Use of Twitter in classroom attendance and participation in a Microbiology & Immunology course

Abstract

Abstract The use of social media in education has become increasingly prominent in recent years by educators in an attempt to improve students’ learning and to increase interaction in large classroom lectures. Among the popular social networking websites, Twitter is of particular interest due to its ease of use, micro blogging and hash tag capabilities. The objective of this study was to assess the use of Twitter in classroom attendance among professional first-year students. This study is distinguished by its focus on the pharmacy curricula, and among first year pharmacy students at CSU College of Pharmacy. All students enrolled in Microbiology and Immunology in the spring semester were included in the study. Students were permitted to use mobile devices in class and were recommended to create a Twitter account and add fellow colleagues and the course coordinator to participate in the study. Data from attendance was collected and analyzed according to the number of students that were present at the beginning of lecture, the number of students that were present until the end of lecture, the number of students that tweeted, the number of students that missed the tweet, and the number of students that tweeted their presence but were not actually in class. Since the study was voluntary, a total of 72 students signed a consent form to participate. An average of 59 students were present at the beginning and stayed until the end of lecture for the duration of the study. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) model was used to assess for differences in attendance at the beginning of class and at the end of class. This study demonstrates that the use of Twitter to take classroom attendance is more useful compared to traditional methods of roll call and sign-in sheets and announcements.