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Making social media work in Higher Education

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2 Introducing Twitter

Another tool popular with students is Twitter, now known as X. It is a social networking tool that enables you to write and share short posts.

An image of a quote: Twitter is not a technology, it’s a conversation, – and it’s happening with or without you. – Charlene Li.

Figure 6

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An image of a quote with the following text: Twitter is not a technology, it’s a conversation, – and it’s happening with or without you. – Charlene Li.

Figure 6

Technically, Twitter is a blogging site but because of the character restrictions, it is best thought of as a microblogging site – and the product is referred to as a tweet.

Basic Twitter use explained in five easy steps

On Twitter you can follow others and set up lists of people you follow.
You can share text, links, photos, videos, and run polls all through Tweets, which remain on Twitter unless you delete them.
To make sure your Tweet is seen by those who might be interested in it, you can also apply hashtags to messages so they are picked up by people who have chosen to see tweets about that subject. For example, using a hashtag such as #dogsoftwitter, which is an active community tweeting about dogs.
You can directly tag people in Tweets, using their account name (for example @OpenUniversity).
You can also send direct private messages (DMs) to people you follow (assuming their profile has not disabled DMs).

Olivia Kelly is an academic who has interviewed students about their use of Twitter. Watch as she discusses her top tips on how to use Twitter.

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Transcript: Video 7 General tips on how to use Twitter

Olivia Kelly

So for me, I think the first thing is the search facility on it. So when you get onto Twitter, you know, if you’re starting a new course or a new, um, search, first of all, maybe your, your lecturers, see if they’re on there. Um, but search for maybe a module code or a module title and see what’s being said about that module, if there’s people out there that you can connect with.

And I think the next step there is definitely reach out, make those connections, don’t be afraid to. to press that follow button. It’s not like other, where they, this person then has to kind of accept you. You’re just automatically following them and you’ll see what they tweet. If they want to follow you back, great. But if not, you know, that’s not a big deal. So yeah, first step, definitely use the search.

See what you can find that’s being said out there that’s of interest to you and start then reach out and follow those people. But the next step after that, which is quite nice, is Twitter then starts recommending based on your usage and who you follow, it recommends other people to follow. And sometimes that could be seen as a bit of, you know, like big brother watching you sort of thing, these algorithms.

But actually again, the students I interviewed said that has been really useful. They’ve ended up connecting with people that, you know. that’s been an advantage of being able to make connections with people that they didn’t maybe didn’t realize were tweeting about similar stuff or interested in similar things. So yeah for me it would be definitely search see what’s out there what’s of interest to you and reach out and make those connections and don’t be afraid to tweet as well you know think about what you’re tweeting and you know what you want to use the platform for what you want to get out of it. But yeah, tweet and see where, definitely make those connections and see where it gets.

End transcript: Video 7 General tips on how to use Twitter

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Video 7 General tips on how to use Twitter

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