The Usage Characteristics of Twitter in the Learning Process

Abstract

This research discusses the use of Twitter as a teaching-supporting tool in face to face (F2F) learning. The uniqueness and importance of this research is in the age group on which it focuses, an age group that has not yet been examined (ninth grade); furthermore, data was analyzed by decoding tweets, grouping tweets into various pedagogical and social uses, and exploring the technical difficulties that arise as a result of using Twitter. In addition, several communication characteristics that have not yet been analyzed regarding Twitter as an educational tool are included in the research. The results clearly show that both the students and the teacher used the new learning space mainly for pedagogical uses, as answers to homework questions and as comments to intriguing issues brought up throughout the lessons. The use of Twitter to support learning organization skills indeed assisted in avoiding time consuming difficulties in F2F learning. Analysis of all tweets during the research period has revealed valuable content. In spite of the fact that tweets were limited to 140 letters, from this study it was found that Twitter is an effective learning tool.