Social networks like Twitter and Facebook quickly have become an indispensable part of life for many individuals. Their widespread use doesn’t please everyone. Detractors claim that its format trivializes and depersonalizes communication. Social scientists and others can debate the merit of Twitter, but ultimately the marketplace will determine its utility and value. There’s already evidence, though, that suggest that Twitter is proving useful in surprising ways.
One would hardly expect Twitter to find a place in the formal world of academe, but apparently it has gained an increasingly sure foothold on some campuses. Tweets, in fact, are becoming an important means of communication between those who teach and those they teach. The result, according to one new study, is extraordinarily beneficial.
The use of Twitter, a report recently published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, can improve student engagement and grade point average. The level of improvements was far from trivial.
Students who used Twitter had a grade point average half a point higher than students in a control group that did not use the network. Moreover, the tweeters were more likely to join in class discussion and to seek out teachers for discussion and advice outside the classroom. Even Twitter’s most persistent detractors should find it difficult to look askance at a tool that in some instances seems to improve both academic engagement and grades.
Twitter’s utility as an academic adjunct depends, of course, on how it is used. In the study, the network was employed by both professors and students to exchange messages about class lectures, assignments and deadlines, and to address academic and other problems. Some might view a 140-character message on a screen as utterly impersonal, but many students and teachers seem to agree that it is sometimes easier to “speak up” in a tweet than it is to do so in the more public setting of classroom or in a face-to-face meeting.
Not every university student or teacher, of course, is willing to use Twitter in a way conducive to learning. Some still prefer more direct and personal contact. Those willing to use Twitter, though, have discovered that its judicious use at appropriate times and settings can facilitate the communication that is vital to the academic process.