COLLEGE STUDENTS ATTITUDES TOWARD

USING TWITTER IN THE CLASSROOM

Bulent Dogan, Ed.D.
North American College
Houston, TX
United States
bdogan@northamerican.edu

Abstract: A research study was conducted in a small, private college in urban Houston to better understand
the benefits and challenges of Twitter use in the classroom with respect to interactive learning. Specifically,
this article outlines and describes the results of this study which investigated the attitudes of undergraduate
students toward utilizing Twitter in the classroom for learning activities such as creative group work,
quizzing and polling, and in and after class discussions. In addition, this paper analyzes students
perspectives about the value of Twitter, the impact the above mentioned learning activities had on their
understanding and comprehension of class material, and their future plans for incorporating Twitter in their
academic and professional careers.

Introduction

Micro-blogging is a platform combining aspects of blogging and social networking allowing users to view
and exchange brief messages. As the most popular micro-blogging application, Twitter has experienced tremendous
growth since the first message sent in 2006 (Twitter.com, 2011). Twitter has 500 million registered users including
more than 140 million in the U.S. (Semiocast, 2012). Twitter users generate over 400 million messages per day with
most messages sent from a mobile device (Gaskell, 2012).
Widely considered as one of the most popular social media tools, the key features of Twitter include the
ability to publish brief posts called tweets (up to 140 characters), to read other users updates, follow trends with
or without following them, to resend messages known as a retweet, to use hashtags to categorize messages,
and to create public or private lists consisting of tweets of users with common interests.
Even though Twitter is ranked behind Facebook as one of the most popular social media tools, Twitter
usage has been on the rise over the last few years with steady increases in the number of users. According to the Pew
Research Center, 15% of all internet users between the ages of 18 and 65 are Twitter users; within this group, 31%
of the users are between the ages of 18 and 24 (Smith & Brenner, 2012). Among this group of young internet users,
which is the typical age of college students, 20% use Twitter on a daily basis compared to over 90% of college
students using Facebook (Martin, 2009; Smith & Brenner, 2012; Junco, 2011). While university and college students
are generally tech-savvy and very interested in social media, college faculty has yet to adopt social media, yet alone
Twitter, as a learning tool. While 34% of university and college faculty utilize social media as an aspect of their
course curriculum, only 8 % use Facebook and only 3% use Twitter. (Moran, Seaman & Tinti-Kane, 2012).
Although limited, researchers have been investigating the benefits and challenges of Twitter use in the
classroom with respect to interactive learning. Twitter has received attention for a variety of purposes in the college
classroom, including use as a platform for quick communication; student-student and student-teacher interaction;
collaborative, reflective, critical, and informal learning; formation of learning community and student networks; and
for peer-to-peer support (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009; McWilliams, Hickey, Hines, Conner, & Bishop, 2010; Badge,
Johnson, Moseley and Cann, 2011; Junco 2012; Luo & Gao, 2012). Among the specific benefits of adopting Twitter
is that it increases student interaction, in-class participation, engagement levels, and improves overall GPA (Junco,
Heiberger & Loken, 2011; Luo & Gao, 2012). According to research, the limitations and challenges of using Twitter
in the classroom include, information overload for students; text character limitation when tweeting; unstructured
learning activities; and distracting and addicting (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008; Luo & Gao, 2012)
The Study
This study investigates the attitudes of undergraduate students, enrolled in three sections of Computer
Literacy and Integrating Technology into Education, toward using Twitter in the classroom for learning activities
such as creative group work, quizzing and polling, and in and after class discussions.
The participants in this study include freshman students taking entry level Computer Literacy courses
during the Fall, 2011 semester and sophomore students enrolled in Integrating Technology into Curriculum in the
Spring, 2012 semester. The courses were taught by the same instructor and were identical in terms of instructional
methods used, namely cooperative learning, polling and voting, discussions during and after class, and class
communication. Ninety students enrolled in these courses were asked to voluntarily complete an online survey. The
survey was administered at the end of each semester and posed a series of questions related to the students
classroom experiences. All students completed the survey with the exception of one student (n=89), thus making the
response rate 99%. The survey respondents included 41 males and 48 females. The ages of the students ranged
between 18 and 27 with the majority of students (73%) between the ages of 18 and 20.

