2 Stupidly Simple Ways to Use Twitter For Training

By: Justin Ferriman May 22, 2012
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We hear it all the time in our industry: social media is the next big thing for collaborative learning. But how? As of today, I have yet to see one mainstream social media tool, or any tool for that matter, provide a really viable option for social learning.

I think in theory we all know that social media lends itself well to learning, but as of now it isn’t adopted mainstream (and I don’t see that changing anytime soon). At its best, social tools of today are a good way to supplement traditional methods – which brings me to the main point of this post.

Millions of people enjoy twitter for social or leisure purposes, but it can also add a little variety into your training. Here are two different possible ways to integerate twitter into your next learning event.

1. Tweet Your Answers!

This works best if you are conducting an instructor led training session and you have exercises and/or breakout sessions incorporated into the schedule. During a breakout session, group participants into a couple of teams. Give the teams 10 questions or so related to the material and require teams to “tweet” their answers (multiple choice or short answer) as quick as they can at a specific account.

Since twitter timestamps tweets, you can see which right answer was submitted first. The only setup needed for this strategy is the creation of the twitter accounts prior to the event (the accounts teams will use and the “master” account that they need to tweet answers to). You could even through in a twist where you tweet back to teams different hints and/or feedback.

2. Tweet Your Questions!

If you are training to a new process or procedure, allow participants the opportunity to tweet any questions they may have, either on the job or during training.

What makes this strategy more unique is that instead compiling answers and sending them back via one large email, ensure that there is someone monitoring the twitter account so as to provide near real-time response (even if the response is, “I will look into it”). Since there is a character limit, the questions have to be precise, but so do the answers!

There are certainly more ways to use twitter. In fact, there are plenty of unique apps that integrate with twitter that enhances its functionality for specific task. Twitter has a long way to go to be completely adopted in the learning world, but that still doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun in the meantime.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter