=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-382/paper-3
|storemode=property
|title=Microblogging in Technology Enhanced Learning: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-382/paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-382
}}
==Microblogging in Technology Enhanced Learning: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-382/paper3.pdf
Microblogging In Technology Enhanced
Learning: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE
Summer School 2008
Cristina Costa1 , Guenter Beham2 , Wolfgang Reinhardt3 , and Martin Sillaots4
1
University of Salford, Research and Graduate College, Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT, United Kingdom, C.MendesdaCosta@salford.ac.uk
2
Know-Center?? and Knowledge Management Institute, Graz University of
Technology, Inffeldgasse 21a, 8010 Graz, Austria, gbeham@know-center.at
3
University of Paderborn, Institute of Computer Science, Fuerstenallee 11, 33102
Paderborn, Germany, wolle@upb.de
4
Tallinn University, Centre for Educational Technology, Narva mnt 25, 10120
Tallinn, Estonia, martin.sillaots@tlu.ee
Abstract. Microblogging is the latest variant of blogging which allows
users to post very short messages. Due to its ease interface, the possibil-
ity of directly addressing other users, and several surrounding services
microblogging becomes more and more used in scientific conferences as
main back-channel. This paper discusses microblogging with Twitter as
main information back-channel in an exemplary use case Summer School.
Key words: microblogging, twitter, social networking, information re-
trieval
1 Introduction
Microblogging is becoming serious in informal learning and networking. In the
recent months we have witnessed the adoption and usage of such channels in
conferences and other academic gatherings as forms of enabling the spontaneous
co-construction of digital artefacts. These artefacts are usually shaped around
note-taking, sharing of resources and individuals’ prompt reactions to the events
in progress. Additionally, such approach can also provide individuals with vis-
ibility and opportunities to develop their voices in topical discussions of their
area of interest at that given moment. This paper aims to describe the use of
Twitter during the Prolearn, Palette, EATEL (PPE) Summer School experience,
and to analyze the impact it had on this given context according to the users’
own views and post-reflection.
??
This work has been partially funded under grant 027023 in the IST work pro-
gramme of the European Community. The Know-Center is funded within the Aus-
trian COMET Program - Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies - under
the auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, the
Austrian Ministry of Economics and Labor and by the State of Styria.
2 C. Costa, G. Beham, W. Reinhardt, M. Sillaots
2 What’s this micro-blogging all about?
Microblogging is a variant of blogging which allows users to quickly post short
messages on the web for others to access. These messages can be restricted to
a certain number of individuals, sent exclusively to a specific contact, or made
available to the World Wide Web. Microblogging has impressively become more
and more popular in the last year, and Twitter is probably the most well known
microblogging platform currently available on the web, when compared with
other micro-blogging applications, such as Plurk, Jaiku and Prownce (cf. [3]).
Twitter works as a microblogging tool and also as a free social network site,
which enables people to follow others, i.e., read about what others are doing, and
establish communication with up to 140-character messages. Although, its main
purpose apparently aims at answering ”what are you doing? ”, its usage is far
from being restricted to what at first may seem a rather trivial way of prompting
communication. The number of Twitter users has increased massively in the last
months . It has also made its way across different sectors, among which education
and research are included.
2.1 Why microblogging, and especially twittering?
It is difficult to account for the reasons why one should use Twitter to report on
what one is doing in a rather short message, when there are so many other al-
ternatives to publish information and connect to people on the web . It becomes
even harder to understand it when, at a first glance, Twitter seems a rather vain
channel where people report about their need for a cup of coffee or complain
about the weather [4]. Although ”chitchat” is indeed part of the Twittersphere,
there is also a critical mass of participation on Twitter [5]. A recent study enti-
tled Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities [3],
has established a taxonomy of user intentions on Twitter, in which ”daily chat-
ter ” has emerged along with other three types of tweets: ”conversations, sharing
information and reporting news” [3, p. 7]. The recognition of the relevancy of
Twitter, and microblogging in general, is quite personal and strongly interre-
lated with whom we choose to follow, and who follows us, in this micro-world.
Such choices are usually determined by individuals’ shared interests, which are
often the basis for the sharing of information in fluid dialogs. As Siemens states,
”Twitter is a conversation, not a monologue” [4]. Appealing to its users is also
the immediacy with which such conversations take place and evolve. As Stevens
emphasizes in [5] the true value of Twitter is in the network(ing).
