Twitter as a means of class participation: Making student reading visible

Earlier studies have shown that tutoring in reading strategies reflects positively on the acquisition of skills and construction of knowledge. However, the suggested ways of carrying out such training – via individual face-to-face instruction or tutoring software – require allocation of time and specialised resources, which is not always possible in a university seminar. In the study reported here, I investigate the possibility of making reading strategy training more feasible through the use of a widely accessible microblogging platform, Twitter. In the experiment, students were required to tweet comments on their reading with an objective to prompt self-explaining. The qualitative data drawn from post-seminar interviews and content analysis of tweets indicate that students spontaneously resort to self-explanation strategies and develop from predominantly low-level to high-level strategy use in the course of the seminar. Other positive effects included an increased commitment to reading, stimulation of in-class discussion and enhancing a feeling of community among learners.