Who: Dr. Monica Rankin
Where: University of Texas at Dallas
What: Twitter as an effective way to increase participation in lecture.
Why: The Twitter Experiment encouraged students to engage who otherwise would not be engaged or participate in the classroom. Large and small classes both have only a small number of students that actively participate in class discussions, the experiment attempted to increase the number of students actively participating.
How: The Twitter Experiment was first implemented in a core course requirement, U.S. History II (in the Spring of 2009). On Mondays and Wednesdays traditional lectures were given in class to lay the foundation of important terms and concepts. Fridays became the day used to conduct the Twitter Experiment. Dr. Rankin’s idea was to set up all of the students on Twitter while they were in class and have them post discussion ideas/questions and respond to each other using twitter. During the Friday lectures, students tweet comments or questions via laptop or cell phone, while the TA and Dr. Rankin were able to respond to a real-time feed displayed on the screen in the front of the classroom. In Dr. Rankin’s class, students participation grade was partially determined by their involvement in the Twitter discussions and most of them seemed comfortable with using the technology to engage with the reading materials.
Watch the YouTube video following the Twitter experiment at UT-Dallas.
Visit Dr. Rankin’s homepage for her account of her experience.
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