2.2 Twitter + #tag = Tweme
Another important aspect of Twitter is that it not only allows communica-
tion with one’s Twitter network, it also allows individuals to automatically co-
construct a resourceful site where the active participation of a micro-network on
a given topic is aggregated through a special hashtag. This is called a Tweme
(a Twitter meme), and it is proving to be a rather preeminent practice in face
Microblogging In TEL: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008 3
to face conferences and other types of learning gatherings in which people are
able to convey the spirit of such events in brief messages. Twemes are allow-
ing the dispersed network to come together into one single event almost in an
instant way. A Tweme also enables the aggregation of other forms of content
related with that joint experience, as additional resources, such as Flickr photos
and Del.icio.us bookmarks, can automatically be linked to it through the use
of micro-metadata (unique tags). In the case under study the hashtag chosen
was #scohrid, as this tag hadn’t yet been used in Twitter, Flickr or Del.icio.us.
Furthermore, it alluded to the Summer School experience (#scohrid = aggluti-
nation of school + Ohrid), making it easier for users to relate to it. The hashtag
was broadly used to aggregate content relate with it (cf. figure 1)5 . Twemes have
become a quite successful way of connecting the remote network to a given event
and also creating a collaborative resource based on spontaneous reflection and
unpremeditated story-telling.
Fig. 1. Tweme aggregation for the hashtag #scohrid
3 The Use Case of PPE Summer School 2008
The PPE Summer School 2008 took place from June 15-21 2008 at Ohrid, FYR
of Macedonia6 . It brought together PhD students with experienced researchers
5
See http://twemes/scohrid for the whole aggregation on the Summer School.
6
See http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/summer-school-2008/ for more
information.
4 C. Costa, G. Beham, W. Reinhardt, M. Sillaots
from PROLEARN, PALETTE, and EA-TEL and several other EU projects
such as MATURE, APOSDLE and iCamp. PROLEARN is a Network of Ex-
cellence financed by the IST programme of the European commission. It deals
with technology enhanced professional learning and aims to bring together the
most important research groups in the area of professional learning and train-
ing. PROLEARN is now working under the umbrella of the EATEL Association.
EATEL is the European Association of Technology-Enhanced Learning whose
objectives are to promote education in TEL and to support research in this area.
The PALETTE project aims at facilitating and augmenting individual and or-
ganisational learning in Communities of Practice (CoPs). One of the main goals
of the Summer School is to support collaboration among PhD students working
in the disparate fields of expertise which promote the advancement of TEL at
the workplace.
3.1 How blogging was planned to be
Prior to the Summer School participants were advised to blog about the experi-
ence they were about to start (”If you don’t have a blog yet, please create one.7 ”).
The blogging activity would enable all parties involved to establish both an on-
line presence and co-develop digital artefacts, which would help the organizers
with the gathering of tangible evidence and feedback on the event. Aggrega-
tion of the personal blogs and additional resources through RSS feeds and an
unique tag was also part of the organisation teams plan, as it was announced
to the students via email. Introducing the blogging strategy during the opening
session and distributing prizes to the best bloggers had also been part of the
plan. However, Summer Schoolers inadvertently got involved in other activities,
as explained below.
3.2 How Twitter got enrolled as main backchannel
When the organizers started collecting the participants’ personal blogs’ URLs,
some of them also suggested using microblogging via Twitter. This was eventu-
ally rolled out as part of the main Summer School’s online presence, which its
organizers also ended up supporting for the following reasons: (1) its interface is
easy and intuitively; (2) Tweets are shorter than regular blog posts, and there-
fore easier to create and to follow; (3) Twemes automatically aggregated the
Summer Schools generated content through the use of the same unique tag in
Flickr and Del.icio.us. The information about using Twitter as a back-channel
for communication was sent to participants through the Summer School mailing
list (”Maybe microblogging during the Summer School is the better idea.”). It
was also shortly announced during the kick-off session and several times during
the first day. Nevertheless, the message about Twitter ended up spreading es-
pecially through word of mouth communication as a source for fast and direct
7
The quotes in this section are taken from e-mails sent to the attendees of the PPE
Summer School by the blogging organisation team.
Microblogging In TEL: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008 5
feedback8 .To accommodate the Twitter back-channel a new, and shorter tag, was
introduced to the attendees: ”scohrid ” should be use instead of ”prolearnsum-
merschool2008 ” (7 characters vs. 24 characters). Still, the blogging organizing
team announced it at the begin of the second day, promoting its emergent suc-
cess: ”The reflection of the Summer School by blogging has actively started. The
main channel for information is http://twemes.com/scohrid. Please have a look
on it because the freshest and the hottest information can be found only from
there.”
