sp131011

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

HOW TWITTER IS BEING USED BY AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING ACADEMIC UNITS

Stuart Palmer@s_palm

Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment Deakin University


Linking students and practising engineers

Engaging large classes in real time

Student ‘journaling’ on work placements

Sending commands to hosted Matlab

Used for student group communications when LMS proves to be unwieldy

Social media in engineering education


Georgia Tech College of Engineering

4891 Twitter followers

4115 Facebook followers

40 YouTube videos14 subscribers


Basic Twitter account statistics for the 8 Australian engineering unitsAcademi

cunit

Tweets Mentio

nsFollowin

gFollower

sUndirected

Directed

Retweets

Total

U1 161 5 7 173 16 22 306

U2 237 306 140 683 58 189 405

U3 12 1 0 13 0 9 7

U4 219 269 73 561 59 536 695

U5 171 0 0 171 0 6 14

U6 91 106 51 248 19 76 288

U7 62 0 1 63 0 12 28

U8 32 10 49 91 40 114 211


Monthly total Tweets for 8 AEAUs

N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J

2010 2011 2012 2013

U1

U2

U3

U4

U5

U6

U7

U8

Nil 1-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70


Twitter network visualisation schema

Account 1(node)

Account 2(node)

Direction of Tweet(clockwise edge)


Exemplar Twitter network diagrams

AEAU 1


Exemplar Twitter network diagrams

AEAU 2

AEAU 1


Combined AEAU Twitter network

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

w

a

b

c

d

1-8: AEAUsw: ‘the world’a: common to AEAUs 2 and 4b: common to AEAUs 2, 4 and 5c: common to AEAUs 2, 4, 6 and 8d: common to 5 AEAUs and others



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

@EngAustralia

@EWB_Australia



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

@EngAustralia

@EWB_Australia

@Bechtel

@AECOM



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

@EngAustralia

@EWB_Australia

@Bechtel

@AECOM

@adambspencer

@DoctorKarl



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

@EngAustralia

@EWB_Australia

@Bechtel

@AECOM

@adambspencer

@DoctorKarl

@UTAustin



1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

@EngAustralia

@EWB_Australia

@Bechtel

@AECOM

@adambspencer

@DoctorKarl

@UTAustin

@KimTairi

@HapgoodK

@s_palm


Limited uses of social media in engineering education documented in the literature

Network visualisation is one method for evaluating the use of social media

For AEAUs, two principal patterns of Twitter activity where observed…

Conclusions


1. sending mostly undirected Tweets; and

2. a more diverse model with a spread of Tweet types, and more Tweets overall

The mere numbers don’t really reveal the content and purpose of the Twitter activity

Twitter is only one social media platform

A useful method for future research

Conclusions


Thank you for your time

ow.ly/qljSi

sp131011

Education