Michelle: I'd be interested in seeing your "Twitter experiment" handout. I may consider incorporating this into my applied social psych course. I'm not sure what percentage of my students are experienced with Twitter, so I'd have to have an alternative assignment (using email or <gasp> pen and paper) available. Thanks in advance! -Max Gwynn Maxwell Gwynn, PhD Psychology Department Wilfrid Laurier University 519-884-0710 ext 3854 mgw...@wlu.ca
>>> <gaddy...@umn.edu> 8/18/2009 11:51 AM >>> I appreciate that you shared this, Mike. It definitely gives me a lot to think about. I actually started using Twitter this summer in my introductory statistics course as an "experiment," and I was so excited by what I observed, I plan to continue using it from this point forward. I can forward a handout to anyone who is interested about how I set this up in my class (I did it this summer in a face-to-face course but will repeat it this fall in two online sections of the same course). It's an extra credit opportunity for students, and they get credit for up to five "tweets." I ask students to "tweet" about things they are finding in the news or online that relate to statistics (e.g., news reports that included statistical information, uses or misuses of statistics, interesting graphs, cartoons, data sets, websites that teach statistics, survey or poll results, YouTube videos, etc.). I thought this would be a great way to emphasize statistical literacy in my course and to help my students become more savvy consumers of statistical information they are presented with in the "real world" on a daily basis. These are definitely learning goals in my courses. It's also a great way for ME to share things I am finding with students, especially since I don't always have time to go into details about these things in the classroom. I had 20 students in my summer course, and 15 of them signed up for Twitter and participated in my "experiment." I think using Twitter can be beneficial and meaningful for students IF you use it in the right way--a way that aligns with both your learning goals for students AND the goals of Twitter. Michelle Everson, Ph.D. Quantitative Methods in Education Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota gaddy...@umn.edu http://www.tc.umn.edu/~delma001/CATALST/ --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
