We’re at Educause (#educause09) this week – Social computing is a key topic. There is a plethora of information regarding how to use Twitter/and other tools. A recurring theme, though, is using these tools as part of an overall strategy – not to start using it because everyone else is.
Sounds simple, but sometimes – if one is unfamiliar with specific best practices and successful techniques, one may not understand how it would integrate into an overall strategy.
One article I read recently identifies statistics of the top 100 universities using twitter. This article highlights usage pattern, followers and frequency of communication – but “What” is communicated?
HigherEd Morning provides the following detail
If you’re wondering what schools are tweeting about, the study determined usage falls into six basic categories:
- Delivering news updates
- News updates within the universities’ schools and departments
- News about student services
- Staying in touch with people outside the university community, such as alumni associations
- Updates on research and campus extensions
- News from university media
Basically, the content is “broadcasted”. Other ways twitter can be used – interactive conversations, tracking re-tweets to demonstrate influence were not identified.
Broadcast is great if you have to broadcast the content once – sending a message to a service either developed internally or using something like ping.fm that is integrated with facebook, twitter, linkedin, et al provides greater reach for content.
There are a melange of tools one can use to track content.
I’ve read several examples of using twitter as part of the learning environment. For example:
A professor at the University of Minnesota makes Twittering a must for students in her public relations class. It’s a tool they’ll need in the professional world, she says.
At the University of Wisconsin-Stout, another professor requires students in her English composition classes to post 200 tweets for the semester. She touts it as a way for them to talk about class materials and share information about assignments.
Another:
If you have a good example within the learning environment, i’d like to know.
Tags: higher education, social 2.0, twitter