4 Twitter message analysis and survey
To get a clearer understanding how microblogging was used and perceived during
the Summer School, we both analysed all tweets of the Summer School and
conducted a survey asking for feedback from all attendees.
4.1 Analysis of Twitter messages
The first part of our evaluation was to investigate the Twitter messages of the
whole Summer School. Each day started with two lectures in the morning, fol-
lowed by parallel workshops on specific subjects in the afternoon. If we assume
that Twitter was used as a channel for lecture- and workshops-specific discus-
sions the analysis of Tweets should bring up some evidence that message are
related to the programme.
We used Wordle (www.wordle.net) to create the visualisations of all tweets
during the Summer School. Figure 2 shows the tweet cloud of Wednesday’s activ-
ity. The two lectures on this day were about ”Personal Learning Environments
(PLEs)” and ”Practice improvements by improving Communities of Practice” -
the two workshops focused on ”Mobile and contextualized Learning” and ”Per-
sonal Learning Environments”.
As we can see in Figure 2 the most frequently used terms in the tweets
of Wednesday were: ”learning”, ”PLE ”, ”technology”, ”system”, ”think ” and
”students” what directly corresponds to the topics of this day. This relation
between very frequently used words in tweets and the programme was also found
in tweet clouds of the other days [1]. Comparing all tweet clouds during the first
two days Twitter was mainly used to exchange only messages without links to
other resources. Starting from Wednesday Summer School attendees shared a
lot of links related to lectures and workshops via Twitter. The term ”http” in
the tweet clouds indicates this sharing of links. Putting all tweets of the week
together into one tweet cloud it shows that the term ”learning” was definitely
to most often used word during the whole Summer School followed by ”http”.
The next section presents the survey, which is the second part of our evaluation.
8
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2118512
6 C. Costa, G. Beham, W. Reinhardt, M. Sillaots
Fig. 2. Tweet Cloud of the third day of the Summer School
4.2 Survey and procedure
To get more detailed information about how Summer School attendees per-
ceived the use of Twitter as part of the Summer School experience, participants
were asked to participate in an online survey. The survey was developed to be
answered anonymously, being its main purpose to record the individual’s own
perspectives and feelings about the use of Twitter in academic context.
All attendees were personally invited via email two weeks after the Summer
School. An additional reminder was sent out three days after the initial invi-
tation. The survey was divided into different sections and comprised multiple
choice and open ended questions, which enabled the researchers to survey about
respondents’ gender, their using of Twitter before, during and after the Summer
School, and also about what they liked and disliked about this microblogging
tool in general. The survey consisted of all in all 20 questions.
60 out of 68 Summer School attendees participated in the survey. 27 (45%)
were female and 33 (55%) male. Looking at the respondents’ professional back-
ground, 38 (63.3%) responded to have a more technical background and 21 (35%)
regarded themselves as being from an pedagogical background. As people had
different roles during the Summer School (an attendee could have been both
a student and a speaker) one question was about their roles. 19 (31.67%) had
been in the role of a speaker, 7 (11.67%) in the role of an organizer and 42 (70%)
stated to be students during the Summer School.
4.3 Results
The following section presents the main results of the survey. In general, no
differences were found among Summer School attendees concerning gender or
educational background. Therefore, in the remainder of this section, these factors
are not taken into account. As described above, one part of the survey was
Microblogging In TEL: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008 7
focusing on the usage of Twitter before the Summer School. According to the
respondents, only 10 (16.67%) of them had a Twitter account before attending
the Summer School. They used Twitter in both personal as well as professional
context. Those who stated to have no Twitter account were asked if they signed
up during the Summer School. When asked the reason for not signing up with
Twitter during the Summer School, the participants elicited technical issues as
the main motive. Some respondents also alluded to the fact they decided to adopt
a more passive approach, as they preferred to take part in the microblogging
activity as observers and not engage fully with it. The participants who did sign
up to Twitter during the summer school stated that they opted to do so, because
they felt that there was where the action was taking place and they wanted to be
part of it. Curiosity also played a strong role in the trying out of Twitter. Many
survey answers state individuals were intrigued about it and wanted to try it
for themselves. A considerable number of individuals also pointed out that peer
influence was another of the drivers for the signing-up with the microblogging
service. A few individuals also answered they decided to sign-up and use Twitter
because they were ”interested in observing how it could support communication”,
provide a space for ”silent discussion” and enable the collection ”of information
and impressions”.