Procedure
After determining that the majority of students in the classes did not have prior experience with Twitter, the
instructor provided training the first week of each semester. The training topics included how to create an account on
Twitter; how to follow the class Twitter account; how to use hashtags for class assignments; and how to create
long tweets. Following the week of training, students were asked to create a new account with their first and last
name and follow the class Twitter account, moderated by the instructor. Students were encouraged to create a
separate account for class purposes if they had an existing Twitter account. To prevent distraction, a public student
list was formed under the class Twitter account where all students could see each others tweets. The instructor
regularly (at least once a week) tweeted for assignment and announcement purposes. Throughout the remainder of
the semester, Twitter was incorporated into specific learning activities.

Group Work
Students were divided into small groups and assigned a topic to discuss and research; group members were rotated
every week. One student in the group was selected as group leader in order to facilitate the discussion, and to assign
research questions to individual group members. After the group discussions, each group member had to answer a
question for the group by conducting quick research on the internet. A group hashtag was assigned for this activity
in order to easily track individual contributions of each group member. By sending individual tweets for the group,
students were able to read other groups tweets and learn from them as well.

Discussions

Twitter was used actively for discussions, especially after class. These virtual discussions were initiated by questions
posed by the instructor. Each week a new topic was assigned using the class Twitter account. Students were
encouraged to read each others tweets and reply.

Polling and Quizzing

A game-like activity was used by the instructor in class for reviewing the weeks content, typically before the
weekly quiz was administered. During this popular classroom activity, students were able to use lifelines in order
to help them answer the questions. One of the lifelines was asking the class opinion on the question by using
Twitters polling feature. A third-party application, through Polleverywhere.com, was used to solicit student
opinions on a given question. Students were able to send a tweet using a special code assigned by this system in
order to indicate the correct answer and live results were projected on a monitor screen.

This article outlines and describes the results of a study investigating the attitudes of undergraduate
students toward utilizing Twitter in classroom for learning activities such as creative group work, quizzing and
polling, and in and after class discussion. In addition, this paper analyzes students perspectives on the value of
Twitter, the impact the above mentioned learning activities had on their understanding and comprehension of class
material, and their future plans for incorporating Twitter in their academic and professional careers.
Results

When students were asked about their prior experience with Twitter, 65% stated they did not have a Twitter
account before taking the course. However, 88% of students had a Facebook account before they enrolled in the
course (Figure 1).
When students who had existing Twitter accounts were asked about the frequency in which they used
Twitter prior to the class, 49% of the students indicated that they had never used their Twitter account. Only 24% of
the students stated that they Always used their twitter account, followed by Sometimes (15%) and Usually
(12%) (Figure 2).

Figure 1 Figure 2

Students chose from a variety of answers for the following question: What feature did you like the most
about Twitter? Quick Updates (32%) was the most popular feature, followed by Less Clutter and Simple
Interface (29%), Being able to search through hashtags (25%), and More privacy option compared to other
social media (12%) (Figure 3).
In response to the question: What feature did you dislike the most about Twitter? Text Limitation was
the most selected limitation, with 75%, followed by Less Interactive Science (11%), Other (6%), and Less
Multimedia Rich (4%) (Figure 4).

Figure 3 Figure 4

When students were questioned about whether they found Twitter a more appropriate and focused tool for
classroom activities, compared to other social media, 89% of students said Yes, while the remaining students said
No (11%) (Figure 5).
A survey item asking students about their future plans for using Twitter revealed that 33% of students
would use Twitter For other classes if required, followed by Quick Communication with Friends (18%),
Educational Purposes (17%), and Following Trends (7%), while 26% of the students indicated that they do not
plan to use Twitter in the future (Figure 6).

