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September 11, 2009, 01:00 PM ET
Professor Gets Religion About Twitter in Class
In Canada, one religious studies professor wants more followers.
Followers on Twitter, that is. Hoping to get students engaged in his introductory course on Islam, Christianity and Judaism, Steven Engler, a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, will test students on news stories posted to the class’s Twitter account. He’s also setting up a discussion group on Tweetworks, a program that complements Twitter.
Students won’t be graded on their participation in online discussions, Mr. Engler said, but three midterms will each include a question that asks students to contextualize one of the news stories posted on Twitter. The response will count for 20 percent of the midterm grade.
Class starts on Monday, September 14, but Mr. Engler has been tweeting away since August. On Sept. 6, he reported: “NEWS: Holy city twist: Arabs moving into Jewish areas.” and linked to an Associated Press article on Palestinians moving into Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
Mr. Engler, who has taught variations of the introductory course for 15 years, said he’s noticed his students grow more distracted by laptops and cell phones in the class room. He said he needs to find new ways to engage their attention so he can show them the relevance of religion in their daily lives. “Twitter is a small step in that direction,” he said.
Posting stories and creating discussion groups is also possible on Blackboard, the online course management program used at Mount Royal and many other colleges. But Mr. Engler said most of his students have trouble using Blackboard, while Twitter is fun and intuitive.
So far, 11 people are following the class’s Twitter account, but the professor is hoping that nearly all of the 80 students in the two sections of his class will sign up in the next few weeks.
Comments
1. sabbatical - September 14, 2009 at 02:51 pm
"Most of his students have trouble using Blackboard" --?????
I've used Blackboard for years, and not one student out of thousands has had trouble using it. This is, in theory, a technoligically literate generation. So there must be something else going on. "Most of his students don't bother using Blackboard, because there's no quiz"?
2. sjengler - September 14, 2009 at 03:50 pm
Steven Engler here. To clarify what Simmi was constrained to reduce: all of my students in all of my courses use BB; 30% of the grade (in this course) consists of quizzes posted on BB; some of my students, arriving at BB for the first time, have trouble getting the hang of it; some of my students have password issues at the start of term that prevent access; many of my students access BB through our MyMRU site, and that interface has been blocking or timing out users. More to the point here, most of my students (like me) find BB a relative hassle to access/navigate (high click-to-content ratio). I get complaints. That's a small price to pay for writing quizzes and grabbing notes/readings. But it's just easier to post to and access a Twitter stream than the BB announcements page.
But that issue is tangential. I want to underline the relevance of religion in the world outside the classroom. Blackboard--the name says it all--is a virtual wall in our classroom. Twitter throws our voices beyond that wall.
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