“The Twitter Experiment” describes one historian’s use of Twitter to expand classroom discussion. Professor Monica Rankin (University of Texas at Dallas) used the microblogging service as a “backchannel,” creating a milieu for questions, comments, and expression. She also Webbed up subsequent reflections on the experiment.
The video covers the use of Twitter to bring in outside comments, to mitigate large class sizes, and bringing online discussion into out loud conversation. Rankin’s article goes into much greater detail concerning her process in selecting and implementing Twitter, the role of graduate students, the importance of a hashtag, and several best practices.
Relevant previous Liberal Education Today blog posts: a US News article on Twitter in the classroom, featuring professor Rankin; another UTA professor teaching with Twitter. Here is a link to all of our posts about Twitter.
(via Gardner Campbell, who reflects on what this says about multiple levels of academic collaboration)
In: Best Practices, Tools, Weblogs · Tagged with: Twitter