Imagine making meaningful connections with your online students, using Twitter, that are as strong as your connections with your on-campus students.
I fantasized about that possibility after completing my first semester teaching undergraduate marketing courses, both online and on campus. Despite engaging with my online students on discussion boards and over e-mail, I still felt a lack of true connection compared with my experiences with on-campus students. I felt unfulfilled as a professor, and I wondered how my online students felt about their connection with me.
Replacing face-to-face instruction is difficult, perhaps impossible. But online education isn't going away, so I decided to find new pedagogical methods to improve online engagement. I quickly saw potential in the rising popularity of Twitter. I decided, for my next online course on strategic electronic marketing, to use Twitter instead of the discussion boards included with my college's course-management software.
Twitter seemed a natural fit for that particular course, thanks to its focus on social media. Still, I knew that using Twitter in the classroom for the first time would be a learning experience for both my students and me. Sure enough, my online students were surprised by the format change, and over half of them didn't know how to use Twitter at first. Like many other academics, I had been under the impression that all students these days are social-media experts. But my marketing students' social-media experience was in fact limited to Facebook and YouTube.
So that was bonus No. 1: Twitter expanded their social-media intelligence. Further, my online-marketing students had become accustomed to responding to discussion questions without any word limits. But upon adopting Twitter for the course, I required that students respond with just one tweet. At first they complained about the maximum of 140 characters per tweet, but that limit proved beneficial: Marketing professionals must learn how to create concise messages, and my students were required to learn—quickly—how to be creative and to craft substantial and analytical responses to their weekly discussion questions.
Finally, I decided to connect my online and on-campus students using Twitter. Online students tend to be isolated from the campus social experience, and I hoped that providing a bridge would help them develop a stronger connection to the university. I thought that my online and on-campus students could learn from each other's diverse perspectives and creative approaches, thus broadening their understanding of one another and enriching their marketing strategies.
The curriculum for the course was the same online and on campus, so I brought the students together during the final course project. Divided into five online and six on-campus teams, the students were required to create social-media campaigns that raised awareness and spurred action toward social causes of their choice. All students were required to tweet regularly about their progress, challenges, and accomplishments. Meanwhile, I retweeted their accomplishments and shared Web links of their Facebook, video, audio, and PowerPoint presentations.
At the beginning, I wasn't entirely sure that Twitter would enhance classroom engagement. But it did, and in more ways than I had predicted:
One final benefit, which professors in any discipline might find useful: Twitter made my students' efforts (or lack thereof) more obvious. At the end of the semester, those students who had underperformed with their campaigns admitted that they should have exerted more time and energy on a project that was visible to students, faculty, and other Twitter followers. The very public nature of Twitter helped them understand how brands—and any other meaningful work in life—must be "baked" rather than "microwaved."
I fantasized about that possibility after completing my first semester teaching undergraduate marketing courses, both online and on campus. Despite engaging with my online students on discussion boards and over e-mail, I still felt a lack of true connection compared with my experiences with on-campus students. I felt unfulfilled as a professor, and I wondered how my online students felt about their connection with me.
Replacing face-to-face instruction is difficult, perhaps impossible. But online education isn't going away, so I decided to find new pedagogical methods to improve online engagement. I quickly saw potential in the rising popularity of Twitter. I decided, for my next online course on strategic electronic marketing, to use Twitter instead of the discussion boards included with my college's course-management software.
Twitter seemed a natural fit for that particular course, thanks to its focus on social media. Still, I knew that using Twitter in the classroom for the first time would be a learning experience for both my students and me. Sure enough, my online students were surprised by the format change, and over half of them didn't know how to use Twitter at first. Like many other academics, I had been under the impression that all students these days are social-media experts. But my marketing students' social-media experience was in fact limited to Facebook and YouTube.
So that was bonus No. 1: Twitter expanded their social-media intelligence. Further, my online-marketing students had become accustomed to responding to discussion questions without any word limits. But upon adopting Twitter for the course, I required that students respond with just one tweet. At first they complained about the maximum of 140 characters per tweet, but that limit proved beneficial: Marketing professionals must learn how to create concise messages, and my students were required to learn—quickly—how to be creative and to craft substantial and analytical responses to their weekly discussion questions.
Finally, I decided to connect my online and on-campus students using Twitter. Online students tend to be isolated from the campus social experience, and I hoped that providing a bridge would help them develop a stronger connection to the university. I thought that my online and on-campus students could learn from each other's diverse perspectives and creative approaches, thus broadening their understanding of one another and enriching their marketing strategies.
The curriculum for the course was the same online and on campus, so I brought the students together during the final course project. Divided into five online and six on-campus teams, the students were required to create social-media campaigns that raised awareness and spurred action toward social causes of their choice. All students were required to tweet regularly about their progress, challenges, and accomplishments. Meanwhile, I retweeted their accomplishments and shared Web links of their Facebook, video, audio, and PowerPoint presentations.
At the beginning, I wasn't entirely sure that Twitter would enhance classroom engagement. But it did, and in more ways than I had predicted:
- Twitter's avatar feature allows for head shots, which helped humanize our tweets. This feature, absent from plain-text responses used on other online discussion boards, helped make the process more personal.
- Twitter allows real-time discussion among students and instructors. The format allowed me to offer constructive criticism and ensure that their conversations remained on track during the project.
- Twitter creates a community. It enabled my students to communicate with one another during the semester as they shared their successes and struggles.
- Twitter can help bridge the gap between online and on-campus students. My on-campus and online students followed their classmates' tweets and provided one another with advice and support, from suggestions on how to improve their marketing videos to cheering one another on as the teams reached their campaign milestones.
One final benefit, which professors in any discipline might find useful: Twitter made my students' efforts (or lack thereof) more obvious. At the end of the semester, those students who had underperformed with their campaigns admitted that they should have exerted more time and energy on a project that was visible to students, faculty, and other Twitter followers. The very public nature of Twitter helped them understand how brands—and any other meaningful work in life—must be "baked" rather than "microwaved."
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