1. Using Twitter as a student
support and communication tool
for project-based English courses
Syuhei KIMURA (@syuhei)
RitsumeikanUniv., Japan
20/Oct/2012, GLoCALL2012

2. Presentation Outline
• Twitter and Japan
• Project-based English Program
• Traditional Ways to Support Students Outside
Classroom
• Twitter as a Support Tool Outside Classroom
• Survey Results in 2010
• Survey Results in 2012
• Do's and Don'ts about Twitter-based Student
Support

3. Twitter and Japan
• Spread of Information on 11th of Mar, 2011
http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/global-pulse.html
Twitter, Inc. (2011, Jun 29)

4. Twitter and Japan
Semiocast (2012, Jan 31)

5. Twitter and Japan
• Twitter for personal micro-blogging, daily
communication, crisis communication, etc.
• Why not for Education?
– Early proposed by Grosseck and Holotescu (2008)
– Japanese private research institute reports that
there is a growing tendency that Twitter is
becoming a popular medium for education in
Japanese colleges (the Institute of Regional
Studies, 2010)

6. Project-based English Program
• College of Sport and Health Science at
Ritsumeikan Univ.
• Newly started in 2010
• About 250 students enroll in one year

7. Project-based English Program
• The college requires the students to finish
two-year requisite English courses
– Freshman and sophomore year
• Project-based English Program
– Students develop the projects based on their own
interest and present the results in several
academic formats (presentation, writings, etc.)
• For more information about our program,
search "PBEP" for Facebook.

8. Project-based English Program
• Typical classroom scenes

9. Project-based English Program
• My weekly class schedule
Mon Tue Thu
1st period
Freshman P Sophomore P Freshman P
9:00～10:30
2nd period
Freshman P Sophomore P
10:40～12:10
3rd period
Freshman P Sophomore P
13:00～14:30
4th period
Freshman P
14:40～16:10
5th period
Sophomore P
16:20～17:50
6th period
Sophomore P
18:00～19:30

10. Traditional Ways to Support
Students Outside Classroom
• Office hour
– Inflexible for both teachers and students
– Possibly unfair to some students
• E-mail
– Several steps to complete one e-mail message
– Need to send the similar message to many
students
• BBS on LMS
– Often accessible only from a PC browser

11. Traditional Ways to Support
Students Outside Classroom
• Accessible from various devices
• Limited to 140 letters
– Very short, but straightforward
• High efficiency in information sharing
– Communication anytime, anywhere
– Teacher's messages (tweets) can be shared
instantly by the students in different classes
– "Favorite" important tweets for later use
– "Retweet" them if needed to circulate around

12. Twitter as a Support Tool
Outside Classroom

13. Twitter as a Support Tool
Outside Classroom
The Q-and-A session of our group presentation should be
within 6-7 minutes times the number of group members,
right?

14. Twitter as a Support Tool
Outside Classroom
I found a reasonably-priced
acer ultrabook on the flier (one
on the top left in the pic). But I
wonder why this one is so
cheap? It has MS Word etc
installed but is still cheaper
than others. Are there any
problems with this machine?

15. Survey Results in 2010
• 130 freshman students surveyed in the end of
the fall semester, the end of their freshman
year
• 74 students out of 102 (73%) started using
Twitter because they were advised to do so by
the author
• 102 out of 130 (78.4%) had acquired a Twitter
account in the end of the fall semester

16. Survey Results in 2010
• 75 students out of 124 (60%) had one or
more experiences to ask course-related
questions of the author and responded that
their problems had been solved via Twitter
• 92 out of 102 (90%) responded that they
hoped for other teachers to employ Twitter as
an online support tool as well

17. Survey Results in 2012
• 89 freshman students surveyed
• 75 students out of 89 (84%) had a Twitter
account in the end of the spring semester, the
middle of their freshman year
– Higher proportion than that of the 2010 survey
– Implying that Twitter has strengthened its
presence among college students

18. Survey Results in 2012
• 37 students out of 84 (42%) used Twitter more
than once to inquire course-related questions
of the author
• 28 of them (76%) answered they were solved
via communication on Twitter
• 54 found Twitter was helpful in solving their
problems regarding their academic activities
• 40 of them (74%) responded they expected
other teachers to make use of Twitter as a
means to help their study.

19. Do's and Don'ts about
Twitter-based Student Support
• Review and repeat important tweets at the
beginning of class
– Some students may not have seen them or have
not had a Twitter account yet
• Avoid including students' personal information
– Name, address, grade, etc.
– Switch to e-mail communication if needed

20. Do's and Don'ts about
Twitter-based Student Support
• Be friendly, but don't be so too much
– Twitter helps establish a friendly relationship
between teachers and students, but it should not
be involved with grading
• Be strong!
– Sometimes students express their negative
feelings about class and teachers

21. References (for the paper)
• Acar, A., & Muraki, Y. (2011). Twitter for crisis communication: lessons learned from Japan's
tsunami disaster. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 7, 392–402. doi:
10.1504/IJWBC.2011.041206
• Grosseck, G. & Holotescu, C. (2008). Can we use Twitter for educational activities?. The 4th
International Scientific Conference eLSE "eLearning and Software for Education", Bucharest.
"eLearning and Software for Education", Bucharest
• The Institute of Regional Studies. (2010, Aug 23). The Actual Conditions and Future Prospects
of Twitter Usage in Japanese Universities: The Survey Report of 1,128 Universities in Japan.
http://chiikikagaku-k.co.jp/kkj/report/index.html
• The Nielsen Company Japan. (2010, Aug). The Current Situation of Online Media in Japan.
Retrieved from http://www.netratings.co.jp/wp01_form.html
• Semiocast. (2012, Jan 31). Brazil becomes 2nd country on Twitter, Japan 3rd Netherlands
most active country. Retrieved from
http://semiocast.com/publications/2012_01_31_Brazil_becomes_2nd_country_on_Twitter_s
uperseds_Japan
• Twitter, Inc. (2011, Jun 29). Global pulse. Twitter blog. Retrieved from
http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/global-pulse.html

22. Tips for Advanced Use of Twitter
• Find out what kind of information students
find helpful and valuable in number
– Twitter tracks your tweets and shows how many
people retweeted or favorited them in number
Here is a sample
summary of a
questionnaire result.
One of my students
last year made this.

23. Tips for Advanced Use of Twitter
• Add hashtags to tweets regarding class for the
sake of categorization and searchability
– Tag your tweets so that they will not be buried
and missed among many other
Here is a sample
summary of a
questionnaire result.
One of my students
last year made this.