While we tend to think about using Twitter - also known as microblogging - to develop an online community or a professional development community, Twitter can also be used to build online community in higher education.
With Twitter we do not just have conversations, but our conversations are tweeted and retweeted, bringing perfect strangers into the discussion, while allowing others to remain silent, simply "listening" and lurking in the background. While some higher education institutions have been early adapters and use Twitter easily, others either have not entered the Twitterverse or are floundering in their usage.
A earlier blog post explored the importance of institutions using technology to build community to increase student success and persistence, but basically...institutions and staff can use Twitter in their technology toolkit to help attract students and retain them, and faculty can use Twitter to engage them in classes while helping them build community and increase their commitment to the class.
Why use Twitter?
In this time of decreasing budget and increasing needs, a free tech tool is ideal, and Twitter is free. Faulty and staff simply need training in how and why to use it.
According to Pew Research Center, 23% of online adults use Twitter, an increase from 16% in 2012. Moore (2013) reports Twitter claims 200 million users send over 400 million tweets daily, with nearly 60% of tweets sent from mobile devices. (Imagine an institution with online programs reaching out to 200 million possible students.) Note that these numbers do not include those Twitter members who follow (AKA lurk) but never tweet. Those Twitter members are reading tweets, just not tweeting on their own...but they are reading those tweets.
Baer (2015) suggests
"49% of monthly Twitter users follow brands or companies, compared to just 16% of social network users overall. Put another way, Twitter users are 3 times more likely to follow brands than Facebook users. Combined with their above average income and above average education, Twitter users’ propensity to interact with brands make them a huge potential source for Mass Influencers."
Institutions certainly have brands to be followed....and those with above average education may need advanced degrees or have children who need associates and bachelor's degrees. Sounds like a perfect match!
Further Twitter demographics (Apuzzo, 2015) report 18-29 year-olds comprise 35% of Twitter users, with 20% of Twitter users being 30-48 year-olds, 11% are 50-64 olds, and 5% are over the age of 65.
So, now that we know how many Twitter followers are out there, how can we use Twitter effectively to build community in higher education?
Institutional use of Twitter to build community
#1. Develop an institutional personality and voice. Rather than thinking of Twitter as a marketing tool, try using it build community. This building of community helps to build your institution's brand. Twitter is about conversations, so spend time developing a conversation with your followers. Follow your followers, and provide content. This content, however, should not be, "Look how great we are here at ABC University," but more about how to be successful in college, or how to locate scholarships. Twitter is not about recruiting, per se, it is about conversing. Once followers become comfortable with an institution's personality, they may apply. They also may not. But, in the meantime, the institution is developing an institutional community of engaged followers.
When institutions need to make announcements about campus evens or deadlines, they should use a separate Twitter account, one entitled ABC University News. This separates the news from the content.
Institutions need several accounts - one for admissions, for financial aid, for athletics, for student development, for each program. Keep the main account for building conversation and voice and the others for more specific announcements.
Following those who follow the institution is vital to developing a community and the institution's personality, so urging all of the institution's Twitter accounts to follow back and engage with their followers is very important.
On to faculty - who can continue to engage students while both in and outside of class.
Using Twitter in the higher ed classroom
#2. Course housekeeping. A way to ease into using Twitter involves handling issues related to course housekeeping. Faculty can set up a class hashtag to tweet class reminders and retweet tweets with class-related information and campus activities. To re-emphasize the first tip....faculty need to develop a twitter personality as they begin to form their own class communities.
#3. Book and course content-related discussions. Now, to get into the fun aspects of using Twitter! Faculty tweeting a question about a course reading can engage students not only in the course material, but as students respond to one another's tweets, they start forging interpersonal networks. With a faculty nudge, students can form study groups and organize service learning opportunities, creating a culture of engagement. These interactions have been linked to increased levels of student engagement, resulting in the development of a strong learning community (Evans, 2014; Junco, Heibergert, & Loken, 2011).
I require my students to set up a Twitter account and post reflections on their readings, sharing videos, articles, and blog posts...all while commenting upon each others' posts...and using a class hashtag. Because my students will eventually become community college administrators, this assignment has several purposes: they share content with others, they begin developing their own professional network, and they see, first hand, how Twitter can be used in their jobs. Since my courses are all fully online, encouraging students to network with one another and to engage with the content is a very important part of community building. Sometimes those outside of our course interact with students, further emphasizing the importance of their work.
