How to participate in a Live Twitter Chat – Tips for Social Workers

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jan 8, 2015

Live Twitter chats (a scheduled event when Twitter users communicate via tweets in real time) can be a great way for social workers and students to stay informed about all types of issues and interests relevant to the profession. For example, medical experts from the Mayo Clinic frequently host chats to share and discuss new treatment options in healthcare. Professionals can also use this tool to meet and talk (for free) with new colleagues from just around the corner to the other side the world. A good example is the #SPSM chat which hosts a weekly forum for mental health professionals interested in using social media to prevent suicide. During a chat like this one, a social worker might engage with influential thought leaders in their field and make their own contributions to the professional conversations that influence and shape social work practice. The Political Social Worker suggests that Twitter can be a powerful networking tool for social workers in her blog post The Benefits of Live Twitter Chats.

But participating in a live Twitter chat requires preparation. Live chats move fast and have guidelines to set the parameters of the conversation. More obvious is the need to be familiar with Twitter (a microblogging platform) before participating in a chat. Understanding what a tweet is and how to write one is a must to chat on Twitter. Being able to communicate and network with professionals in online environments is considered an important digital media skill for any 21^st century professional including social workers (Rheingold, 2012).

Here are some practical tips for social work students, educators and practitioners interested in being part of a live Twitter chat:

Q & A: Student Perspective on Twitter Assignment

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Dec 12, 2014

Ms. Bobbi Arrington (@bobbielle) is an instructor at School of Social Work at Monmouth University.   In this blog post  Ms. Arrington interviews Ms. Nadia Jeter, a BSW student at Monmouth University, who participated in Twitter assignment during an Human Behavior and the Social Environment course.  In another post, Ms. Arrington and Dr. Becky Anthony (@becky_anthony ), an assistant professor of social work at Salisbury University, write about how they developed and managed an assignment using Twitter in their Human Behavior and the Social Environment Courses. 

Recently, I sat down with Nadia Jeter, a BSW social work student at Monmouth University.    Nadia was in Professor Becky Anthony’s class when the Twitter project was started.  Nadia and I sat down in the back of a brightly lit classroom, papers and books cluttered the desk as her last class had just finished.  She has a bright infectious smile and a large personality that is charismatic.  It’s not surprising that she has become a major advocate for vulnerable and marginalized populations using Twitter.  It took just a few seconds for her to recall back to the spring of 2013 and the assignment.

BA:  What did you initially think of the assignment?

NJ:  I hated it!  I asked was it mandatory and Professor Anthony, with her nice smile and her hands folded (she imitates Professor Anthony’s hand expression) she said, “Yes – but don’t worry.  We’ll show you how to do it!”  I had just got on facebook and I hated it!  It wasn’t user friendly.

BA: How was it learning to use Twitter?

NJ:  It’s actually very user friendly.  I took me all of two minutes to set up.  It’s really easy, accept for the fact that you have only one hundred forty characters to express yourself!  This was a very good tool for me because it was so simple and I really value simplicity.

BA:  How did you develop your tweets and how you responded to replies? 

NJ:  (she laughs)  In the end I was actually very thankful that you only have one hundred forty characters!  Having only a few words made you choose what was important.  You had to take out the bread and just give the meat.  Because…yeah…you have to just give them a fact.  No explanation.  So if you retweet an article you just give them a brief statement.  Say you’re reading something and you say to yourself…this is so corrupt.  You can retweet and just say “corruption in the judicial system.”  The person has to look to see what you are talking about.

Twitter Project for HBSE Course

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Dec 12, 2014

Dr. Becky Anthony (@becky_anthony) is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at Salisbury University and Ms. Bobbi Arrington (@bobbielle) is an instructor at School of Social Work at Monmouth University.   In this blog post, they write about how they developed and managed an assignment using Twitter in their Human Behavior and the Social Environment Courses.  In another post,  Ms. Arrington interviews Ms. Nadia Jeter, a BSW student who completed the assignment.

As professional users of Twitter, we understand how social media can be utilized to share knowledge, resources, and information.  As professors, we wondered would students be able to gain similar professional benefits if they utilized social media, specifically Twitter, in the classroom.  To help us answer this question, we created the “Twitter Project” for our Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) students.

Based on the course design where the content of each week is about a specific diverse community, we assigned students into groups and gave each group a specific diverse community. These communities included: religious communities, people with disabilities, social classism in the United States, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and LGBTQ populations. Each student was asked to post, using our classroom hashtag, two tweets per week about their assigned community. They were encouraged to post about news, current events, and advocacy opportunities, focusing on examples of social and economic injustice. Learners were graded based on writing two posts (or tweets) per week.  The assignment was worth eight points.  A student received a point each week they posted two tweets that advocated on behalf of an issue that affected their particular population.

Follow-up to 10/28 #MacroSW Twitter Chat

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Nov 7, 2014

How do you get social work students passionate about policy issues?  Jimmy Young and I have an answer for you – live Twitter chats!  We were overwhelmed with the response from social work educators and students to our live Twitter Chat last Tuesday, October 28th.  My best estimate is that close to 200 people, mostly students from at least six universities across the country, participated in our one-hour chat about income inequality.  You can read a copy of the transcript from the chat here.  What I observed during the chat was that students were engaged in open, thoughtful and respectful conversations about the problems in our country due to the wide income gap between the rich and poor.
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The chat was hosted by the #MacroSW Chat folks who graciously allowed Jimmy and I to co-moderate a discussion about the film Inequality for All.   When organizing this event, we targeted to social work students in social welfare policy and macro practice classes. Click here  to read about how we set up the chat and developed an assignment using Twitter.

Many thanks to #MacroSW Chat, especially Pat Shelly (@PatShellySSW) of the University of Buffalo School of Social Work and Karen Zgoda (@karenzgoda), Instructor at Bridgewater State University, who sponsored and promoted our chat.  And a big thanks to everyone who participated in the chat – including social work students and educators from Appalachia State, Bridgewater State University, California State University – Long Beach, Tarleton State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Buffalo School of Social Work, and the University of Nebraska Kearney.

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2014, November 7). Follow-up to 10/28 #MacroSW Twitter Chat[Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2014/11/07/follow-up-to-1028-macrosw-twitter-chat/.