Twitter lends itself to discussion. It’s quick, easy, and—with its strict structure and economy of space—forces writers to condense their thoughts while maintaining coherence. Unlike other social networking sites, Twitter does not require you to follow (or “friend”) others in order to see their posts; Twitter allows you to read the conversations of anyone you’d like, mitigating some (though, not all) of the privacy issues that might lead us away from using social media sites in the classroom. There has been a considerable amount of discussion on various sites and academic blogs about using Twitter in academic settings (see the Profhacker blog: here, here, or most recently, here), Bill Wolff’s blog, the site, Emerging EdTech or here at Bedford Bits and Lit Bits. Some bloggers have discussed how to use Twitter for research and engagement among academics, while others have examined how and why to use Twitter as a classroom tool. Over at Kelli Marshall’s blog is a candid and detailed post on using Twitter as a discussion tool in some of the film courses Marshall has taught. She explains that while some students have resisted using the site, they have generally produced great comments about the course’s content and have participated in thoughtful conversations, even beyond the classroom. As Marshall also teaches literature courses, I asked her a few questions about her experience using Twitter and how it might be applied to a literature classroom.
Hetland: How might Twitter benefit our classroom / students / student discussion?
Marshall: Giving shyer students a voice. Continuing in-class discussion outside the classroom. Forcing students to get to the “meat” of their argument/opinion (i.e., the 140 character limit). Encouraging students to interact with others online, i.e., classmates, me (!), students in other parts of the US/world, celebrities, film directors, etc.
Hetland: How could Twitter be used in a literature classroom?
Marshall: Students can live-tweet books, poems, and short stories as they read or during the lecture (TIM: Live tweeting is essentially tweeting thoughts, questions and experiences while reading a text or listening to the lecture). I live-tweeted a book once (Rapture Ready), and the author (who writes for The Daily Show) responded to me a few times. Literature teachers could also use Twitter to teach theory, asking students to tweet about the same passage/text from different theoretical perspectives (feminist, psychological, etc.).
Hetland: What has worked for you—in terms of using Twitter as a teaching tool?
Marshall: Twitter has sparked solid, thoughtful discussions outside the classroom, particularly after in-class screenings of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and the documentary Religulous. Both films are controversial, so both provoked interesting commentary. From my perspective, Twitter aided in helping students realize why they believed what they did and why others believed what they did. Seeing both sides of the issue isn’t always something that can be done in a relatively discussion-less class of 120+ students.
Hetland: What hasn’t worked for you?
Marshall: Students not participating. Students only tweeting the required amount for a grade but not really engaging with others. Students who are too outspoken and who don’t have good social boundaries (I’ve only experienced this in the last semester though; otherwise, it’s not much of a problem).
Hetland: Let’s say I want to use Twitter in my course for the first time. What advice would you give me?
Marshall: Think of it as an experiment; it may or may not go smoothly (count on the latter). But learn from those mishaps, modify your assignments, and if you like it and think it’s useful, fire it up again next semester. Also, keep in mind that while studies out there show Millennials as being super tech-savvy, that’s not completely true. The instructor needs to walk them through much of the Twitter process, particularly hashtags, and suggest platforms for them to use as the web interface isn’t that user-friendly for first-timers, IMHO (I always suggest Tweetdeck).
Next week I will follow up some of these comments with a look at how to actually structure a classroom’s discussion on Twitter, but for now, feel free to add your own experiences using Twitter in the literature classroom in the comments below.
Great post! Looking forward to Part 2. I agree with Marshall – Twitter’s handy in that it prompts users to formulate concise responses, a crucial practice / skill in life outside of academe. Not sure if you read Theresa Billiot’s 9/29 CHE article on Twitter in the classroom: http://bit.ly/pnEfS9.
As an undergraduate I took a poetry class wherein many of our assignments were centered on evaluating groups of texts as if we were a publisher sifting through many submissions. Initially we were given something like a 500 word limit to explain why poem A was selected for our imagined publication and poems B, C, D, E, and F were not. Eventually we were given some where between 8 and 10 poems and only 25 words to justify our choice. This was well before Twitter even existed, but the same principle applies in requiring concise, yet effective and informative analysis. Reflecting on my undergrad days, that was easily the most memorable, and likely the most useful writing assignment I ever completed. I’m sure embracing Twitter is valuable, and I think your guides here are extremely useful. Nicely done, Tim!