Enhancing undergraduate teaching through social media – ‘teaching by twitter’

SALT Conference 2012 July 2nd

Dr Ben Evans

@DrBenEvans

#susalt

‘Tell me and I forget, Teach me and I remember, Involve me and I learn.’

Benjamin Franklin

• Large cohorts

• Meaningful real-time feedback

• Student contact between lectures

• Teaching generic engineering content to multiple disciplines

• Pressure on ‘office hours’ / email

01 Challenges

02 The Technology

Twitter

@DrBenEvans#EG168

02 The Technology Camtasia

02 The Technology YouTube

03 The Philosophy

04 Impact

• Over two thirds of the 630 strong cohort for this module were following @DrBenEvans via twitter by the end of the module and the video lectures were streamed over 900 times

• the majority of students stated that they were engaging with this teaching method primarily using smart phones

• Lecture attendance was significantly improved compared with previous years

04 Impact

‘not relevant for medical engineering’‘not enough feedback on assignments’‘do not understand why this is relevant’‘unengaging tedious and boring’‘not enough involvment’‘lecturers needed to involve students instead of just standing at the front’

04 Impact

‘module was really stimulating’‘lecturer did a good job of making boring topics not quite so boring’‘lots of applications’‘videos great for revision’‘enjoyed following the lecturer on twitter’

04 Impact

04 Impact

• Negligible impact on module grade distribution• Some students complained that it was unfair if they weren’t

on Twitter

05 Feedback / Questions ??

© SAP 2009 / Page 14