Twitter In Higher Education Research Articles

Exploring the Usage of Twitter in Higher Education

The use of technology in the context of higher education is not a novel idea as lecturers and students have used different types of technology such as smartphones, software, and social media. In recent years, social media like Twitter have been extensively used to decimate information about learning. However, there is a global disparity between the use of social media sites like Twitter for higher education; some countries use it extensively, while for some, its use is a rarity. This situation is evident in Malaysia, where there is a low percentage of students and lecturers using Twitter in teaching and learning. Furthermore, there are limited studies related to Twitter in the context of higher education in Malaysia. Based on this gap, this study aims to devise a strategy for using Twitter in Malaysia’s higher education context. This study discusses some of the strategies that can be implemented in conducting learning inside or outside the class. In addition, the study’s findings can benefit many education stakeholders by exploring ways to optimise the use of Twitter in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

Use of Twitter to share news in higher education: The risk of magnification of engagement and learning

Despite the growing interest in the use of Twitter in higher education, its effects on aspects such as student engagement and learning continue to yield unclear and even contradictory results. The combination of evaluative methodologies for these different impacts contributes to confusion and bias. The aim of this study is to analyse whether the use Twitter to share and discuss current news produces engagement and its effects on learning by university students. The analysed sample is composed of 93 students earning a political science degree, split into three groups. The analysis is based on a mixed approach combining statistical and qualitative methods (content analysis and thematic coding of self-reported assessments) used to evaluate the degree of engagement, the evidence of learning and the relationship between these two dimensions. The results show a very low degree of engagement and little evidence of learning. The relationships between one dimension and another dissipate after detailed scrutiny of the statistically significant correlations found and are inflated by enthusiastic self-evaluations of the learning experience by students. The results warn about the risks for the research community of magnifying the benefits of the use of Twitter for educational purposes. The educational community should reflect on the effectiveness and efficiency of the use of Twitter for the purpose of stimulating independent, collaborative and reflective learning.

Twitter in higher education: increasing student engagement

ABSTRACT Engagement is an essential factor in successful outcomes for students. Several studies have shown that the use of Twitter in the higher education classroom has the potential to increase student engagement. Student engagement increases students’ academic success, because they are interacting with the course content, peers and the course instructor on a higher level. In this time of a world-wide pandemic, more and more institutions of higher education are offering online courses. The following bullet points have implications for higher education teaching in that they demonstrate the positive aspects of using Twitter. The key findings of this manuscript include: There are statistically significant positive correlations between student engagement and their academic success. Twitter increases student engagement in the higher education classroom. Students who would normally not speak up in class are able to increase their engagement in class discussions, etc. through the use of Twitter. Twitter is a potential tool for overcoming student feelings of isolation due to a lack of communication intimacy and immediacy. Twitter provides another communication channel; provides a space to share assignments; and provides a medium where students actively engage with other, with the course content, and with the professor both in out of classroom.

Using Twitter for Civic Education in K-12 Classrooms

This paper is a report of a qualitative case study of two teachers who use the social media platform Twitter with their students to teach civic knowledge and skills. Although the use of Twitter in higher education has been studied, few studies have been done to understand the use of Twitter in K-12 education (Greenhow et al., 2020). This article adds to that literature on Twitter in K-12 education by examining the ways in which one elementary school teacher and one high school teacher use Twitter in their classrooms to prepare their students for lifelong civic engagement. This study showed the elementary teacher used Twitter to teach her students how to interact with others on social media, while the high school teacher used Twitter to increase student engagement and civic participation. For both, Twitter provided a space where each teacher and their students could learn and practice the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in civic life across the lifespan.

\u201cPedagogical tweeting\u201d in higher education: boon or bane?

Social media have become widely adopted by the current generation of students. Yet, not every social media tool is as popular as others; for instance in 2016, 74.4% of Flemings ever had an account on Facebook, only 34.1% were once active on the microblogging platform Twitter. However, Twitter might have advantages over Facebook as a didactic agent in higher education. To date, research results on the added value of Twitter as a learning and teaching tool are still ambiguous. Therefore, this paper describes two interventions, which are evaluated using a mixed methods approach, to determine higher education students’ expectations and experiences about using Twitter for educational purposes. Results indicate that although students had moderate to high initial expectations about using Twitter in higher education, they were rather skeptical about this tool after using it. The most critical obstacles formulated by students were competence frustration, (information) overload, and extrinsic motivation; that were taken into account by designing the second, follow-up intervention. The results of both interventions are presented and discussed. This study also highlights practical implications regarding the educational use of Twitter as well as suggestions for further research.

Rethinking the Usefulness of Twitter in Higher Education

Rethinking the Usefulness of Twitter in Higher Education

Incorporating microblogging (“tweeting”) in higher education: Lessons learnt in a knowledge management course

This paper features a competency-enhancing social networking application which provides a solution for the dilemma of non-participating (non-engaged) students in class: ‘pedagogical tweeting’. Twitter’s micro-blogging service enables both instructors and students to send and read messages (tweets) of up to 140 characters, incl. links to blogs, web pages, photos, videos, etc. As Twitter can be accessed from a website, via applications on PC/Mac, iPhone, Android phones, etc., it represents an effective tool to engage students, e.g. by taking up questions during in-class and out-of-class discussions or by providing advice on assignments etc. Students in turn can generate their own learning context and benefit from collaborative knowledge creation. We share respective tweeting experiences made during a course on Knowledge Management (KM) taught at Singapore Management University (SMU) backed up by exploratory research on students’ micro-blogging activities. We discuss challenges ahead and propose four hypotheses about the effective deployment of social awareness streams such as Twitter in higher education.

Using Twitter in Higher Education

Using Twitter in Higher Education

Cultivating Twitter

In a recent article ("Finding a Place for Twitter in Higher Education," May 20, 2010, eLearnMag.org), Hend Suliman Al-Khalifa reported some of the findings in a Faculty Focus 2009 survey, "Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today's College Faculty." In the article, Al-Khalifa summarizes the findings of the more than 2,000 respondents, writing that according to the survey, the majority of higher education thinks Twitter is a gigantic time suck with little to no educational value. While she accurately reported the findings, she missed reporting the bigger picture, namely, that while approximately 30 percent of the surveyed higher education professionals tweet, currently only 10 percent of the general Internet-using public makes regular use of Twitter. The college ranks are outpacing the public in adoption nearly 3 to 1.

Finding a Place for Twitter in Higher Education

Twitter has recently flourished in its number of registered users. Amazingly, nearly 73 percent of all Twitter users have joined the service in the first five months of 2009. This Twitter trend can and should be utilized to benefit education. Twitter has various educational uses in both developing countries and more developed ones. But the real tipping point for Twitter in education will only come if teachers can manage to add Twitter to their arsenal of teaching tools. The question is can they do it?