twitter and student engagement: what is the value added?

Dawn AldersonStuart MacDonald, Chris Hall & Paul Latreille

Swansea University & University of Sheffield

Twitter and student engagement: What is the value added?

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Twitter and student engagement: What is the value added?

• Two final-year criminology modules that

focused on UK Law/Policy & Antisocial Behaviour Orders (n=117)

• Case study methodology

Method Qualitative data type

Approach for analysis

1.Observation Student Tweets *Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) Micro-Event Analysis

2. Journals Student Interim Reflective Diary Entries

Deductive Corroboratory Analysis

3. Survey Student End of Module Survey

Deductive Corroboratory Analysis

4. *Field-Notes Lecturer’s field notes after each session were analysed as part of the memo activity during the main analysis (CGT)

Analysis: Constructivist Grounded Theory (Alderson, Hall & Latreille, 2014)

What did we find?O/codes Categories Axial coding Themes

248 1.Rhetoric2.Humour3.Fun/Enjoyment4.Peer-peer5.Applied academic skills6.Progression7.Continuity8.Context9.Ownership10.Reflection11.Opinion12.Emotional13.Self-directed activity14.Sharing15.Questioning

a)Questioning b)Thinking skills c)Spontaneous Activity

A) Surface Level Engagement

B) Deep Level Engagement

Surface Level EngagementQuestioning: rhetorical question forms: humour, to provoke and to

lead ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Survey: Many questions were tweeted and provided laughs and

entertainment, it brought a bit of fun into lectures

Lecturer: The lack of student-student engagement is something that puzzles me too. I thought there would be more interaction but it seems that – whilst they read each other’s tweets – they don’t respond to them

Survey: I think using Twitter has helped a lot, any questions that pop into my head during the lecture i can tweet....sometimes questions can be forgotten otherwise by the time the seminar for the lecture has come around

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Survey: It did make the lecture more interesting because you felt like you had the freedom to choose to tweet and allowed you to engage more within the lecture making it more enjoyable

Journal: For the first time in ages I felt excited about going to a 9am lecture

Lecturer: And nice to see some emotion! It isn’t just about scoring good marks in the exam!

Survey: I found it was a good way to post stories or news related to ASB, It’s also a great way to post different articles.

Lecturer: nice to see students making the connection between their experiences and their studies.

Survey: Brilliant way of summing up statements and having a live feed to look back to

Journal: An innovative way of sharing thoughts, links and questions... It’s great to get feedback it makes you feel that you are contributing to the course

Survey: You can see how other students are thinking...I will use tweets to recap and expand points

Lecturer: It’s good that students have reached this point in their thinking by the end of the lecture – sets the seminar discussion up well

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Reflective Activity

Reflection in action:

Tweeting to construct

thought in the moment

Reflection on action: thinking about what has gone before for

continuity

Reflection for action:

connections with intended learning

outcome for progression

Lecturer: Good to see this wider thought and evaluation

Survey: I will definitely look back at them as many of the tweets posted at the time I agreed with so they will trigger the thought process...and perhaps offer

a critical approach

Fin

Thank you for listening

Your questions?

dawnalderson@outlook.com