Twitter Reflection

                As I approached this Twitter assignment, I was more open minded about the potential benefits of using Twitter in education after being first exposed to it during the summer. I was hopeful about understanding its value, but I am still struggling to fit into this learning experience. Although tweeting in education is not top on my to-do list in the future, especially in providing course content, I do feel that it helped to create a sense of community among the students enrolled in this class.

                One of the most important things I’ve learned about creating an online environment that is both engaging and collaborative, is in an instructor’s ability to successfully set up their synchronous and/or asynchronous delivery. It directly influences a student’s ability to connect to their peers and feel as though they belong to a greater community of learners. Tweeting has done that for me this semester and I felt connected to my classmates in ways that I did not previously experience. There seem to be a sense of camaraderie and a genuine interest in people. The support I received and observed among others on Twitter was always encouraging. For this reason alone, I can find value in using Twitter in higher education.

                Another aspect of tweeting that I liked, but would have filtered a little more was the sharing of links. There were so many wonderful shares that I couldn’t keep up. I believe that in a smaller class it would have been feasible to ask students to share a link related to a weekly assignment and write a response or review about the tweeted link on a discussion board. It was a real struggle sometimes and I would have to delete words or shorten my thoughts. If another student asked me about tweeting I would say try it out for yourself and definitely have separate Twitter accounts for school, work, and fun (Thanks for that advice Kealii).