Figure 5 Figure 6

As shown in Table 1, the analysis of the questions aimed to measure students experiences with learning
activities through Twitter by using a five-point Likert-scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly
agree, yielded mean scores between 4.04 and 3.40 for each question for all students (Table 1). A mean scale score
close to the value of 5 indicates that the participants strongly agreed with the statement and a mean scale score
close to the value of 1 would indicate that the participants strongly disagreed with the statement. The mean scores
indicate that the students mostly agreed with these statements. Among the question items, Being able to easily
share my research results through tweets for the class was a valuable feature in Twitter and Twitter allowed me to
quickly communicate with my professor had the highest mean scores, followed by, Twitter allowed me to quickly
communicate with my class and By using Twitter, I felt more connected with my class during the class time. By
using Twitter, I felt more connected with my class after the class time had the lowest mean (3.40) in this group of
questions. Large standard deviations (>1) in this set of questions indicate a sizeable amount of variation among
participants in terms of their responses regarding the value and benefit of Twitter (Table 1).

Mean
VALUE AND BENEFIT OF USING TWITTER SD
(n=89)
Being able to easily share my research results through tweets for the class was a valuable feature in Twitter. 4.04 1.08

Twitter allowed me to quickly communicate with my professor. 3.97 1.04

Twitter allowed me to quickly communicate with my class. 3.74 1.04

By using Twitter, I felt more connected with my class DURING the class time. 3.71 1.08

By using Twitter, I felt more connected with my class AFTER the class time. 3.40 1.19

Table 1. Value and benefit of using Twitter in classroom as reported by students, (n=89)

Analysis of Likert-style questions measuring the students attitudes about group work activity utilizing
Twitter in this course yielded mean scores between 4.06 and 3.82, indicating the participants generally agreed with
the statements (Table 2). Among the question items, I felt that through the use of twitter the instructor was able to
log my responses for adequate participation in the group work and Use of Twitter made group work activity more
interesting and engaging had the highest mean scores, followed by, I felt that I had more opportunities to
contribute to the group work through tweeting compared to a traditional group work activity and I learned from
the efforts of other groups work due to being able to access to all tweets in my class. Standard deviations in this set
of questions indicate a lesser amount of variation among participants in terms of their responses as compared to the
previous set of questions in Table 1.
 Mean
GROUP WORK ACTIVITY SD
(n=89)
I felt that through the use of twitter the instructor was able to log my responses for adequate participation in the group work. 4.06 .98

Use of Twitter made group work activity more interesting and engaging. 3.91 1.05

I felt that I had more opportunities to contribute to the group work through tweeting compared to traditional group work activity. 3.83 1.05

I learned from the efforts of other groups work due to being able to access to all tweets in my class. 3.82 .97

Table 2. Students attitudes toward Group Work activity using Twitter, (n=89)

As demonstrated in Table 3, the analysis of the question items measuring the overall attitudes of students
toward the use of Twitter for Discussion activity yielded mean scores between 4.13 and 3.92 (Table 3), while
Polling and Voting activity means were generally higher, ranging from 4.03 to 4.26 (Table 4).

Mean
DISCUSSION ACTIVITY SD
(n=89)
Using Twitter for online discussions allowed me to be more creative as I was able to post my research findings through URLs, pictures, or videos. 4.13 .99

Online discussions through twitter were easier to use on mobile devices such as a phone or an IPAD compared to using traditional online forums. 4.02 1.10

The ability to extend the class discussion outside of class made my experience with this course more interactive. 3.92 .96

Table 3. Students attitudes toward Discussion activity using Twitter, (n=89)

Mean
POLLING AND VOTING ACTIVITY SD
(n=89)
Playing educational games in class using polling/voting feature with Twitter allowed me to review the content in a more engaging way. 4.26 1.04

Due to the "polling/voting" feature of Twitter used in class, I participated more in class discussions/answering questions compared to the 4.16 1.08
traditional show of hands.

I enjoyed using Twitter whenever we had a polling/voting activity in class. 4.03 1.09

Table 4. Students attitudes toward Polling and Voting activity using Twitter, (n=89)

As can be seen in Table 5, the analysis of the question items measuring the overall attitudes of students
toward the use of Twitter for class activities yielded mean scores of 4.04 and 3.99 respectively (Table 5). Low
standard deviation values (<1) for all questions in this set indicate that the participants agreed with the statements in
uniformity.

