The Twitter academic: supporting learning communications in 140 characters or less

Social media has become an important tool for communicating information and allowing for the shared construction of knowledge. Research on the use of specific tools and reports of curriculum or instruction designed to leverage them remains weak. The following piece provides a case in which an instructor developed a course that used the micro-blogging platform Twitter as an important means of academic communication and support for a nascent learning community. This study found that designing a course to include Twitter for out-of-class discourse fostered desired communicative actions for learning while also allowing the instructor to help foster student-initiated community.