Last fall, in physio psych, I asked students to tweet once per week about the course or related material. It was low stakes and, in general, quite successful and enjoyable.
This fall, with a larger number of students and intro level courses, I am trying a different approach. I am not requiring students tweet, but am giving them the option as a form of engagement. Each course has a unique hashtag (#psy1130 for General Psychology and #psy2230 for Intro to Experimental). I’ll be tracking the course hashtag using @mhawksey ‘s TAGS v6.1 tool (https://tags.hawksey.info/). I’m not sure whether non-required twitter participation will lead to students tweeting about the course, but in the event we have some active participants, these should show the interactions from the last 7 days:
General Psychology TAGS Explorer
Intro to experimental TAGS Explorer
Here is the info on our course “site” and “engagement” from the syllabus (~same for each course):
COURSE SITE
I will use a course hashtag on Twitter (#Psy2230) to post (subjectively 😎) interesting, thought provoking, and potentially useful information related to psychology and methods/statistics in psychology. You do not need a Twitter account to search and find the hashtag. You are welcome and encouraged to contribute to the course hashtag on Twitter and you may choose to create a pseudonym account or use your own personal account. You may want to use Tweetdeck to more easily follow the hashtag. You are not required to contribute to the hashtag; however, this is one way to demonstrate engagement. You may follow me (but are not required to follow me) on twitter for more psychology, neuroscience, higher education, running, and craft beer related tweets (@kamekomae).
ENGAGEMENT
I will assess your engagement in class. The following count toward engagement (although this is not an exhaustive list): regularly attending class, being alert and attentive, contributing to small group discussions, staying on task and helping others stay on task, contributing to large group discussions, participating in activities, and contributing to our course hashtag online. I will assess engagement using a cluster grading method. Usually students fall into 3-5 “clusters” for their in-class engagement:
| Grade / Cluster | Example contributions (but may vary) |
| A (~25 pts) | Never or rarely misses class, actively contributes to small and large group in class activities, contributes to 3+ times to course hashtag, promotes peer engagement |
| B (~21 pts) | Rarely misses class, actively contributes to small OR large group in-class activities, contributes once or twice to course hashtag |
| C (~18 pts | Occasionally misses class, pays attention but rarely contributes to discussions/activities |
| D (~16 pts) | Often misses class, does not pay attention & rarely contributes to discussions/activities |
| F (~14 pts) | Regularly skips class, does not pay attention or contribute when present, distracts others |
So you want to be a scientist 