The focus of the latest SGH iPAD coffee club was looking at how social media can be used in teaching and research, with some inspiring examples from within the faculty.
Catherine Hennessy explained how students on the NLM2 module had been encouraged to raise questions and share information on Twitter using the hashtag #nlm2soton. Students could follow the Twitter feed on Blackboard (instructions for adding a widget are here) if they preferred, or interact on Twitter. Using Twitter in this way helped students engage with the module, interact with lecturers and support each other. It reduced students’ anxiety around studying a notoriously challenging subject, and helped stimulate discussion as well as giving them an outlet to express their concerns.
Sarah Sims shared her great tips for Twitter users; her guide ‘Getting to grips with Twitter in 1, 2, 3’ is here.
We discussed options for shortening web links to stay within the 140 character limit for a Tweet. Twitter automatically shortens URLs to 22 characters, but to make a link even shorter you can use https://goo.gl/, http://ow.ly/ or https://bitly.com.
Tools for managing Twitter accounts include Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and ManageFlitter.
Our next session at SGH is Weds 16th September in LF8, at the slightly later time of 10:30am. Do let us know if there are particular themes you’d like to see covered in future sessions.