Title: Viability of using Twitter to support peer instruction in teacher education

Authors: Tian Luo; Danielle E. Dani; Li Cheng

Addresses: Instructional Design and Technology, Department of STEM Education and Professional Studies, Darden College of Education, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA ' Science Education, Department of Teacher Education, Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, USA ' Educational Technology, School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA

Abstract: This paper reports on a case study in which Twitter served as a backchannel to mediate and support the peer-teaching activity in a face-to-face teacher education course. Surveys and interviews were utilised to understand the effectiveness of the Twitter integration and students' perceived learning in a Twitter-supported peer teaching environment. Tweets were used to determine how preservice teachers used Twitter to support peer instruction. Most students were able to use the Twitter platform to produce and retrieve peer feedback, while some encountered technical difficulties. Our current analysis suggests the Twitter-based peer feedback was moderately successful in this peer teaching activity. There exists a large variability of students' perceptions towards Twitter as a tool to support the delivery and reception of peer feedback.

Keywords: microblogging; Twitter; peer instruction; Web 2.0; social media; teacher education; case study; student perceptions; tweets; preservice teachers; peer feedback.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSMILE.2016.081280

International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, 2016 Vol.4 No.4, pp.287 - 304

Received: 25 Jul 2016
Accepted: 08 Oct 2016

Published online: 01 Jan 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article