Could Twitter increase student engagement?

Engaging students is probably the most important aspect of teaching. Engaged students are more likely to learn, and retain their learning for longer. I expend quite a lot of effort trying to engage with students, including through social media. My classes have had their own Facebook groups for the last several years. I know of other lecturers who have used Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, or WeChat, but I haven't engaged with those (either because I'm not convinced that enough students are using them to make it worthwhile or, in the case of Instagram which many students use, it isn't clear how it would be an improvement over Facebook). Also, while I know that students find the Facebook groups helpful for their learning, I haven't rigorously evaluated the effect.

So, I was interested to read this 2017 article (which appears to be open access) by Abdullah Al-Bahrani (Northern Kentucky University), Darshak Patel (University of Kentucky), and Brandon Sheridan (Elon University), published in the Journal of Economic Education. In the article, Al-Bahrani et al. evaluate the impact of Twitter on student learning in economics principles courses in three U.S. universities. All students were provided, roughly three times per week, with "short articles relating concepts from class to the real world" (probably not too dissimilar to what I do on this blog). At each institution, one section of the class received this information via the learning management system (like Moodle), while one section received this information via Twitter. Al-Bahrani et al. then looked at whether there was any difference in learning between the two groups, and found that:

In all specifications, the treatment coefficient is statistically insignificant, therefore we find no evidence that communicating through Twitter impacts students’ learning differently than a traditional LMS.

So, Twitter is no better for providing students with links to additional material than a learning management system like Moodle. Admittedly, there was a lack of statistical power in their analysis as they only had a sample of 163 students across the three institutions. So, maybe there was an effect, but their sample size was too small to detect it. However, either way I do agree with their conclusion that:

...the impact of Twitter on the educational experience may not necessarily be in the form of grades or learning, but may rather be in the form of engagement, teacher evaluations, and fostering interest in the topic.

Student engagement is important, and finding ways of engaging students on 'their turf' is even more important. More on that in a future post.