Twitter as a Tool for Open Education

Open Pedagogy has always been closely associated with the creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources or OERs (Wiley and Hilton, 2018). It is for this reason that when it comes to Open Education, educators should be knowledgeable enough when it comes to various tools that they can utilize to promote student-centered learning. These tools, according to Hodgkinson-Williams and Gray (2009) are enabled by Web 2.0 technologies (cited in Wiley and Hilton, 2018). Educators do not necessarily have to look hard to search for tools that can enable the creation, use, and sharing of open educational resources (OERs). In fact, educators can actually use sites that most students are already familiar with like Twitter.

Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ service where users are only allowed to post 280 characters (Madland, 2020). Twitter’s ‘micro-blogging’ service is perfect for discussions. For instance, one can host the discussion and ask various questions. In response, the students could either reblog the question to invite other learners or they could reply to the thread. With this kind of set-up, the learners’ voices are amplified because they take control of what content to share. Even if Twitter is only limited to 280 characters, learners can share resources of various formats. Learners can share videos, podcasts, forum, and articles by just posting the link of their desired content. In sharing the link, the learners just have to make sure to provide a context or label to give other users an idea on what the link is about. By sharing the link, the learners help other learners discover other resources which can they find valuable for future use. Unlike WordPress, Twitter is less complicated and it is user-friendly. Furthermore, since Twitter is a popular social media platform, many are already familiar with how it works. Open platforms like Twitter help learners and educators create a community of people who shares the passion for learning. Twitter also enables communication between learners and educators. For instance, a learner would like to hear an expert opinion on a certain topic; depending on the situation, he/she can just easily Tweet questions for the expert or send a private message.

In conclusion, common sites like Twitter can enable Open Education. This means that Open Education does not necessarily have to be complicated to be considered effective. In line with this, educators should also explore other social media sites to use for Open Education in order to cater more learners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Madland, C. (2020). Topic 4 (July 22-28). opened.ca. https://teaching.madland.ca/edci339-july20/home/topic-04

Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601