Tweeting Your Way to Improved #Writing, #Reflection, and #Community

Engaging students using social media: The students’ perspective

“…Kassens (2014) explains that the use of Twitter assignments may not be M a n u s c r i p t 7 suitable in large lecture-based classrooms. Student privacy is also mentioned as a concern in Kassens (2014).…”

“…Social media is a tool that instructors can use to provide additional active learning opportunities to their students. Kassens (2014) provides insight on how to use Twitter for writing assignments in Principles of Macroeconomics classes, while Al-Bahrani and Patel (2015) provide a "how-to" guide on using social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to engage students inside and outside of the economics classroom. Kassens (2014) …”

“…Social media accounts are usually for individual use and, unlike email, social media accounts share information with the user"s network of followers. In hopes of minimizing privacy concerns, some instructors mandate that students create new profiles for use in their economics classes (Kassens, 2014;Kader, 2012). A disadvantage of this approach is that it requires students to have multiple accounts, which increases the costs of using social media for the student and may consequently reduce its efficacy.…”

“…The use of social media provides the ability for students to engage continuously and spontaneously which increases engagement both in and out of the classroom. Students gain an opportunity to be part of a larger learning community and refine their writing and analytical skills (Kassens, 2014). Wankel (2009) finds students tend to listen more carefully, be more attentive, collect information, and multi-task better M a n u s c r i p t 8 through the use of "live-tweeting" in classrooms.…”

“…To avoid any potential concerns, Kassens (2014) asks students to create new Twitter accounts for her course and Harmon et al (2013) advise instructors to add students as members to a course Facebook group rather than adding them as friends. A detailed discussion on privacy settings can also be found in Munoz and Towner (2009).…”