1. A Year of Twitter Chats: What
Did We Learn?
Melissa A. Venable, PhD
Education Writer/Blogger
@Melissa_Venable
18th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning - #aln12
2.
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4. The #IOLchat Team
Laura M. Puente
@LauraMilli
Editor, Social Media Strategist
Houston, TX
RaheelRamzanali
@The_Raheel
Former sports radio journalist turned social media
manager
Houston, TX
5. By the Numbers…
June 2011 - June 2012
• 48 live sessions
• 2-14 participants/chat (avg: 6)
• Popular topics:
1. Maintaining student motivation for online
learning
2. Evaluating online courses
3. Twitter in education (#2012TCC)
4. Game-based Learning
14. Recommendations
• Participate in other chats
• Go with the flow
• Ask for ideas and input
• Focus on function, the tools
change
• It’s not the numbers- it’s the
networking
• Have an idea? Just try it –
there’s no, right one way
18. Your favorite chats?
#chat2lrn – bi-monthly, Thurs. 11:00am ET
#lrnchat – Thursday, 8:30pm ET
#literacies – first and third Thurs. 7pm ET
#techtalk – Thursday, 3:00pm ET
#digiped – Friday, 1:00pm ET
What is a Live Chat?- synchronous, text-based, use #hashtag: 100s of chats – popular among educators, use with students and colleagues professional development and networking purposes
INSIDE ONLINE LEARNING - #IOLchatChat Goals:-April 2011, IOL blog began, by June looking for ways to…Community-building-Engagement of readers-Build a fan base for siteWeekly topic: introduction, read-aheads, Summary ReportMy Goal:-Present what we’re doing-Things we’ve tried and lessons learned-Recommend some tools along the way
BrainstormingPromotionNetworking-Connecting
Scheduling – holidays, awareness of semester breaks, etc. Popular topics: number of participants 14 – April 1214 – April 1213 – April 1210 – March 12
Chat reports – began October 2011
Creating a vibe - Create a vibe – workshop or break room?StructureInteraction
NCDA, TCC, Sloan-C#ce12, #openeducationweek
One of the things we’ve done to help us with the decisions along the way is …. SchedulingTopicsTopic generation – TwtPoll, SurveyGizmo, staff ideasFeedback – June, December surveys