Background

Social media platforms are becoming more and more versatile in today’s technology dependent age. The use of social media for educational purposes is ever expanding and proves to be a useful way to harness student’s dependence on social media sites. Educators are constantly trying to engage and motivate their students to be more active learners and social media is a very innovative way to reach the student’s level.

Twitter is a type of social media site that has gained a lot of momentum in the last couple of years. With 300 million users and 1.6 million search requests per day, Twitter is one of the most popular microblogging sites in the world. Created in 2006, Twitter has also gained a lot attention from educators. They find Twitter to be a great site to engage students because of its “microblogging” qualities. “Microblogs” are social media sites in which posts are made of 140 characters or less and bloggers are forced to make their posts short, concise and very conversation and discussion like (Junco, Heiberget, and Loken, 2010, p.2).

Engagement as described by the educators in many of studies as the main way to achievement. If a student is participating in what they are learning then they will be able to recall more information than if they aren’t engaged. 

Research Question

How does education engagement via Twitter affect student engagement in college classrooms?

Research Hypothesis

When Twitter is used as an educational tool, participants are likely to have a positive engagement experience, resulting in higher levels of involvement. The application of learned knowledge will be seen through the student’s posts. Twitter will be used for a multitude of educational purposes such as classroom discussion, setting up study groups, asking questions from professor to students, students to professor, or students to students.

Rationale

Twitter and other social media sites are becoming a part of many student’s daily lives, and being able to intermix education into the sites could potentially have many positive effects on student engagement. Many of the interviewed educators in the studies revealed that they wished they had more time in class, and Twitter was giving them the opportunity to teach more. Twitter has the ability to give students and faculty the chance to share anytime, and with a large majority of cellphones, almost anywhere. Twitter has also been shown to give students the ability to build relationships they may have never been able to make in and during a classroom setting (Junco, et al., 2010, p.8). Only spending one or two hours in a typical classroom doesn’t allow for a lot of socializing or group based work, especially in college. In the study done by Junco, Heibergert, and Loken (2010), a content analysis showed that it took “little effort on the part of the faculty member to help students create and attend a study group (p. 9).” The study also concluded that Twitter helped students be more comfortable asking each other for help (p.10). All of these different factors show why Twitter could potentially increase classroom engagement and why students could benefit from this unique teaching method. 

Research Method

For my research I plan to conduct an experiment to gauge how effect twitter is on classroom engagement. Preferably, the experiment would take place at a diverse college/university in the US. Within that college/university, I would take two similar classrooms in subject matter, and size with close attention paid to ethnic and gender presence within the different classrooms. These two classrooms would be randomly chosen to be a control group and one to be the manipulated group. The control group would use standard classical teaching methods without Twitter, while the manipulated group would incorporate Twitter into the agenda. To determine the liking, usefulness and effectiveness of Twitter in the classroom, I would use survey and interviews to evaluate student response. I think it would also be necessary to administer both a pre-test and post-test for the manipulated group. Questions in the pretest would read something like this:

1.     What teaching methods do you believe engage you the most? The least?

2.     From 1 – 10, how would you rate your class participation in this class? (1 being very poor, to 10 being exceptional.)

3.     What are ways that you believe professors could make class more engaging?

4.     Are you familiar with Twitter?

5.     Have you ever used Twitter in a previous class? Thoughts?

-       If not, do you feel it would help students be more engaged?

For each classroom, I would observe classroom engagement and participation among students throughout one semester. If Twitter seems to be engaging students, a second run of the experiment should be run to solidify results. At the end of the semester, a post-test would be run and the questions would read something like this:

1.     From 1-10, how would you rate your class participation in this class? (1 being very poor, to 10 being exceptional.)

2.     If you have improved since the beginning of the semester, detail why?

3.     How would you evaluate the use of Twitter in your class? Do you prefer it to more standard teaching methods? Why or why not?

After I have recorded all of my observations from the two classes from the semester, I will evaluate the responses and look at a content analysis of the tweets by the manipulated classroom. It would be exceptionally interesting to try this experiment in different educational settings, different locations, and differing ethnicities. 

Literature Review

Of the six articles I collected for this project, all of them performed some type of experiment to test the effectiveness of Twitter in the classroom. One of the best articles I collected was called “The Effect of Twitter on College Student Engagement in Grades,” by R. Juno, G. Heibergert, and E. Loken. This is directed related to my research question that was specifically about college student use of Twitter in the classroom. The study outlined Twitter use in a first year seminar class for pre-health majors. There were seven sections of this seminar – four were randomly selected to be the experimental group, and three were randomly chosen to be part of the control group. The experiment lasted fourteen weeks, and at the beginning of the experiment, students were given a Twitter tutorial in order to introduce those who had no exposure to Twitter.  This study concluded that Twitter gave students a richer discussion of class materials. The study also concluded that students were more apt to using more time outside class with Twitter.

            The critique I have this study is that Junco, et al., based most of their conclusions off the grades the students received at the end of the class. I personally believe that grades are not always an indicator of classroom engagement. Another critique is that the diversity of the study needs to be widened. I was surprised to find that 92% of the subjects were Caucasian (6% were Latino, 3% were native American, and 1% were Asian Americans). My experiment would widen the amount of diversity and use more than one university for experimenting. There also needs to be a focus put on variety among majors. All of the students within this study were pre-health majors.

            There rest of the articles I collected gave similar experimental methods. Classrooms were given tutorials and observed on how they were engaging. I believe this is the best method, because it proves with specific real life examples that are demonstrated. Seeing the examples of conversations was an added bonus, because the reader was able to see just how easy it was so form study groups, ask questions, or make conversation. 

Theories

The use of Twitter in the classroom for educational engagement is related to two major communication theories. One of those theories is the changing media landscape. As stated before, social media sites are becoming used for more than just casually socializing with friends. The uses of media are endless and because of this, social media is ever-evolving and adapts to societies current needs. Another theory that is relevant to this topic is the uses and gratification theory. This theory states that media not just used for a given need, but that it is used to enhance learning, social interaction, and diversion. For example, Twitter isn’t just used as a site to tell your friends what you are doing, but can be used in the classroom, to share opinions, or inform an audience of important bits of information.