Twitter In Higher Education: The Case Of Sustainable Tweets
1123 Words5 Pages
“Did you know that 96 percent of students with Internet access report using social networking technologies, and that three in five use these tools to talk about educational topics online?” (Bennett, 1). The original purpose of Twitter is to enable online users to send and receive 140-character messages, which then became one of the biggest social media networks in our era. In her article “Twitter as a Teaching Practice to Enhance Active and Informal Learning in Higher Education: The Case of Sustainable Tweets” Eva Kassens-Noor analyzes the use of Twitter in higher education and gives feedback on her study in her sustainable course. Noor educates people on how Twitter is effective in ways that traditional methods may not be. Noor’s study examines…show more content… Since we are now in the 21st century technology has advanced tremendously and has a big impact on society. Professor Kassens-Noor experiments as she makes a study to see which learning style is more effective; using Twitter or the traditional method. Noor states “Twitter has been primarily used as an instant feedback tool for student-teacher communication and is in its early stage for exploration for student-student interaction” (293). Its beneficial for students and teachers to have the ability to instantly communicate with one another through Twitter and also be able to see the time and date each tweet was posted. As opposed to the traditional method as Noor stated “the traditional students could have completed their diaries the day before their assignment was due or might have thought about the exercise only on a weekly basis” (301). Since Twitter provided tracking of the students tweets by time and date it ensures continuous participation throughout the time of the study that may have even contributed to the greater number of unsustainable practices identified. Having instant communication and feedback from peers can be helpful in many ways, and can apply and create…show more content… Noor makes rules between both categories, but it was shown within the results that both groups had different outcomes most likely due to the rules set. Noor states “The Twitter group members were not allowed to discuss their tweets outside the forum” (298). Which meant that the only communication that the Twitter members could have was within Twitter itself. She also reported about the traditional members that “The students discussed their diary entries within their “traditional group” during class time on 22 April 2010. A time slot of 30 minutes was allotted for discussion while the Twitter group left the classroom” (299). It is clear that it is an advantage for the traditional group to be able to communicate face to face with one another, especially since not everyone is a visual learner. Some students may be auditory learners in which it would be more effective if they heard their peers speak about their discussions. When looking through the results of both groups, Noor states “One possible explanation is that the traditional group had the chances to share their knowledge shortly before the test during their scheduled discussion session, whereas the Twitter group probably did not reread all tweets shortly before the quiz” (304). It is clear that within the rules given the Twitter group had disadvantages that led them to lower