Assessing Language Student Interaction and Engagement via Twitter

Twitter has over 326 million monthly active users with the number of daily users growing every year since 2016 and is increasingly used by students and academics to interact and build online learning communities. For distance language learners, Twitter offers an open, free, and accessible environment for interaction and engagement which is difficult to replicate in Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) forums. VLE forums have the issue of being module and year specific and are often split into small student groups limiting the opportunity for natural interaction between students. This study aims to build on existing research and assesses the levels of student interaction and engagement via Twitter. The research involved the use of a survey of language students at The Open University (OU), UK, and a virtual ethnographic analysis of tweets related to the term 'OU languages'. The survey asked OU language students about their use of Twitter in relation to their studies and their thoughts on its advantages. The analysis of public tweets related to the term OU languages showed that a large number of different users tweet about the topic, which leads to enhanced interaction between students themselves and their teachers. A sentiment analysis of the words used in the tweets also showed that the tweets are consistently positive, which can lead to increased motivation for students. Overall, the analysis showed that students value the use of Twitter by teachers to give out information and offer support as well as the support they offer and receive from each other during their studies. [For the complete volume, "New Case Studies of Openness in and beyond the Language Classroom," see ED596829.]