Twitter, as a popular social media around the world, conveys and spreads information in a few seconds. Under the open pedagogy theory, Twitter can be seen as a tool for open education. On this open platform, users can share videos, articles, links, and topics, which helps understand various information.
Analyzing whether Twitter can be used as an educational tool is controversial. The purpose of developing Twitter is to connect people around the world together. Luo et al. (2019) state that Twitter is a micro-blog social media, with a maximum of 140 characters. Each person is encouraged to share his/her comment and voice by creating a new blog. Twitter has five major characters: assessing, collaborating, administrating, reflecting, and communicating. Hence, the form of using Twitter is similar to education pedagogy. A study shows, in higher education, the usage of Twitter increases student’s learning outcome and learning experience (Luo et al., 2019).
Twitter chat is available for a person to share a brief opinion with other users. Participators can engage in the conversation by typing a hashtag sign (#) to locate a specific topic. For example, in the edci339 class, students are invited to discuss open education for K-12 students. Each student can join in the conversation using the hashtag #edci339 without creating an account. There is also no limit time for students to read others’ posts, which is beneficial for reviewing posts repeat.
Luo et al. (2019) argue that “online micro-blog provides a digital, flexible, and open learning environment,” which can motivate students’ learning interests, different from the traditional educational model. Instructors and learners can communicate and interact through commenting on each blog. Instructors can post a web link or article link on Twitter to increase learning resources, developing student’s ability to explore new knowledge. “Twitter-based education helps educators create a dynamic learning community for students where they could collaboratively work on projects and provide emotional support to their peers” (Luo et al., 2019). It also supports Open Educational Resources (OER) pedagogy by giving students access to academic articles, educational videos, etc.
However, Twitter is fast-paced, which is not suitable for education. Instructors may use Twitter as an auxiliary educational tool to increase communication with students and enhance students’ learning interest. Nonetheless, Twitter is still social media. Students may waste time on this app and distract their attention from the course material. Although Twitter can help to increase learning outcomes in higher education, in terms of educating K-12 students, I do not recommend to use this social media frequently.
Reference:
Luo, T., Shah, S. J., & Cromptom, H. (2019). Using Twitter to Support Reflective Learning in an Asynchronous Online Course. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 35(3). doi:10.14742/ajet.4124
Hello Yi,
Thank you for your insightful full post. I like how you covered all the basics the Twitter platform to offer in the first portion of your blog post so others who are not familiar with Twitter can get an understanding of what it’s about! I’ve never before used Twitter for any education courses before I began taking EDCI courses; however, I have found it a lot easier to gain new knowledge about the most recent research in my field of interest. I find it interesting how you say that Twitter is not suitable for education because it is too fast paced. I’m a little confused by this, do you mean in terms of the one-hour Twitter chat the instructors hosted? I totally agree with you that Twitter is a social media account where students can end up focusing their attention that aren’t relevant to the course. However, I do believe Twitter is becoming more and more of a tool to spread valuable knowledge in various topics to all of its users! Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Regards,
Tanvir Sidhu