While the ubiquity of social media as a mode of communication, collaboration, connection and creativity has been widely adopted in journalism, entertainment, healthcare and others, the field of education has been more reticent to integrate social media for teaching and learning purposes. This paper aims to summarize research on how social media may support educational aims with specific reference to large classrooms. In addition, the authors provide practical tips on using Twitter from the experience teaching in a typical higher education setting: a large, undergraduate course in a public university. Finally, the authors offer conclusions about how instructors can use social media to support increased engagement, professional development and digital literacy skills.,This paper presents a real-life “case study” of using Twitter in an educational context common to many in higher education: a large, undergraduate lecture class over the course of one semester. This course focused on the foundations of educational technology and was a requirement of receiving a teaching credential at a large public institution in the Midwest. As a required course, students from a number of different majors were enrolled in the course, including biology, chemistry, mathematics, English, history, world languages, physical education and many more. While these majors were grouped by content-area groups (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math; the humanities; and physical education), for this paper the authors will focus on the part of the course where students were all together in lecture format. Guided by the research above, and pedagogical practices discussed elsewhere (Greenhow and Gleason, 2012), it was decided to use Twitter for a number of different pedagogical purposes, including in-class discussion, increase student engagement with course material, expand student interaction and develop student presence.,The use of Twitter was found to increase student participation, help facilitate conceptual understanding, to foster students’ “social presence,” and to increase interactions with “real world experts.” Twitter provided a way, for example, for students in a large lecture course to participate, and roughly 90 per cent of students did so with Twitter. Likewise, instructors used Twitter as a way to bridge learning across different experiences (i.e. lab activities, lecture and online lesson), while also providing a way to support social presence (letting students share humorous pictures). Finally, Twitter facilitated interaction with content experts including historians, during a lesson on global collaboration.,Overall, integrating Twitter into a large, lecture course seemed to suggest a number of positive learning outcomes, including presenting opportunities for student voice and expression, visible participation, the development of social presence and tools to connect different course activities (e.g. lecture, in-class activities and lab activities). For example, much research in this field has begun to explore the educational outcomes associated with social media use, and this study contributes to this emerging field. Here, the authors advocate for using social media to support interactive, collaborative and social learning.

中文翻译：

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课程与指导：高等教育中使用Twitter进行教学的教学方法

尽管社交媒体作为一种交流，协作，联系和创造力的方式已在新闻，娱乐，医疗保健和其他领域得到广泛采用，但教育领域对于将社交媒体集成到教学中的态度更加谨慎。本文旨在总结有关社交媒体如何支持教育目标的研究，特别是针对大型教室的研究。此外，作者还提供了在典型的高等教育环境中的经验教学中使用Twitter的实用技巧：一所公立大学的大型本科课程。最后，作者提供了有关教师如何使用社交媒体来支持增加参与度，专业发展和数字素养技能的结论。本文提供了一个现实的“案例研究”，即在高等教育中许多人共有的教育环境中使用Twitter：一个学期的大型本科讲课。本课程侧重于教育技术的基础，并且是在中西部大型公共机构获得教学证书的要求。作为必修课程，该课程招收了来自不同专业的学生，​​包括生物学，化学，数学，英语，历史，世界语言，体育等。虽然这些专业按内容领域组（科学，技术，工程和数学；人文科学和体育）分组，但对于本文，作者将专注于课程中以讲课方式将学生聚集在一起的部分。在以上研究的指导下，以及在其他地方讨论过的教学实践（Greenhow和Gleason，2012年），决定将Twitter用于许多不同的教学目的，包括课堂讨论，增加学生对课程材料的参与度，扩大学生的互动性和发展学生的影响力。发现使用Twitter可以提高学生的参与度，有助于促进概念理解，促进学生的“社会存在”，并增加与“现实世界专家”的互动。Twitter提供了一种方法，例如，为参加大型讲座课程的学生提供参与的途径，大约90％的学生是通过Twitter参与的。同样，讲师使用Twitter作为跨不同体验（例如实验室活动，讲座和在线课程）学习的桥梁，同时还提供了一种支持社交活动的方法（让学生分享幽默的图片）。最后，在全球合作课程中，Twitter促进了与包括历史学家在内的内容专家的互动。总体而言，将Twitter集成到大型讲座课程中似乎总体上显示出许多积极的学习成果，包括为学生提供表达和表达意见的机会，可见的参与，社交能力的开发以及将不同课程活动（例如演讲，课堂活动和实验室活动）联系起来的工具。例如，该领域的许多研究已经开始探索与社交媒体使用相关的教育成果，并且这项研究为这一新兴领域做出了贡献。在这里，作者主张使用社交媒体来支持交互式，协作式和社交学习。