#4. Specific Twitter account for each course. Those concerned about privacy can still integrate Twitter to add community to their courses: faculty will just need to set up a specific Twitter account for each class, then check the account's setting to ensure the twitter profile is set at "Protect my Tweets." Protected Tweets are only visible to one's approved Twitter followers, allowing faculty and students to maintain some control over their tweets' visibility, fostering a level of professionalism, while allowing students to network and engage. Unfortunately, this involves using multiple email accounts, but consider the benefits of separate Twitter accounts as opposed to separate hashtags.
#5. Live Twitter chats during lectures. How about encouraging students to tweet while in class? Faculty who teach face-to-face classes might want to try displaying live Twitter chats during lectures. As students tweet their questions, a live stream appears on a screen, encouraging students to pay attention to the questions AND to the discussion. Students tend to feel more of a part of the discussion, increasing their engagement with the material and with each other.
#6. Professional development. Encourage students to develop their own professional network on Twitter, using it for professional development. Teach them how to locate the hashtags associated with both class topics and their career as well as conferences in their field. They can identify known professionals in their field, follow them, and interact.
#7. Office hours. One task I am going to try next semester is offering Twitter office hours. Using a course hashtag combined with my twitter name, students will have to keep their posts to less than 140 characters, requiring they be succinct in posing their questions. My thought is twitter-based office hours would encourage students to ask a question without the encumbrance of logging into university email or our LMS to send a message. They can tweet directly from their phone or office computer, hopefully making the process quicker and easier. Their questions - and my responses - will also be available for their classmates to review.... a different type of "water cooler." Any way to foster engagement and community in an online course!
#8. Posting course materials. Scheduling tweets is easy with a variety of free programs (HootSuite, SocialOomph, TweetDeck, and Buffer, for example), so why not schedule tweets providing links to course content? Videos, websites, even articles can be shared this way, so establish a time frame for your students and post away! Organizing tweets to where they appear at a specific time keeps you from clogging up your students' accounts, decreasing the likelihood of them overlooking something important.....while keeping them engaged.
Challenges of Tweeting
We now have some ideas of how to use Twitter to build community, but what else should we consider?
1. Institutions need designated employees to tweet for their various departments and entities, and the choice of personnel needs to entail writing skills, authenticity, and creativity, as well as technology skills. while tempting to give such a job to a grad student worker, the idea of developing a consistent Institutional Voice is too important to assign to a position that may change every year. The key here is consistency in developing the voice.
2. Twitter - as with all social media - can be distracting, so care needs to be taken to integrate it into courses. Faculty need to be certain that Twitter is enhancing community and engagement, not detracting from it.
3. While Twitter is a great way for students and faculty to connect, users can open themselves up to harassment. Faculty incorporating Twitter and other social media into their courses need to be aware of the pitfalls and be ready to intervene with minor incidents. Training students in proper nettiquette is a must as is instilling the importance of respectful behavior.
4. Teach students about their digital footprint. Remind them that they are responsible for what they tweet...and what they tweet can - if one does not think through the ramifications of a tweet - land them in hot water. A case in point is detailed here: How One Stupd Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life. Whether or not you agree that what happened to her after her tweet should have happened is not the issue - the isue is that she did not think before she tweeted..... and another: 10 People Who Lost Their jobs over Social Media Mistakes.... and 13 People Who Got Fired for Tweeting.
5. Issues regarding confidentiality and boundaries may surface when using social media. Faculty need to consider their own boundaries as well as those of their students to determine - ahead of time - how to handle such issues, laying our guidelines. Students can use pseudonyms and avatars instead of posting personal information, and twitter accounts have various privacy levels to adjust. Being aware of these concerns allows faculty to prepare for them.
It's not - or shouldn't be - about the technology. This should be about learning. Using Twitter because it's new and interesting is not the purpose. The purpose should be to enhance learning, engagement, and community. Twitter should not substitute for teaching.
References
Apuzzo, R. (2015). Social media user statistics and age demographics for 2014. retrieved June 5, 2015.
Baer, J. (2015). 7 surprising statistics about Twitter in America. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
Evans, C. (2014). Twitter for teaching: Can social media be used to enhance the process of learning? British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 902-915.
Junco, R., Heibergert, G., & Loken,E. (2011). The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27, 199-132.
Moore, H. (September 12, 2013). Twitter heads for stock market debut by filing for IPO. The Guardian. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
Pew Research Center. (n.d.). Social networking fact sheet. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
