Taught with Twitter

February 7, 2012

It's no secret that most college students and other Generation Y members love social media.

But a recent Pearson Education survey of about 2,000 college professors shows that nearly all of those professors use social media as well. And some even use it to help them teach.

Ryan Furness, a faculty member of the University of Minnesota Rochester's Center for Learning Innovation, is one of those professors. Furness is responsible for developing the curriculum for UMR's Spanish for Health Sciences courses and during the past year, he says he uses Twitter to help his students better learn and understand the Spanish language.

"We've been able to use Twitter inside the classroom and outside the classroom to help students engage in their learning," he says. "I think it's been a good way for them to learn Spanish."

Furness says using Twitter isn't a requirement for his students, but rather an optional, extra credit offering. But those who do decide to take part are required to tweet in Spanish.

"So it's not necessarily about content so much as it's about the Spanish that they're using," Furness says. "In my class, the goal is to help them learn the Spanish language better. The tweets are only 140 characters long, but it's at least allowing the students to change their mindset from English to Spanish."

Tara Johnson is one of those students. She says using social media in Furness' classroom has helped her look at learning in a new and different light.

"Using social media in the classroom as a whole is a great way to learn outside of the box because our world today is full of social media and everyone seems to be addicted to their Facebook and Twitter accounts, so why not incorporate that into a learning experience?" she says.

Johnson says tweeting in Spanish has also helped her grasp and retain the Spanish language because she and other students often receive almost instant feedback on their tweets from Furness.

"I love tweeting in Spanish!" she says. "It really helps build my Spanish vocabulary and allows me to practice grammar. And if I happen to tweet a verb in the wrong form, Professor Furness will tweet back within like 10 minutes correcting me."

Johnson says the experience has also helped her on class exams.

"Tweeting in Spanish has helped me on tests as well because when I'm writing an essay, I think back to what I have been tweeting the past week and it helps me get ideas and remember how to use different forms of verbs," she says.

In addition to creating UMR's Spanish for Health Sciences coursework, Furness is also responsible for adding a service learning component to the students' curriculum by developing programs and partnerships with local community organizations to help get students involved and working in the community.

And he says he hopes the experience that they're getting with social media in his classroom with help them there as well.

"I think students who gain an understanding of Twitter and other forms of social media in the classroom will be less scared to use those mediums later on in life," he says. "So I'm hoping that within their internships, volunteer programs or service learning experiences that they'll be able to bring the use of social media more readily to the places they work.

"It's a skill set that they're adding to their repertoire that I'm hoping will transfer over to real life for them."

Story by: Cory Pedersen - a Rochester freelance writer.

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