Measuring the Use of Twitter in Education

Abstract

[EN] The educational environmet is affected by the transformations of new technologies, virtual communities, and social networks, and especially by the creation of social knowledge. In this frame, students show a greater tendency to use ICT tools, inside and outside academic serrings, a fact that is transforming their process and the ways of learning. To copy with this situation, it is crucial to use educational strategies centred on active methodologies, the use of new technologies, the continuous participation of students, and the use of co-learning processes that focus on the characteristics of new students. However, research abour the advantages of these new methodologies of teaching and learning, and specially about their performance are still scarce. This paper concentrates and analyzes specifically on the use of Twitter as an important tool for educational purposes. Twitter, like other social media, is broadly used by students. However, and in spite of its possibilities, its use for educational purposes is reduced. In order to fill this gap, this work studies the main potentialities of Twitter to provide different applications and services for students. In addition, and after a deep research in the literature, the paper creates a rubric or questionnaire to measure the opinion of students about the capabilities and possibilities of Twitter for educational purposes. The questionnaite is tested with a sample of 105 students at the university level. Results and discussion of the results, and recommendations for future research and applications are also provided.