Last night was the first time that I actually required extended use of twitter in one of my classes.  For a few years, I’ve required that students establish a twitter account, follow me and follow their colleagues.  I’ve used twitter as a communication tool, to share resources, as an outlet for students to post what’s going on in the classroom (or their exit slips), and I’ve even integrated optional assignments involving twitter chats and one-time required tweets from class.

But, this semester, I’m teaching a Masters course (Introduction to Educational Research) which is meeting online 5 times over the course of the semester.  As part of the online portion of the course, I decided to try holding a 30-minute synchronous twitter chat using our class hashtag (#edp400) to check-in with where students were in relation to their research questions, potential problems of practice, and the process in general.

I’ve always wanted to require a twitter chat in one of my courses since I’ve found them to be one of the most accessible ways to connect with fellow professionals in informal professional development settings.  Everyone’s there to talk about a particular topic.  People are interested, interesting and engaged.  The chat passes quickly and is done before you know it. But, I worried that it might overwhelm my students with its pace, particularly some of my more novice twitter users who had just established their accounts.

After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to try this 30-minute format, with 4 questions.

And….it was actually amazing! While it was rapid-fire, and I’m still not sure (even after spending 30 minutes after the chat trying to look for responses that I hadn’t gotten to during the chat) that I was able to address all the tweets that I wanted to, but from what students reported, they felt better about their topics, were able to connect with others who were investigating similar things, were able to think through problems of practice, and were clearer about where they were in the process.

Victory!

What I am learning through this semester and this process is to push beyond my comfort zone.  I can only grow and experience new things if I am willing to risk confusion, rejection and failure.  In the end, this growth (as painful and difficult as it can be) is inspiring, renewing, and pushing me to be better as a teacher, scholar, mother, and person.