Mean
OVERALL SD
(n=89)
Overall, using Twitter for class activities (discussion, polling and group work) engaged me more in the course. 4.04 .96

Overall, using Twitter for class activities (discussion, polling and group work) improved my learning of the studied subjects in this course. 3.99 .96

Table 5. Overall students attitudes toward using Twitter for class activities, (n=89)
Conclusions

According to the results, the majority of the students (65%) in this research study did not have a Twitter
account before taking the Computer Literacy and Integrating Technology into Education courses; almost 90% of the
students, however, did have an existing Facebook account prior to the study. Even among the small number of
students who had a Twitter account, only 24% of them used their account Always and when combined with the
other categories, almost 50% of the students used their Twitter accounts to some degree of frequency. This indicates
that students in this study did not have much experience with Twitter prior to taking the courses and the number of
students using Twitter and Facebook in this study is similar to other studies aligned with national statistics (Martin,
2009; Smith & Brenner, 2012; Junco, 2011).
The results also shed light on what Twitter features students in this study liked and disliked and whether
they feel it is appropriate to use Twitter for educational purposes. Being able to send and receive Quick updates
was the most desired feature of Twitter, along with Less clutter and simple interface, when compared to other
social media tools. Text limitation was by far the most disliked feature of Twitter, restricting students ability to
explain their ideas. A great majority of the students found that Twitter was more appropriate and focused for
classroom activities compared to other social media sites. In addition, the results revealed that students would like to
continue using Twitter in a variety of ways, including required class work, quick communication with friends,
educational purposes, and following trends.
Students in this study generally agreed that Twitter was a valuable tool, especially when sharing research
results with the class. Students also valued the ability to quickly communicate with the instructor and the other
students. To a lesser extent, students felt that connecting with the class after class time was an additional benefit to
those mentioned above.
Among the class activities which utilized Twitter in this experiment, Polling and Quizzing received the
most attention and positive feedback from students. Polling students, with live projected responses, was the
students favorite activity when reviewing the course content for the week. Students indicated that due to this
activity they participated more in classroom discussions and felt more comfortable answering questions compared to
the traditional show of hands method. Overall, the results conform to similar studies showing increased student
participation as well as engagement, as a result of Twitter use in the classroom (Junco, Heiberger & Loken, 2011;
Luo & Gao, 2012).
In addition, the creative group work activity was very well received by the students. Students particularly
noted that the instructor was able to keep track of group members individual contributions to the group work
activity. According to the results, the discussion activity allowed students to be creative, as students were able to
post research findings through URLs, pictures, and videos Not completely unexpected, as research shows that most
tweets are sent from mobile devices, students found that using Twitter for the discussion activity on mobile devices,
such as a smartphone or iPad, was easier than using it on traditional online forums on computers (Gaskell, 2012).
Overall, students agreed in uniformity that using Twitter for certain class activities (group work, polling,
and discussions) in this study resulted in increased engagement as well as an enhanced understanding and
comprehension of class material. In conclusion, further investigation is needed to fully understand if some of the
positive initial findings from this study can be replicated in different settings with larger populations in order to be
generalized. Future studies detailing if and how Twitter can be incorporated into other classroom activities; in what
conditions and in what kind of structured activity the use of Twitter would produce the utmost positive learning
environment; and possible challenges with using Twitter for these activities are required.

Challenges and Recommendations

The 140 character limitation for tweets can be overridden by using third-party applications such as
twitlonger.com or xltweet.com. Students in this study were able to express their ideas and answer
discussion questions using some of these services.
Training sessions, outlining the basic features of Twitter, are essential for effective
implementation of Twitter in the classroom, as it is a relatively new social media tool.
Assigning hashtags for each assignment and using these hashtags should be encouraged for
better categorization and organization of messages. Students can be instructed to reply to other
students to increase interaction.
 Following organizations or and individuals who are engaged in matters relating to material studied
in class through Twitter would be another worthwhile class activity for college students.
Third-party applications can be explored to make Twitter work more efficiently with additional
capabilities.

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