Online Learning Update

by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

Some adventurous professors have used Twitter as a teaching tool for at least a few years. At a presentation at Educause in 2009, W. Gardner Campbell, director of the academy of teaching and learning at Baylor University, extolled the virtues of allowing students to pose questions to the professor and each other — an important part of the thinking and learning process — without having to raise their hands to do so immediately and aloud. And in November, a group of professors published a scientific paper suggesting that bringing Twitter into the learning process might boost student engagement and performance. The relationship between online learning and language instruction has a more contentious history than most.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/11/college_professors_use_social_media_such_as_twitter_and_itunes_to_teach_students_foreign_language