Revision through twitter: Do tweets affect students' performance?

Abstract

Twitter is one of the free micro bloggings available today. Created in 2006, Twitter has about 500 million registered users worldwide. Many scholars have been debating over the use of Twitter in teaching and learning. This brief research paper aims to look at Twitter as a source of revision for a course offered at the Defence University in Kuala Lumpur. The assumption is that the students are able to score a higher grade when Twitter is used as a revision tool. 32 students participated in this study and tweets were used to support students during their revision period before the second test. Data were analysed based on the results of Test 1 (without Twitter as a revision tool) and Test 2, where comparisons were made to see whether there is a change in the students' results. Further, the tweets sent to/shared with students and the retweets shared by students were also examined. A survey was also conducted to explore the respondents' thoughts on using Twitter as a revision tool. Preliminary findings suggest that the students had greatly benefitted when Twitter is used as a revision tool. This is because the results of Test 2 show that all students scored higher. The results of the survey also indicate that students were positive about using Twitter as a revision tool. Although it cannot be conclusively determined whether Twitter is the only factor that contributes to the increase of students' results in Test 2, this paper will highlight how Twitter can be used as an effective revision tool.