“How Twitter Saved my Literature Class: A Case Study with Discussion”
Andy Jones, University of California, Davis
Teaching Arts and Science with the New Social Media, edited by Charles Wankel
Abstract
Like many faculty teaching in the social sciences or humanities, I’ve often been frustrated when students show no evidence of having completed assigned readings for my discussion-centric literature classes. Recently I therefore decided to try something different; I taught a short story class which emphasized my high expectations for student participation, and the means by which students would collaboratively and nightly analyze assigned texts: the increasingly-popular microblogging application Twitter. My students soon embraced Twitter as a collaboration tool, and increasingly came to class with improved attitudes towards, and readiness for, class discussions. The nightly peer-review process made possible by Twitter helped students improve their spoken and written arguments, and deepen their understanding of challenging texts. This chapter tells the story of the discoveries I made about teaching student-centered classes, and about using Twitter as a sandbox where students would share their ideas before coming to the well-attended lectures and class discussions. The chapter concludes with ten recommended strategies for teaching with Twitter.
