Tonight, I was fortunate to be in my first organized chat on Twitter. In addition to it being my first, I was one of the moderators! While the chat was going on, my fingers couldn’t move quick enough to tweet posts, for every minute (sometimes multiple times a minute) someone was using the hash tag for our chat and was presenting a new idea for the chat topic. To say the least, it was interesting. From the outside, it would appear to be unproductive and disorganized, but in fact, it possessed the greatest efficacy that I have ever seen in a discussion. Everyone involved in the chat presented excellent comments, ideas, questions, and topic-prompts, all of which were able to keep the chat alive. Even though disagreements were a common aspect of the chat, people always disagreed politely and with a strong counterargument.
I think that chats on Twitter can be an extremely effective way to conduct academic discussions between students and educators across all of academia. I, however, think that if these Twitter chats were used in education, some modification would need to be made. For example, it seemed that ideas were being thrown around too rapidly, preventing those in the chat from digesting each comment fully. In addition, it seemed that side conversations occurred within the Twitter chat discussing one subtopic while another separate conversation is going on about a different sub topic. I feel that it would be more effective if set sub topics were decided beforehand and set times during the chat. This is so that everyone involved is able to read everyone’s thoughts and comment on each. Nevertheless, since I have only been in one chat, I am not sure if the aforementioned problem is really even problem. Perhaps the rapid fire of ideas is more analogous to real-life arguments/discussions.
I hope that Twitter chats are able spread like wildfire across the whole of academia, because they are an exciting, effective, and energetic way to discuss interesting and controversial topics. Maybe a few modifications will need to be made to increase the efficacy of these chats, but overall, I believe that these chats have high potential in enhancing education through social media.
