Engaging Students: Tweet of the Week

“Times are a changin” is a common slogan echoed throughout our nation. Faculty continually search for innovative ways to keep up with our "changin times" and engage students in learning. The use of social media is an effective medium transforming education in healthcare. E-mail, instant messenger and real-time interactive programs such as Skype are tools that have been used to connect with students. Twitter is a combination of these communication methodologies; the primary difference is that “tweets” are limited to 140 characters. A fast and simple social networking platform, Twitter has been implemented at the University College of Nursing as a powerful tool for online information sharing.  Students and faculty engage in a “Tweet of the Week” to present and discuss curricular content.  Twitter Basics101 will be presented including a) Getting Started, b) Twitter terminology c) Creating groups on Twitter, d) Creating a classroom hashtag, and e) Strategies for using Twitter in course work. At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to add Twitter, one of the most popular social media platforms on the web today to their toolbox of strategies to ensure that “learning is not a spectator sport” (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).