Twitter as a means of class participation
Making student reading visible
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v8i1.1Keywords:
active reading, reading strategy, self-explanation, social media, Twitter, university teachingAbstract
Earlier studies have shown that tutoring in reading strategies reflects positively on the acquisition of skills and construction of knowledge. However, the suggested ways of carrying out such training – via individual face-to-face instruction or tutoring software – require time and specialized resources which are not always available in a university seminar. In the study reported here, I investigate the possibility of making reading strategy training more feasible through the use of a widely accessible microblogging platform, Twitter. In the experiment, students were required to tweet comments on their reading with the objective of prompt self-explanation. The qualitative data drawn from post-seminar interviews and content analysis of tweets indicate that students spontaneously resort to self-explanation strategies and develop from predominantly low-level to high-level strategy use in the course of the seminar. Other positive effects included an increased commitment to reading, stimulation of in-class discussion and enhancement of a feeling of community among learners.
References
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Mulcahy-Ernt, P. (1990) What’s new in reading research. Journal of College Reading and Learning 22 (2): 37–48.
Nippert-Eng, C. (2010) Islands of Privacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nunan, D. (1989) Understanding Language Classrooms. New York: Prentice Hall.
Orsini-Jones, M. (2010) Task-based development of language students’ critical digital multiliteracies and cybergenre awareness. In M. Luzón, M. Ruiz-Madrid and M. Villanueva (eds) Digital Genres, New Literacies and Autonomy in Language Learning, 197–224. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
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Pike, G., Kuh, G. and McCormick, A. (2011) An investigation of the contingent relationships between learning community participation and student engagement. Research in Higher Education 52 (3): 300–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11162-010-9192-1.
Puschmann, C. (2009) Lies at Wal-Mart. In J. Giltrow and D. Stein (eds) Genres in the Internet, 49–84. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Ripley, B. (2007) Causation, counterfactuals, and critical reading in the active classroom. International Studies Perspectives 8 (3): 303–314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1528- 3585.2007.00291.x.
Schroeder, A., Minocha, S. and Schneider, C. (2010) The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of using social software in higher and further education teaching and learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 26 (3): 159–174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365- 2729.2010.00347.x.
Skeels, M. and Grudin, J. (2009) When social networks cross boundaries. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI. New York: ACM. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1531674.1531689.
Smyk-Bhattacharjee, D. (2006) A ‘lyracist’ by night, teenager by day and sleepaholic everytime in between. In J. Androutsopoulos, J. Runkehl, P. Schlobinski and T. Siever (eds) Neuere Entwicklungen in der linguistischen Internetforschung, 68–85. Hildesheim: Olms.
Van Compernolle, R. (2008) Second-person pronoun use and address strategies in online personal ads from Quebec. Journal of Pragmatics 40 (12): 2062–2076. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.008.
Yus, F. (2011) Cyberpragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Zhao, D. and Rosson, M. (2009) How and why people Twitter. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI. New York: ACM. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1531674.1531710.
Bielaczyc, K., Pirolli, P. and Brown, A. (1995) Training in self-explanation and selfregulation strategies. Cognition and Instruction 13 (2): 221–252. http://dx.doi. org/10.1207/s1532690xci1302_3.
boyd, d. and Marwick, A. (2011) Social privacy in networked publics. Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1925128.
boyd, d., Golder, S. and Lotan, G. (2010) Tweet Tweet Retweet. In Proceedings of HICSS-43: 1–10. Kauai, HI. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2010.412.
Burns, A. (2005) Action research. Language Teaching 38: 57–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S0261444805002661.
Carter-Wells, J. (1996) Raising expectations for critical reading. New Directions for Higher Education 96: 45–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/he.36919969606.
Chi, M., Bassok, M., Lewis, M., Reimann, P. and Glaser, R. (1989) Self-explanations. Cognitive Science 13 (2): 145–182. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1302_1
Chi, M., Leeuw, N., Chiu, M. and Lavancher, C. (1994) Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding. Cognitive Science 18: 439–477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/ s15516709cog1803_3.
Cottrell, K. and McNamara, D. (2002) Cognitive precursors to science comprehension. In Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society 24: 244–249. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Croxall, B. (2010) Reflections on teaching with social media. Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/06/2010. http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/reflections-on-teaching-with-socialmedia.
Dunlap, J. and Lowenthal, P. (2009) Tweeting the night away. Journal of Information Systems Education 20 (2): 129–137.
