Twitter.
After reading that single word, I’m sure you all have immediate opinions about it.
How could you not? You either love it or you hate it. There isn’t much of an in between. But for you nonbelievers, here’s a reason to sway to the “love it” side of the issue: professors.
Let’s be real; most of us see professors as older men and women who give assignments and make or break our GPAs. But some of the smarter ones (they’re all smart #Iwouldliketobelieve) think that Twitter will increase student engagement. Us students are hard-wired for technology; admit it, you’ve seen all the Facebook pages open on students’ laptops while you sit in a large lecture hall, and you might have been on it as well. The fact that a majority of students have short attention spans is a given, and the fact that professors want to do something about is important for us to realize.
Dr. David Parry of the University of Texas at Dallas uses Twitter in his classes. “The first thing I noticed when the class started using Twitter was how conversations continued inside and outside of class,” Parry stated. “Once students started Twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space, rather than just students they saw twice a week for an hour and a half.”
Here at UMD, Professor Kevin Murnane of the Department of Psychology uses Twitter to post exam dates and information, links to class related websites, and class cancellations, among other beneficial tweets. Students are immediately informed with what is happening in his classes and can save time by following their specific class’s’ Twitter account.
“I think that Twitter is a great way for students and teachers to keep in contact during the semester,” said Tola Lanlokun, a sophomore Psychology major. “My PSYCH100 professor, Professor Murnane, used Twitter as a means of communication and he was able to easily put up assignments and announcements for all of his students to see easily and efficiently.”
In Professor Susan Moeller’s Media Literacy lecture (Philip Merrill College of Journalism course, JOUR175), students were able to use their laptops or cell phones to answer polls via Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. The polls related to topics discussed in class and the results were sent to a website that created a graph of student responses, which was projected in a slideshow during class. This enabled every student to participate and engage in the class without even raising a hand.
I could go on and on about the benefits of using Twitter. But the most convincing benefit has to be the fact that my behind was saved last semester when my professor tweeted that class was cancelled, and that I happened to read that email while checking my twitter feed before I even got out of my bed. Guess what I did right after I read that tweet from my bed? I stayed there.
Whether or not you grapple with the idea of creating a Twitter account, you should highly consider the benefits of having one, especially if your professor has one and posts updates about the classsyllabus, exam dates, class cancellations, et al. Say what you want about how people use it and the types of things people tweet. But at the end of the day, I’m sure most of you would agree that finding out about a class cancellation or information about an upcoming exam would be a worth joining the little bluebird bandwagon. #Twitterforthewin