Use of Twitter in Education

2328 Words5 Pages

Twitter is a social media outlet that has become extremely popular with today’s young

adults, 140 characters at a time. This form of communication allows people from all over the

world to connect over the same topic or share their personal thoughts or opinions. In light

of Twitter becoming so popular, professors and administrators in higher education are now

looking to this social media to better connect with students on several different platforms

such as classroom discussions, college updates, or even scholarship applications. Several but

not many studies have been made by researchers on the impact or effectiveness of Twitter as

a learning tool. Due to the popularity Twitter now has, our research group decided to further

study the use of twitter by college students.

We chose this topic because as college students, we are very familiar with social media

outlets, such as twitter. With the rapid growth in technology that we have today, and our own

experience with social media in classrooms, we wanted to see how other universities and

college students take advantage of Twitter.

Research Background & Purpose

In recent years, college students are using more technology, such as the

Internet, for reading or research and books are becoming obsolete. Instead of meeting with

their colleagues, students are communicating over email, text message, and other social media

outlets. In the article, ‘Twitter Takes a Trip to College’ by Zach Miners, David Parry, a professor

of emerging media at the University of Texas-Dallas stated "One thing that has changed about

higher education is the idea that people come and sit in a dorm and, after class, they share

ideas, a lot of that is gone now, because students work...

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