Twitter Usage and Trends by Faculty

The Faculty Focus survey of nearly 2,000 higher education professionals found that almost a third (30.7 percent) of the 1,958 respondents who completed the survey are using Twitter in some capacity. More than half (56.4 percent) say they’ve never used Twitter. The remaining 12.9 percent of respondents say they tried it, but no longer use it.

Depending how they answered the question — “Do you use Twitter?” — respondents were asked a unique set of follow-up questions. The 20-page report provides breakdown of the survey results by question, including comments provided by survey respondents. The comments allowed faculty to further explain how they are using Twitter, why they stopped, or why they have no interest in using it at all.

It is clear that those educators who’ve had a good experience with Twitter are eager to share comments or anecdotes with others, as well as stretch their imagination to find new applications for using the tool to engage students inside and outside of the classroom.

Download the report here!

I love this example of a use of Twitter:

Currently, we have a Russian instructor using it to tweet on every day activities. His students respond in Russian. It gives him a chance to correct mistakes and it gives the students daily practice in writing and understanding the language. Students from other universities have joined in to make it a very dynamic learning tool.

Do you use Twitter? Want to share with us what you do?

Please comment!

Don't forget to come see what we're working on!

Tomorrow, at College Day, we'll be presenting 2 workshops.

The first will be Enhancing your Course with ANGEL - if you don't already know how this course management tool, this is the chance to see how to post documents, link to extra resources, communicate with your students outside of class and more!

The second, Teach, Rewind, Repeat - come learn about the option to video key parts of your lessons, then you can post these for your students to use as review or in case they missed the class. We're going to be starting with a pilot group - why not be a part of it?

Happy Friday!!!

I'm Back!

Wow - where has the time gone?

I can't believe it's been two months since I posted here, for that I apologize. I hope to be posting on a much more regular basis from now on!

There are lots of articles that I want to share...

To start us off, I want to share one from Faculty Focus...

An insider’s guide to teaching and learning in the online classroom
10 Principles of Effective Online Teaching: Best Practices in Distance Education

"Teaching online for the first time is a little like trying to drive a car in a foreign country. You know how to drive, just like you know how to teach, but it sure is hard to get the hang of driving on the left side of the road … you’re not quite sure how far a kilometer is … and darn it if those road signs aren’t all in Japanese. "

Download the free report right now.

Simply enter your email address and click the button below.

Click Here to download.

Looking for Education Blogs?

Celebrating the best Education Blogs on the web

You can search for blogs by categories or by dates of nomination. They have created a widget that allows you to read about a blog by clicking on the date it was nominated...

Looking at the nominations is a great way to find some blogs that you might not have known existed.

Want to know what's happening with Social Media?

Checkout Mashable.com. Mashable is a big blog site, a place to read about social media stuff, like how celebrities and news outlets are using Twitter lists or a list of the best apps on Facebook.

You can find things to use in the classroom as well. Look at this list Nonfiction Tweets: 70+ Authors to Follow on Twitter This list focuses on authors that use Twitter often to engage their readers in discussions and to offer information that is useful and interesting. Come on, all you English professors, can't you find a way to use this in your course?

Take a look at all the topics on Mashable, I am sure you can find something that you can use to make your course a little more engaging!

(Please let me know if you do use something you found here, and how you are using it in your course...we love to share these things!)

Using Discussion Boards within and between Classes

Here's a Webinar that might be of interest to anyone teaching online.

If you are interested, let me know and I will make the arrangements. You do need to be at a computer for this session, we could set it up in a smart classroom if several of you want to participate.

Using Discussion Boards within and between Classes
Elluminate
Nov. 10, 2009 - 2:00pm-3:00pm Eastern Time
Presenter: Margaret Anderson, Associate Professor, Psychology Department, SUNY Cortland

Margaret Anderson will describe how and why Live Journal blogs were used to maintain private student journals and provide a mechanism for group interaction within and between courses. Live Journals were also used to coordinate communication across six different courses which included two groups of students who were enrolled in three parallel courses, four instructors and four teaching assistants. Since Live Journal is a stand-alone program, it can be integrated into course delivery systems and used in a distance or blended formats. Live Journal allows for private, semi private and open communication and is particularly useful to facilitate communication among students who are not enrolled in the same course.

Sloan-C College Pass Program

As a benefit of our membership in SLN, we have seats available in the 2009 Sloan-C workshops. These workshops are 2-4 weeks long with convenient synchronous and asynchronous delivery.

Please click here for a listing of upcoming courses.

If you would like to take part in one of these workshops, please send me an email, at least 2 weeks prior to the workshop start date. I will submit your registration information to SLN.

When submitting a request, please be sure to include your name, email, campus, and phone number along with the course name and start date.