Examining Teachers' Commitment Dynamics in Twitter-Based Learning Networks

• In Event: Uses of Technology in Teacher Development and Support

Abstract

Social media, which provides new opportunities for teachers to learn, communicate and develop professional relationships, has been proved to be a valid and helpful resource for teachers’ professional learning purposes. While previous studies pursued questions on how and why regarding online professional learning, we asked a more profound question: how participants are committed to a massive informal online professional learning community over time? This work presents an empirical study of a massive Twitter-based professional learning network to investigate participants’ commitment dynamics over time. We employed social network analysis on a longitudinal data set of more than 400,000 tweets published with the hashtag “#edchat”. We found that around 30% participants remained committed to the informal learning community over time.

Authors

• Hanxiang Du, University of Florida

• Wanli Xing, University of Florida

• Gaoxia Zhu, Nanyang Technological University