Teaching with Twitter Geneviève Bassellier Jui

Outline Why What How So what

Why For us: – To enhance the teaching – To generate more unique outputs – To get them to read more For them (Learning objectives): – Understand emerging technologies – Identify how these technologies can be used in organizations – Experience social filtering – Facilitates “learning how to learn” How do I know what are the important IT to learn? What are the good sources of information about IT?

What It is a tool to access information from different sources: – Their established network (~Facebook) – An expanded network – A new network Social filtering – Very dynamic (follow/unfollow) Building reputation

How Steps: 1.Setup Twitter account 2.Follow a variety of tweeters 1.Related to technology 2.Related to your field 3.Related to your professionals and personal interests 4.Classmates 5.Class TA

MBA Core For selected class sessions, questions were posted. Students had to: 1.find a relevant article 2.Tweet the article

Sample Question 1. Find an article that relates to either the successful or unsuccessful use of information technology within an organizational context. Tweet a brief comment on why it is interesting as well as a link to the article.

Sample Question 2. Think about “the Long Tail” and what you learned about it in the Marketing portion of the course. Find and tweet an article that relates to the role that information technology plays in driving or impacting the Long Tail.

Bcom Core 1 st year; 75 students/section; 10 sections 1. Learn about an IT of your choice – who tweets about IT? – who tweets about IT that you are interested in? – Tweet about your learnings 2. Prepare a video on the IT 3. Write a brief essay on your experience using Twitter

So What (Students’ take away) No thank you I found myself completely uninterested in what other people had to say in such few words compared to the in-depth conversations found on Reddit. I find that Twitter is a classic example of sacrificing quality for quantity

Efficiency Often as a student it is difficult to find the time to read for enjoyment. It is not surprising when a majority of students do not know the latest news even when it comes to celebrities. Therefore, Twitter has eliminated this problem as it is quick, easy to use as a way to communicating with everyone

Discovery I find myself reading more that I would normally read on a day to day basis Timeliness I first found out about the Tsunami in Japan while following New York Times Twitter account. This shows the effect that social networking sites like Twittter are having on the release of breaking news and how many people now receive news updates firstly through Twitter.

Facilitates “learning how to learn”: – Addressing different frequent concerns: How do I know what are the important IT to learn about What are the good sources of information about IT Very dynamic (follow/unfollow)

Last words "Keep the Twitter." - Frankie O., MBA student

Social filtering

So what? Good motivation for students to learn Engage in their learning