A semester long study has completed that brought faculty from Lock Haven University, South Dakota State University, and The Pennsylvania State University together to look at how social media is being used in the classroom. Dr. Rey Junco who led the paper decided to use the popular social media site, Twitter, in several classrooms to see how students respond.
Here is the abstract of the paper that better describes the study,
"Despite the widespread use of social media by students and its increased use by instructors,
very little empirical evidence is available concerning the impact of social media use on student
learning and engagement. This paper describes our semester-long experimental study to determine
if using Twitter - the microblogging and social networking platform most amenable to
ongoing, public dialogue - for educationally relevant purposes can impact college student
engagement and grades. A total of 125 students taking a first year seminar course for pre-health
professional majors participated in this study (70 in the experimental group and 55 in the
control group). With the experimental group, Twitter was used for various types of academic
and co-curricular discussions. Engagement was quantified by using a 19-item scale based on
the National Survey of Student Engagement. To assess differences in engagement and grades,
we used mixed effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) models, with class sections nested within
treatment groups. We also conducted content analyses of samples of Twitter exchanges. The
ANOVA results showed that the experimental group had a significantly greater increase in
engagement than the control group, as well as higher semester grade point averages. Analyses
of Twitter communications showed that students and faculty were both highly engaged in the
learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities. This study provides
experimental evidence that Twitter can be used as an educational tool to help engage students
and to mobilize faculty into a more active and participatory role."
Dr. Junco also provided a student created video that helps to summarize this research. You will find it embedded below. Please consider taking just a few short minutes to watch this very well done video. The paper and video starts to challenge traditional ways of teaching, and encourages the use of technology in the classroom.
If you want to read the entire paper, please contact Dr. Junco. He can be found by searching out his information on the Lock Haven University website, or by visiting his blog.
Let your voice be heard
If you enjoyed this article, and want to share some thoughts, please post in the Comment section below. You are also welcome to e-mail me at: andrew@lambmaster.com. Know someone who would enjoy reading this article? Then please send them the URL. If you're not part of the already growing community, please click on the Subscribe button at the top of the page.
Comments