Concerning the use of Twitter during the Summer School, as it can be seen
in figure 3 , 10 (37%) of the attendees signed up to Twitter during the Summer
School, whereas 6 (66.67%) had already a Twitter account before the Summer
School, and actively posted Twitter messages during this period. 50 (83.33%)
of the respondents said they read Twitter messages posted by other attendees
while in the Summer School. When asked about whether they found Twitter en-
couraging to join discussions about topics presented during the Summer School,
45 (70%) answered positively.
posted messages did not post messages
18 17
16
14
12
10
10
8
6
6
4 3
2
0
signed up before SS signed up during SS
Fig. 3. Distribution of Twitter users according to sign up time and posting of messages
8 C. Costa, G. Beham, W. Reinhardt, M. Sillaots
The last part of the survey asked for feedback about the use of Twitter after
the Summer School. 15 (55.56%) of the attendees who signed up to Twitter
during the Summer School have reportedly been using Twitter after the Summer
School. 12 of these attendees posted less than 5 Twitter messages, and three
between 5 and 10 messages. When asked about what users liked about Twitter
in general, a great part of the survey answers tell us the use of this channel
to communicate with others and engage in sharing of information was largely
appreciated. Its user-friendly interface was also one of the other main aspects
stressed out by the survey’s respondents. Relevant to our study was also the fact
that a good number of answers focused on the effectiveness of such channel for
immediate communication. Although the majority of answers received inform us
that, in general, microblogging was well accepted and regarded as an interesting
approach, most individuals also pointed some negative aspects to it. The limited
length of the messages was one of the main points of criticism, only preceded
by Twitter’s design structure, which seemed to displease many of the summer
schoolers. In their own words, it was quite limitative. A considerable number
of users also mentioned Twitter’s technical problems [during the summer school
it reached the ”over capacity status” several times] as a rather negative aspect
of this tool. A minor group of the answerers considered Twitter to be rather
distracting and some were not positively impressed with the overload of messages
and information generated in that channel.
5 Outlook
Based on this small study we were able to conclude that in general terms Twitter
was well accepted and regarded as a useful tool for spontaneous and immediate
communication. In a broad sense it helped capture the spirit of the moment in
a very easy way, promote the sharing of ideas and prompt unplanned discussion
about relevant topics. However, there’s no such thing as perfection, and Twitter
also received considerable criticism, especially related with its technical limita-
tions. Although microblogging seemed to have been favored by a considerable
number of people, some felt quite overwhelmed by its rather chaotic structure,
as Twitter and Twemes do not allow threaded discussions and organisation of
content into topical areas. This leads the researchers to infer that, as it stand,
Twitter can be helpful to capture the atmosphere of a given event, and enable
individuals to participate actively and input their ideas as they occur. Neverthe-
less, such approach doesn’t seem to comply with everyone’s learning styles. This
leaves us to conclude microblogging can be used as an interesting discussion and
sharing back-channel in learning events. Yet, microblogging does not present us
with an ubiquitous learning strategy. Another interesting aspect that emerged
from this short study is that, just like it often happens in many other social net-
working sites, the signing-up to and participation in such venues is influenced
by peer-users. In this particular case participation was also driven by the need
of the individual to be included in shared online spaces where the offline discus-
sions were also taking place [2]. There is a chain-reaction factor associated with
Microblogging In TEL: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008 9
active participation in this kind of networks and the need for the individual to
be where the action is. Even two weeks after the Summer School more than half
of all attendees who got in touch with Twitter the first time, used it again to
read or post messages.
The growing adoption and use of twitter in the Summer School happened
in a rather viral way. There was no initial intent to use or analyze the impact
of twitter on the group, as no strategy had been developed and the entire pro-
cess was totally unexpected. Thus, the idea to carry out a small study emerged
from the reality in which the researchers themselves were involved, as partici-
pants. In this sense, the study offers limitations as all the data collection and
analysis strategies had to be conducted a posteriori, and within a very short
time frame, which didnt allow the researchers to engage with more advanced
research methods. This is something the authors plan to overcome in their next
studies related to the use of microblogging. If we want to draw any pattern of
using microblogging in group communication, we need to observe more groups
where microblogging is an essential part of the communication back channel.
With this it may become possible to understand how microblogging can be inte-
grated as means for rapidly providing feedback to presenters, to derivate group
communication patterns and to support reflection with the attendees.
References
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WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop 2007, August 2007.
4. George Siemens. Twitter, twitter, twitter. http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/
archives/003307.html viewed on 2008/07/07, March 2008.
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