Though often considered solely a social networking platform, Twitter may also offer more scholarly benefits, according to a study published in a November issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 

‘Twitter is a good way for students to connect with us and have more exposure to course material,’ said Reynol Junco, lead author of the study and an associate professor of academic development and counseling at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania.

The experiment examined how educationally relevant uses of Twitter in and outside of the classroom impacted classroom engagement and grades of first-year students in pre-health professional programs, Junco said. Students would respond to questions via Twitter and also pose questions to professors.

The study found Lock Haven students asked to complete assignments and engage in class discussion using Twitter over one semester increased their engagement more than twice as much as a group that utilized a different social networking website for these same assignments, Junco said.

‘Twitter is a good way for students to connect with us and have more exposure to course material,’ Junco said. 

Junco worked in collaboration with Greg Heiberger, coordinator and adviser in the biology and microbiology department at South Dakota State University.

In fall 2009, 70 students from four class sections were randomly assigned to groups and given assignments and discussions that incorporated Twitter. A control group of 55 students from three sections were given the same assignments and information, but did not use Twitter, Junco said.

Student engagement was measured at the beginning and end of the semester using a 19-question survey based on the National Survey of Student Engagement. Survey questions asked students how often they engaged in certain activities, such as asking questions in class or discussing grades or assignments with a professor, Junco said.

In addition to showing a significantly higher improvement in engagement than the control group, the students who used Twitter also demonstrated about a 0.5 point increase in their overall semester grade point average, Junco said. 

There were some cases in which he had to assist participants who were not doing well psychosocially, but Junco said Twitter helped him better identify those who were struggling. It is harder to identify those students in a classroom setting because students did not speak up much as they did on Twitter, Junco said.

‘There were two students out of 70 who thought using Twitter as a part of the class was too much work at first, but later in the semester, they ended up liking it a lot more than they thought they would,’ he said.

But some faculty members may have a more difficult time accepting Twitter and other social networking websites as tools for educational purposes, Junco said. He said he anticipated more integration between social media and the classroom in the future.

‘For a while, many faculty members saw websites like Facebook as something evil,’ Junco said. ‘Now it seems like more faculty are willing to explore these social technologies and even integrate them into classroom teaching.’

Junco and his colleagues are currently collecting and assessing one-year follow-up data of the study. Twitter and increased engagement had carried over into the students’ daily lives during the study, but Junco is interested to find out if it remained that way after the study was over, he said.

‘We are looking at second-year persistence,’ Junco said. ‘We are doing interviews with students to get at the finer details of how using Twitter in educationally relevant ways helped or did not help them increase their engagement.’

Marilyn Arnone, associate professor of practice in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and director of educational media for SU’s Center for Digital Literacy, is also an advocate of using Twitter for educational purposes. Arnone said she intends to experiment with Twitter as a tool for extending class discussions with her classes in 2011.

‘Dr. Junco’s research design was appropriate for this study, and we’ll need lots more empirical evidence like this before educators are convinced of the value of social media integration with teaching methods,’ Arnone said in an e-mail.

Olga Litvinenko, a junior finance major, said she thinks Twitter could be a valuable tool for students if organized by the professor for students to easily access discussion points and questions for the class.

‘I’m generally not a huge fan of Twitter,’ Litvinenko said. ‘But I think promoting Twitter through a class would make it more appealing to use on a constant basis.’ 

vdnapoli@syr.edu

Published on November 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm