[Asis-l] Twittering > The Student Experience

[gerrymck]

Colleagues/


IMHO > A Breakthrough Initiative !

/Gerry

Twittering > The Student Experience

Alan Cann (Department of Biology)  / Jo Badge  (School of Biological
Sciences) / Stuart Johnson (Student Development)  / Alex Moseley
(Course Design and Development Unit)  / University of Leicester, UK

Association For Learning Technology / Online Newsletter / Issue 17 /
October 2009

Introduction

[snip] Twitter is a powerful personal research tool, populated by
carefully selected individuals whom we have chosen to 'follow' for
their knowledge and insight. [snip] Unlike a Google search, which will
only suggest links related to the terms searched, a question posted
via Twitter usually yields a range of replies, from shortened URLs
containing answers to the question to more intelligent responses. For
example, when Professor Martin Weller asked on Twitter

"What are the key components of a viral idea?",

he received a wide range of replies ... . Similarly, a tweeted remark
I made during a seminar on creativity turned into an online discussion
on the subject  ... . [snip]

While the largest age group on Twitter is the 35-49 range ... . the
service is rapidly growing in popularity among younger users. The most
recent data ... suggests that 65% of Twitter users are under the age
of 25 ... [snip] . One year ago, a Twitter search for 'University of
Leicester' revealed little of interest. More recent searches reveal a
growing volume of conversation between existing students, often across
institutional boundaries, and also from prospective students,
commenting on perceptions of the University and Higher Education
(HE)in general.

Background

Based on our personal experience of Twitter, we were interested in
examining what use students would make of the service and to what
extent it could be used as a support channel. In the summer of 2008 we
were awarded 10 iPod Touch devices through the JISC TechDis HEAT3
scheme ...  to evaluate their potential as low-cost mobile gateways to
microblogging services. The iPod Touch was chosen for its superior
accessibility over other mobile devices (such as regular mobile
phones), ease of use, multi-mode nature, wifi capabilities, and for
its attraction as a device to students (helping to encourage
participation in the project).

We selected Twitter as the sector-leading microblogging service. The
benefits of using Twitter for data collection have previously been
described ... .These authors found that Twitter could provide
light-hearted but insightful information about how students'
university, home, and social lives blend together. There are many free
Twitter clients available for the iPodTouch; the service is also
available via a simple web page and via mobile phones through SMS.

Study participants were campus-based first year undergraduate students
in the School of Biological Sciences, all 18-19 years old, who were
participating in their first semester of higher education. [snip]

Participants were provided with an iPod Touch, although they were free
to 'tweet' via other devices. To incentivise recruitment, several
students were selected at random to keep one of the iPod Touches at
the end of the project. Participating students were required to tweet
at least four times per day, ... .They were also encouraged to label
their tweets with a unique 'hashtag'  ... . Participants were
enthusiastic about using the devices and were rigorous about using
hashtags in their messages.

This provided a powerful means of tracking a stream of information for
later analysis. The hashtags were easily tracked using RSS ... .
Tagged messages were collated and archived via the RSS feed from the
hashtag using an RSS aggregator (Google Reader), since Twitter content
does not remain on the system indefinitely. Tweetstats ...  was used
to further analyse the number of messages per day, Twitter clients
used, and the percentage of @tweets (i.e. replies to other Twitter
users). A measure of the student networks was made by counting the
number of followers and following accounts listed on their profile
pages. The evidence collected online was supported with a short online
survey that asked the participants about their previous experience of
Twitter and their impressions of using it on this project.

[snip]

Findings

All of the study participants were new to Twitter and had not
previously used it or any similar microblogging service. We provided
the participants with online training materials about Twitter and the
iPod Touch via a project wiki (walls.wetpaint.com) but the iPod Touch
devices proved to be very intuitive and very little instruction was
needed beyond the initial face-to-face set up meeting.

[snip]

All of the participants used multiple interfaces to access Twitter,
including some not available on the mobile devices.

In a relatively short period of time, the participants formed quite
sophisticated peer networks, following up to 60 accounts with the
ratio of following:followers at 1.5. Although many messages posted
consisted of simple status updates carrying the designated hashtag,
participants were also highly conversational in their use of Twitter,
with over a third of their messages being @replies to other people
(Figures 1 and 2). [snip]

[snip]

Summary and Future Plans

As a relatively low cost mobile device, the iPod Touch is an easy to
use device that does not require much training or support and allows a
wide range of applications. However, the data during this work shows
that Twitter was the main attraction, with students accessing the
service via a range of devices and continuing to do so when the iPod
Touch devices were no longer available.

The academic departments involved in the study were so impressed with
the affordances of Twitter that they have continued to use it in their
pedagogic academic practices and plan to work with other bodies in the
University such as the Students' Union to promote the use of Twitter
as a lightweight communication channel in the coming academic year.

Acknowledgements > We are grateful to JISC TechDis (www.techdis.ac.uk)
for their support under the HEAT3 scheme

!!! Thanks To / HollyRae Bemis-Schurtz and Laura Grant / New Mexico
State University / For The HeadsUp !!!

As Previously Requested > I Am Greatly Interested In Any / All Library
; Educational Uses / Applications Of Twitter / Other Microblogging
Technologies || Please Post As A Comment(s) On The Blog Entry ...
Thanks A Million !!!

Regards,

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu

There Is No Answer, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying

The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed
Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace