Using Twitter as a diagnostic teaching and learning assessment tool

Higher education students coming from different regions and schools have different interests and knowledge levels. These differences can be exploited by teachers to improve the course efficiency. Knowing beforehand the misconceptions and the prior knowledge of the students, the teacher can tune the content of the lecture accordingly. In traditional systems, short essay, multiple choice or true-false diagnostic quizzes that include several potential misconceptions related to the targeted learning, are often practiced for this purpose. This approach reveals the differences in prior knowledge, misconceptions and deficiencies in prerequisite skills amongst the students. The teacher armed with this information can organize both the content and the structure of his/her teaching more efficiently. In this paper, we propose using Twitter as a diagnostic teaching and learning assessment tool. In this scenario the teacher tweets hashtags related to key concepts or misconceptions. The comments of the students are retrieved using Twitter APIs and stored in a local database. The teacher views and analyzes the retrieved data to tune her/his instruction. After lecturing, the same hashtags are sent and responses are collected. Analysis of the data before and after will reveal how much learning is achieved. Besides, this tool will enable instructors to provide some hints to students about the topic of the lecture and engage students more through the use of social media.

[1]  Des Laffey,et al.  Is Twitter for the Birds? , 2011 .

[2]  Chris Evans,et al.  Twitter for teaching: Can social media be used to enhance the process of learning? , 2014, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[3]  Reynol Junco,et al.  The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades , 2011, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[4]  Alan Levine,et al.  The 2009 Horizon Report , 2009 .

[5]  George Veletsianos,et al.  Higher education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter , 2012, J. Comput. Assist. Learn..

[6]  Martin Ebner,et al.  Microblogs in Higher Education - A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning? , 2010, Comput. Educ..

[7]  Jay McTighe,et al.  Seven Practices for Effective Learning , 2005 .

[8]  Tung-Liang Chen,et al.  Use of Twitter for formative evaluation: Reflections on trainer and trainees' experiences , 2012, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[9]  Carmen Holotescu,et al.  CAN WE USE TWITTER FOR EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES , 2008 .

[10]  Ruimin Shen,et al.  Microblogging for Language Learning: Using Twitter to Train Communicative and Cultural Competence , 2009, ICWL.

[11]  George Siemens.  Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age , 2004 .

[12]  Dawn-Marie Walker.  Classroom Assessment Techniques: An Assessment and Student Evaluation Method , 2012 .

[13]  Lara Lomicka,et al.  A Tale of Tweets: Analyzing Microblogging among Language Learners , 2012 .

[14]  Joanna C. Dunlap,et al.  Learning, unlearning, and relearning: Using Web2.0 technologies to support the development of lifel , 2011 .

[15]  Martin Ebner,et al.  Introducing Live Microblogging: How Single Presentations Can Be Enhanced by the Mass , 2009 .

[16]  J. Seaman,et al.  Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today's Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media. , 2011 .