Higher education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter

Authors:
G. Veletsianos
Affiliations:
University of Texas at Austin – Instructional Technology, Austin, Texas, USA
Venue:
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Year:
2012

Citing 8
Cited 2

Public Displays of Connection

BT Technology Journal
A disappearing digital divide among college students?: peeling away the layers of the digital divide

Social Science Computer Review
Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities

Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 workshop on Web mining and social network analysis
Microblogs in Higher Education - A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning?

Computers & Education
Making the ordinary visible in microblogs

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media
Facebook® and academic performance

Computers in Human Behavior
Review: Students' and teachers' use of Facebook

Computers in Human Behavior

Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks

Computers & Education
A comparative review of research literature on microblogging use and risk in organizational and educational settings

OCSC'13 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Online Communities and Social Computing

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Scholars participate in online social networks for professional purposes. In such networks, learning takes the form of participation and identity formation through engagement in and contribution to networked practices. While current literature describes the possible benefits of online participation, empirical research on scholars' use of online social networks in the educational technology literature is negligible. The purpose of this paper is to understand scholars' naturalistic practices in social networks in general, and on Twitter in particular. Tweets from 45 scholars were analysed qualitatively to arrive at dominant themes describing online social network practice. Findings indicate that scholars participating on Twitter (1) shared information, resources, and media relating to their professional practice; (2) shared information about their classroom and their students; (3) requested assistance from and offered suggestions to others; (4) engaged in social commentary; (5) engaged in digital identity and impression management; (6) sought to network and make connections with others; and (7) highlighted their participation in online networks other than Twitter. These findings assist the field in understanding the emerging practice of scholarly participation in online networks. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.