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A comparison of students’ twitter use in a postsecondary course delivered on campus and online

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Abstract

Social media’s reach has extended into our personal, professional, and educational lives. Related to the latter, research has examined how technologies, such as Twitter, can be used as communication and evaluation tools in postsecondary settings. No known studies have considered students’ experiences using Twitter in different course delivery formats (e.g., on campus compared to online courses), yet this can inform instructor decision-making on whether Twitter can be more effectively incorporated as an instructional tool in one format over another. This study sets out to examine whether differences existed between students’ perceptions and use of this social media platform as a device for learning and “classroom” connectedness. As students’ perceptions can reveal the effectiveness of pedagogical strategies given their position at the center of the learning process, the present study relied on anonymous, voluntary online survey results from 37 students enrolled in an upper-level Sociology of Deviance course delivered by the same instructor both online and on campus to ascertain students’ use of Twitter and their perceptions of using Twitter in learning, as a course evaluation tool, and in connecting students. Our findings suggest there are interesting differences in the social networking platform’s use between the two course formats. These differences were used to recommend strategies for how instructors can integrate Twitter into their courses, both online and on campus.

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Notes

  1. See Peters et al. (2018) for a description of Memorial University and the Department of Sociology.

  2. This research did not require university ethics approval since the researchers used secondary anonymized data that resulted from a course evaluation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, 230 Elizabeth Avenue, St. John’s, NL, A1C 5S7, Canada

    Adrienne M. F. Peters

  2. Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s, NL, A1B 3X8, Canada

    Daph Crane & Jane Costello

Authors
  1. Adrienne M. F. Peters
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  2. Daph Crane
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  3. Jane Costello
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Correspondence to Adrienne M. F. Peters.

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Peters, A.M.F., Crane, D. & Costello, J. A comparison of students’ twitter use in a postsecondary course delivered on campus and online. Educ Inf Technol 24, 2567–2584 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-09888-1

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