Teaching and Tweeting

Today I asked my students to tweet me their questions and live feedback during class.   It was an experiment that I'm willing to repeat.  Here's how it unfolded.

My Wills, Trusts & Estates class has 90 students.  It meets at 9:00 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays.  The class size and time slot make for lower levels of voluntary class participation that I have experienced in teaching in the 11:00 a.m. or 1:00 p.m. slots.  I do cold-call students; many students volunteer and ask questions.  Still I have not been satisfied with my ability to elicit more participation in this particular class. 

Today I decided to ask students who were so inclined to tweet clarifying questions, feedback or comments during class.  Our topic was the mental capacity required to execute a will.  Subtopics included a comparison of the mental capacity required to execute a contract versus a will, and the effect of a testator's mistaken beliefs about the nature of her own property.

Here are four representative tweets I received during class:

@ProfBCrawford Do we have to know how the mental capacity is different to enter a contract or an intervivos gift v capacity for a will

@ProfBCrawford what if the [testator's property] was worthless, but person never attached importance to actual money (i.e.had inherited and never used 10m)

@ProfBCrawford how many states is the minority rule in effect?

 My Wills/Trusts professor @ProfBCrawford wants us to communicate with her via twitter during class ... this is def a first.

I received only 8 tweets during a 80 minute class session.  My guess is that the number would have been higher if I had announced in advance that I was going to experiment with Twitter.  I had my computer open at the podium, and glanced at and refreshed my Twitter page every few minutes. 

Instead of stopping class the flow to say, "Ok, now let's turn to the Twitter questions," I tried to integrate answers into the discussion as it was unfolding.  I think that part worked fairly well -- perhaps too well for one particularly distracted student who approached me after class and revealed himself as a particular pseudonymous tweeter.  He said, "I'm the one who asked...and I don't think you answered it."  When I reminded him of a hypo we had done, and explained how it responded to his question, a light bulb did seem to go off.  Perhaps this student should not multi-task again in the near future.  

 I don't think that Twitter can substitute for live class participation, but it may be a promising supplement. 

Comments

[Jim Milles]

I still find that hardly any of my students use Twitter. Have you tried simply inviting your students to text you during class?

[James Grimmelmann]

In my Internet Law class, I have a dedicated chat room for any class members who want to use it. My RA monitors the chat room and relays any common questions to me. It's hardly surefire, but it does sometimes get out in the open questions that many students have but no one quite wants to be the one to ask.

I like your Twitter experiment, in part because it's a technology many of the students are using and are comfortable with already, and also because it's so trivially easy to set up.

[Josh Blackman]

I have used a live chat during my class sessions this semester, and I have found it to be quite effective. I discuss it here: http://joshblackman.com/blog/?p=6071

[JT]

I have tried something similar this semester (for an MBA class focused on the birth, life and death of a business, examined through the lens of law and regulation).

For a Monday/Wednesday class, students email me on Sunday night questions regarding the reading. I can then read through the questions before class and tailor our discussion to those areas of greatest interest or confusion. It also means that the students come to class more prepared and engaged, with a stake in the discussion.

[Bridget Crawford]

@jimmilles, you're totally right that most students don't seem to be on Twitter. IM'ing probably would have yielded greater participation.

[Bridget Crawford]

Follow up to Monday's post -- my second experiment with Twitter was a dud. Only one student tweeted me during the entire 80 minute class. How quickly the novelty wore off!