can be used in addition to other resources and technologies to help
students feel supported. But this requires staff to be using
Twitter regularly and to scaffold how students use it.
Useful research & resources Carpenter, J.P. and Krutka, D.G. (2014) How and Why Educators Use Twitter: A Survey of the Field, Journal of
Research on Technology in Education, 46 (4), pp.414-434.
Carpenter, J.P. (2014) Twitter’s capacity to support collaborative learning, International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 22 (2), pp.103-118.
Carpenter, J.P. and Krutka, D.G. (2014) Chat it up: Everything you wanted to know about Twitter chats but were afraid to ask, Learning and Leading with Technology, 41 (5), pp.10-15.
Elavsky, C.M., Mislan, C. and Elavsky, S. (2011) When talking less is more: Exploring outcomes of Twitter usage in the large lecture hall, Learning, Media and Technology, 36 (3), pp.215-233.
Junco, R., Elavsky, C.M. and Heiberger, G. (2012) Putting Twitter to the Test: Assessing outcomes for student collaboration, engagement and success, British Journal of Educational Technology, 44 (2), pp.273-287.
Kassens-Noor, E. (2012) Twitter as a teaching practice to enhance active and informal learning in higher education: The case of sustainable tweets, Active Learning in Higher Education, 13 (1), pp.9-21.
Mollet, A., Moran, D. and Dunleavy, P. (2011) Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities, London: LSE Public Policy Group. Free PDF guide available here: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/files/2011/11/Published-Twitter_Guide_Sept_2011.pdf
Seaman, J. and Tinti-Kane, H. (2013) Social media for teaching and learning, Pearson Learning Solutions and Babson Survey Research Group. Free PDF guide available here:http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/assets/downloads/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf#view=FitH,0
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