Teaching Tip: Developing an Intercollegiate Twitter Forum to Improve Student Exam Study and Digital Professionalism.

Liz Mossop,Tierney Kinnison,Martin Whiting

doi:10.3138/jvme.0715-114r

Abstract

#VetFinals has been developed as a novel online Twitter teaching event designed to support intercollegiate veterinary teaching using social media. Previous studies in other fields have suggested that Twitter use within universities may have benefits for undergraduate education. This "teaching tip" paper describes a project using Twitter to host online exam study sessions. The project has been a highly successful collaborative effort between the Royal Veterinary College and Nottingham Veterinary School in the UK. Over 4 years, the #VetFinals project has developed into a long-term, self-sustaining enterprise. This initiative provides a semi-structured means for student exam preparation with direct real-time input from a faculty member. It also creates a network of peers both horizontally across institutions and vertically throughout year groups. Based on similar initiatives in other disciplines, an anticipated outcome of this project was to contribute to student online professionalism. This could help address the veterinary community's recently highlighted problems with professional conduct and appropriate use of social media. Analysis of the success of this endeavor will be available in a future publication.

Highlights

Twitter is a key Web2.0 micro-blogging social media tool which was created in 2006 and currently has approximately 228 million active users sending 500 million messages (‘tweets’) per day.1 Twitter’s unique format makes it an amenable social media format for ongoing public dialogue, it is ideal in the academic setting for ‘ticker-style’news feeds and as an interactive tool for students and collaborators
In this paper the #VetFinals project will be described as a case study for the teaching of veterinary students using this medium, to assist other veterinary educators considering using Twitter for teaching and learning activities
#VetFinals online teaching has continued to run for four subsequent years and has developed into a fully functional long-term educational tool that seeks to promote student learning and develop an intercollegiate, inter-professional, life-long learning social media network

Summary

Introduction

Twitter is a key Web2.0 micro-blogging social media tool which was created in 2006 and currently has approximately 228 million active users sending 500 million messages (‘tweets’) per day.1 Twitter’s unique format makes it an amenable social media format for ongoing public dialogue, it is ideal in the academic setting for ‘ticker-style’news feeds and as an interactive tool for students and collaborators. In this paper the #VetFinals project will be described as a case study for the teaching of veterinary students using this medium, to assist other veterinary educators considering using Twitter for teaching and learning activities. #VetFinals was used for students to interact with an online academic on a studentselected topic, at set times, as part of a distance-learning facilitated exam preparation seminar.

Results

Conclusion