Using Twitter in Higher Education

Abstract

The use of the social networking tool Twitter was incorporated into a first year education studies course to support the Universities development of First Year students' academic culture, connectedness and resourcefulness. A hashtag was created using the course code where students were encouraged to paraphrase, question and provoke thinking during face to face and individual study time. Student tweets were analysed qualitatively using three types of interaction; learner- learner-instructor; leaner-content & learner-interface. The tweets offer insight into both the social and cognitive engagement of student during their first year of university study.