@AcademicsSay: A Case Study of Academic Engagement via Twitter

• In Event: 34.078 - Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: 34.078-11 - Connected Forms of Professional Development: Social Media, Open Online Courses, and Teacherpreneurs

Abstract

Despite a burgeoning literature highlighting the relevance of Twitter for research, instruction, and engagement among post-secondary educators, this social media platform is underutilized due to lingering concerns regarding utility, respectability, and overexposure. Following from studies showing faculty to prefer Twitter for personal purposes, and tweets providing timely, humorous, or curious details of scholarly work to demonstrate extensive reach, this paper outlines the systematic implementation and impact of the Twitter account @AcademicsSay in which shared thoughts, experiences, and personal challenges of post-secondary educators are explicitly addressed. Descriptive and experimental findings demonstrate the utility of Twitter for promoting academic development, community, and engagement, and underscore the need for research on social media and well-being in post-secondary education.

Author

• Nathan C. Hall, McGill University