Empirical study looking at relationship between instructors' use of Twitter, and student's perception of immediacy and credibility of instructor
Key ideas
Literature review
Twitter can:
- increased class participation
- decreased student shyness
- increased writing skills
- enhanced discussions
- increased engagement
(Ferrenstein, 2010b; Harris, 2010; “Twittering the Student Experience,” 2009). p. 1
Theoretical construct
- Teacher immediacy
- Teacher content relevance
- Teacher credibility
All been shown to directly relate to perceived and actual student learning outcomes (McCroskey, Valencic, & Richmond, 2004; Witt & Wheeless, 2001; Witt, Wheeless, & Allen, 2004)
Research questions
- RQ 1: What is the relationship, if any, between student perceptions of teacher immediacy and frequency of student-instructor interaction on Twitter?
- RQ 2: What is the relationship, if any, between teacher content relevance and frequency of student-instructor interaction on Twitter?
- RQ 3: What is the relationship, if any, between student perceptions of teacher credibility and frequency of student-instructor interaction on Twitter?
Design
Likert-style questionnaire of students in courses where instructors tweet, but Twitter is not used as part of the class (participation not obligatory).
Findings
Thus, students did not perceive greater feelings of character, competence, or caring from instructors using Twitter unless they used Twitter themselves. If students used Twitter frequently, they rated their instructor with higher credibility than students who did not use Twitter.
Discussion
Most of the effect seemed to come from
- teacher making his thinking/professional life (research)/personal life more available
- teacher using a tool that students like/find modern (shared experience)
How would this be different if teacher was blogging, writing on Facebook or Google Plus, etc?
