Twitter Chat as an Informal Learning Tool

Abstract

This case study focuses on Twitter as an informal learning tool. Specifically, the authors examine user-created Twitter chats using one specific chat, #sachat, as a case study. #sachat is a weekly one-hour chat held on Twitter and populated by higher education professionals in the field of student affairs (e.g. college admissions, advising, housing, new student orientation). The authors contrast this chat with other ways in which student affairs and higher education professionals are using Twitter. Using methods of computer-mediated discourse analysis, they then discover and elicit defining characteristics of #sachat. Finally, the authors offer thoughts on why this chat seems to be successful as an informal learning resource, how it compares to other uses of Twitter by professionals, and implications for other communities interested in using Twitter or similar tools to create informal learning.

A Syllabi Analysis of Social Media for Teaching and Learning Courses

“…The amount of research related to social media in teaching and learning within higher education is exuberating (Bista, 2015;Lin, Hoffman, and Borengasser, 2013;DiVall&Kirwin, 2012;Xi, Hui, de Pablos, Lytras, and Yongqiang, 2016). Researchers have focused on understanding: how different platforms can be used in varying learning experiences (Bista, 2015;DiVall&Kirwin, 2012;Alzouebi&Isakovic, 2014;Evans, 2014;Tuten& Marks, 2012), how and when informal learning can occur within these environments (Tess, 2013;Lin, Hoffman, and Borengasser, 2013), how social media can serve to enhance professional development (Luo, Sickel, & Cheng, 2017;Author, 2017), the types of content and connections that occur when using social media for teaching and learning (Guidry &Pasquini, 2013), the culture-specific parameters that have an effect on learning experiences with social media communities (Atkins, Koroluk, & Stranach, 2017), the locations of the knowledge sharing activities (Greenhalgh, Staudt Willet, Rosenberg, & Koehler, 2018), the learning experiences that field-specific students encounter when using social media (Evans, 2014;Pham, 2014;Myers, Jeffery, Nimmagadda, Werthman, and Jordan, 2015;Spallek et al, 2015) and the tensions and uncertainties that scholars who use social media experience themselves (Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2016;Veletsianos & Stewart, 2016), amongst other topics.…”

A Syllabi Analysis of Social Media for Teaching and Learning Courses

“…The amount of research related to social media in teaching and learning within higher education is exhaustive (Bista, 2015;DiVall & Kirwin, 2012;Xi, Hui, de Pablos, Lytras, & Yongqiang, 2016;Lin, Hoffman, & Borengasser, 2013). Researchers have focused on understanding: how different platforms can be used in varying learning experiences (Alzouebi & Isakovic, 2014;Bista, 2015;DiVall & Kirwin, 2012;Evans, 2014;Tuten & Marks, 2012), how and when informal learning can occur within these environments (Lin et al, 2013;Tess, 2013), how social media can serve to enhance professional development (Luo, Sickel, & Cheng, 2017;Romero-Hall, 2017), the types of content and connections that occur when using social media for teaching and learning (Guidry & Pasquini, 2013), the culture-specific parameters that have an effect on learning experiences with social media communities (Atkins, Koroluk, & Stranach, 2017), the locations of the knowledge sharing activities (Greenhalgh, Staudt Willet, Rosenberg, & Koehler, 2018), the learning experiences that field-specific students encounter when using social media (Evans, 2014;Myers, Jeffery, Nimmagadda, Werthman, & Jordan, 2015;Pham, 2014; 15 Spallek et al, 2015) and the tensions and uncertainties that scholars who use social media experience themselves (Kimmons & Veletsianos, 2016;Veletsianos & Stewart, 2016), amongst other topics.…”