Ehrlich, K. and Shami, S. (2010) Microblogging inside and outside the workplace. Presentation at ICWSM 2010, 10–15 April 2010. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~sadats/ icwsm2010.pdf.
Ellison, N., Steinfield, C. and Lampe, C. (2007) The benefits of Facebook “friends”: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ j.1083-6101.2007.00367.x.
Fies, C. and Marshall, J. (2006) Classroom response systems. Journal of Science Education and Technology 15 (1): 101–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10956-006-0360-1.
Gardner, R. (1988) The socio-educational model of second-language learning. Language Learning 38 (1): 101–126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1988.tb00403.x.
Graesser, A. (2007) An introduction to strategic reading comprehension. In D. McNamara (ed.) Reading Comprehension Strategies, 3–26. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Hartley, P. (2007) New technology and the modern university. Presentation at Next Generation Environments Conference. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/events/2007/04/ next_gen_keynote.pdf.
Herring, S. (1999) Interactional Coherence in CMC. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 4 (4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1999.tb00106.x.
Hew, K. and Cheung, W. (2008) Attracting student participation in asynchronous online discussions. Computers & Education 51 (3): 1111–1124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. compedu.2007.11.002.
Hopkins, D. (2008) A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Jucker, A. (2003) Mass media communication at the beginning of 21st century. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4 (1): 129–148. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jhp.4.1.07juc.
Junco, R., Heiberger, G. and Loken, E. (2011) The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 27 (2): 119–132. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387.x.
Kieslinger, B. (2009) How To Use Social Software in Higher Education. A handbook from the iCamp project. http://www.icamp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/icamp-handbookweb.pdf.
Marwick, A. and boyd, d. (2011) I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately. New Media and Society 13 (1): 114–133. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461444810365313.
Mazur, E. (1997) Peer Instruction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
McNamara, D. (2004) SERT: Self-explanation reading training. Discourse Processes 38 (1): 1–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326950dp3801_1.
McNamara, D. (2010) Strategies to read and learn. Medical Education 44 (4): 340–346. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03550.x.
McNamara, D., Levinstein, I. and Boonthum, C. (2004) iSTART. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 36 (2): 222–233. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03195567.
Mulcahy-Ernt, P. (1990) What’s new in reading research. Journal of College Reading and Learning 22 (2): 37–48.
Nippert-Eng, C. (2010) Islands of Privacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nunan, D. (1989) Understanding Language Classrooms. New York: Prentice Hall.
Orsini-Jones, M. (2010) Task-based development of language students’ critical digital multiliteracies and cybergenre awareness. In M. Luzón, M. Ruiz-Madrid and M. Villanueva (eds) Digital Genres, New Literacies and Autonomy in Language Learning, 197–224. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Parry, D. (2008) Twitter for Academia. In AcademHack, January 23, 2008. http:// academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/.
Pike, G., Kuh, G. and McCormick, A. (2011) An investigation of the contingent relationships between learning community participation and student engagement. Research in Higher Education 52 (3): 300–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11162-010-9192-1.
Puschmann, C. (2009) Lies at Wal-Mart. In J. Giltrow and D. Stein (eds) Genres in the Internet, 49–84. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Ripley, B. (2007) Causation, counterfactuals, and critical reading in the active classroom. International Studies Perspectives 8 (3): 303–314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1528- 3585.2007.00291.x.
Schroeder, A., Minocha, S. and Schneider, C. (2010) The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of using social software in higher and further education teaching and learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 26 (3): 159–174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365- 2729.2010.00347.x.
Skeels, M. and Grudin, J. (2009) When social networks cross boundaries. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI. New York: ACM. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1531674.1531689.
Smyk-Bhattacharjee, D. (2006) A ‘lyracist’ by night, teenager by day and sleepaholic everytime in between. In J. Androutsopoulos, J. Runkehl, P. Schlobinski and T. Siever (eds) Neuere Entwicklungen in der linguistischen Internetforschung, 68–85. Hildesheim: Olms.
Van Compernolle, R. (2008) Second-person pronoun use and address strategies in online personal ads from Quebec. Journal of Pragmatics 40 (12): 2062–2076. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.008.
Yus, F. (2011) Cyberpragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Zhao, D. and Rosson, M. (2009) How and why people Twitter. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI. New York: ACM. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1531674.1531710.
Published
2013-07-19
Issue
Section
Articles
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Dayter, D. (2013). Twitter as a means of class participation: Making student reading visible. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 8(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v8i1.1
