Abstract—The micro-blogging
platform, Twitter, has been employed by some in higher education as a tool for
enhanced student engagement. This platform has shown promise as an educational
tool for the promotion of critical reading and writing and concise expression
of ideas. However, it is unclear in what settings and under what circumstances
Twitter can be effectively employed in the engineering classroom. These
questions were explored over a multi-semester study of student participation in
directed social media discussions within the engineering classroom. The various
cohorts of students included in this study were drawn from engineering courses.
Comparisons were made between these multiple cohorts on the basis of active
engagement in the assigned tasks, performance on homework and examinations, and
overall course performance. Through the process of using this practice in the
classroom, it was found that there was difficulty encouraging engineering
students to participate in Twitter discussions regardless of the incentive
provided. Limited evidence was found of greater course achievement correlating
with greater participation in Twitter based tasks. It is expected that greater
effort is required in familiarizing students with the Twitter platform and
increasing their comfort level with asking questions and carrying out
discussions in a public forum.