seda 10 dot

#10DoTBuilding Professional HE learning Communities and Digital Literacy through Teaching Twitter

Dr Helen Webster @scholastic_ratAnglia Ruskin University

Aims

To explore the potential of social media in our work and in that of the academics we support

To explore what it means to ‘teach’ social media

To introduce #10DoT as a way to help academics explore to potential of Twitter in their work, develop digital literacy and build a professional community

Terms

Social networking

Web

2.0

Social mediaMicro-

blogging

App

Social networking in a professional context

Those who use Twitter - what do you use it for, professionally, and what benefits have you gained from it?

Those who use other social media – what other social media tools do you use to achieve these aims? What benefits are there of this approach?

Those who use traditional approaches – how do you achieve these aims? What benefits are there of this approach?

Social networking for other professional groups

Having identified our social networking needs and the benefits social media might offer….

Do these groups have the same needs/benefits, or do they have different ones to us?

Faculty Academics Early Career researchers Students Other central services professionals

But do we really need to teach social media?!

What exactly are we teaching?

But what IS digital literacy in this context?!

So do we need to teach social media?

Origins of #10DoT

University of Cambridge, Digital Humanities Network

6 month project “to encourage Early Career Researchers to develop advanced digital and social media skills to enhance their research, wider professional practice and employability”

How to teach this?

Principles

Not just to teach digital tools, but also:

an awareness of the ways in which social media and digital technologies can enhance or impact on your work

an understanding of the issues raised by social media and digital technologies, including potential pitfalls, good practice and ways they are changing the profession

an awareness of, and ability to evaluate, new and future digital tools and make informed decisions about your own engagement with them

Theoretical Solutions

Digital Literacy and Digital Literacies (Lea and Street; Lea and Jones)

Situated learning and communities of practice (Lave and Wenger; Wenger)

Digital Residents and Visitors (White)

Connectivism (Siemens) and Rhizomatic learning (Cormier)

Practical Solutions

MOOCs, SPOCs and 23Things

C-MOOCs (connectivist Massive Open Online Courses

X-MOOCs (more traditional instructivist Massive Open Online Courses)

23Things

Small Private Online Courses

Blended learning

E-learning models: bridging theory and practice

Access and motivation

Online Socialisation

Information exchange

Knowledge Construction

Development

Gilly Salmon

What is #10DoT?

BlogTwitter

The #10DoT Schedule

The schedule of topics over the ten days is as follows:

Day One: Set up a profile Day Two: What to tweet Day Three: Following people Day Four: @messages Day Five: Embedding and shortening URLs Day Six: Retweeting Day Seven: Hashtags Day Eight: Managing people (apps to create lists) Day Nine: Managing information (apps to curate links) Day Ten: Past and Future: Twitter archiving and

scheduling tweets

Example of a #10DoT post

Each post contains A need arising in the context of

academic practice Instructions for a small element of

Twitter Examples or suggestions of use in

the context of academic practice A small task to complete

Iterations of #10DoT #STEM10DoT STEM researchers at Cambridge

University (the original) http://stemdigital.wordpress.com/ten-days-of-twitter/

#LD10DoT Association of Learning Developers in Higher Education (simultaneous) http://ld5d.wordpress.com/ten-days-of-twitter/

#ARU10DoT http://aru10dot.wordpress.com/ Anglia Ruskin Librarians and Student Services Anglia Ruskin Academics (x2)

Other universities incl. #YSJ, #RUL, Sussex, the iMature student

Using #10DoT

What opportunities for staff/student development can you see, and how can these be maximised?

What barriers to engagement can you foresee, and how might these be overcome?

How might you adapt #10DoT for your context, or to teach other topics or tools?

Findings

Overall comments

What did you find most useful about the course? Conventions and terms Confidence Refining use Authenticity and embedded learning

Which part of the course did you find least useful? Time Level Tailoring

My own observations

#10DoT Online

#10DoT is freely available under a Creative Commons License to be adapted and reused CC BY-NC-SA

http://10daysoftwitter.wordpress.com/

Website contains What you need to set up What you need to do throughout Annotated materials Links to various iterations