The effect of Twitter posts on students’ perceptions of instructor credibility

Abstract

Greater numbers of instructors are turning to social networking sites to communicate with students. This study examined whether posting social, scholarly, or a combination of social and scholarly information to Twitter has an impact on the perceived credibility of the instructor. Participants were assigned to one of three groups: a group that viewed social tweets, one that viewed scholarly tweets, and one that viewed a combination of social and scholarly tweets. Participants were then asked questions about the instructor's perceived credibility. Results show that participants who viewed only the social tweets rated the instructor significantly higher in perceived credibility than the group that viewed only the scholarly tweets. No other significant differences were found among the groups. These results have implications for both teaching and learning, as there is an established link between perceived instructor credibility and positive learning outcomes.

Twitter’s contribution to improving strategic communication in Latin American universities

“…Es indudable que Twitter ofrece grandes ventajas al respecto, dado que facilita una comunicación ágil, entretenida y motivadora; permite compartir experiencias y opiniones; cambia la dinámica formativa al promover la comunicación y estimular la creatividad y la imaginación; suscita interés, discusión y participación (Rinaldoet al, 2011), al tiempo que se propone como una herramienta idónea para comunicarse con los estudiantes (Johnson, 2011).…”

Twitter Use and its Effects on Student Perception of Instructor Credibility

“…Indeed, some students may be hesitant to initiate communication with instructors outside of class (Kelly, Duran, & Zolten, 2001;Martin & Myers, 2006). Communication researchers have recently focused attention on how students and instructors communicate via technology (e.g., Johnson, 2011;Mazer, Murphy, & Simonds, 2007a, 2007b, and how forms of technology, such as Twitter, can serve as a form of informal communication with instructors. Thus, the current study examines Twitter as a mechanism of informal communication between instructor and student.…”

“…We build upon the assertion that an instructor's self-disclosure is a vital component to creating a perception of credibility (Brookfield, 2006;McCroskey, 1992), adding recent work that suggests that formal and informal self-disclosure among students and instructors transpires and is affected by communication in an online context (Johnson, 2011;Lowe & Laffey, 2011;Mazer et al, 2007aMazer et al, , 2007b). …”

“…Priem et al's (2012) research indicated that only 30% of faculty's tweets are scholarly in nature. Johnson (2011) found that instructors who tweeted more social content were perceived as more credible by students. While Johnson's findings are provocative, they are not intuitive, and we argue that the subject deserves further investigation.…”

“…While Johnson's findings are provocative, they are not intuitive, and we argue that the subject deserves further investigation. Our study was designed to examine how instructor use of Twitter affects perceptions of their credibility, as previous studies have resulted in mixed findings with regard to students' perceptions of Twitter-using instructors (Johnson, 2011;McArthur & Bostedo-Conway, 2012). Therefore, the primary aims of our study were twofold: to quantitatively examine perceived differences in credibility based on the content of a hypothetical instructor's Twitterfeed, and to qualitatively investigate perceptions of credibility and Twitter use to understand what students think about instructors who use Twitter.…”