Methods
Methods
This project used Improvement Research to investigate how teachers can utilize social media tools, specifically Twitter, to share their practice and connect with other educators. As a result of this work, the research team hoped to create a HTeNC Twitter page, grow the group of educators from HTeNC who were sharing work via tweeting, improve the quality and frequency of tweeting for all participants, and host regular Twitter chats. Improvement Research’s focus on fast iterations helped support the rapid feedback and growth of Twitter implementation both at the school- and organization-wide levels.
In reflecting upon the previous failed attempt to motivate a whole staff to use Twitter, we decided that a small group of self-selected teachers might yield greater initial momentum. To start, we worked with a team of seven teachers to complete six Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles over the course of twelve weeks. The team consisted of teachers from kindergarten, first, third, and fourth grade, and our science exploratory teacher. We invited all teachers at our school to be a part of the focus group and these seven teachers were interested in participating. All seven teachers agreed to participate as part of the team, with the plan of conducting a PDSA cycle every two weeks.
PDSA Cycles in Depth
We began our first PDSA cycle with a survey for all teachers regarding their current connectedness with other classrooms on our campus, other classrooms in our organization, and to other educators beyond our schools. The survey also gathered information regarding teachers’ reasons for joining Twitter and their feelings and perceptions about sharing work beyond the walls of their classroom. To view the Twitter Initial Survey click here. Another focus of this cycle was to create a HTe North County Twitter account and follow the current staff members at HTeNC who had Twitter accounts. Our hunch was that in order to gain and sustain momentum, teachers would need to feel their work had a purpose and an audience. Opening up our own school Twitter account was the first step in modeling and utilizing this larger voice to amplify the work happening at our school. When a teacher is new to Twitter, he or she has limited followers. Just by leveraging the other accounts that we held, we could make the tweets gain a larger audience.
Our second PDSA cycle focused on the change idea making the work public. The driver was to get the High Tech High organization more involved with Twitter. We wanted to know how having leaders in High Tech High’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) would impact engagement in the organization through Twitter. In addition, we wanted to gather information in regards to what the leaders of the GSE already knew about what they could do with Twitter. This was our first opportunity to sit down and share the possibilities available within our work, which was eye-opening as we began planning what our additional PDSA cycles would be. We realized that from an overarching organizational standpoint, the use of Twitter was an area of growth. All throughout educational communities, Twitter is being used to showcase work and add to the larger conversation, but that was not happening within High Tech High at this point. On average, the organization-account was tweeting five to seven times per month with interactions averaging about ten thousand times per month. We identified this as a huge area of leverage for our work of connecting the wider organization for our teachers and the educational community.
Our third PDSA cycle built on the change idea of making work public. We met with our focus group with the intention of scaffolding with and building in time for those teachers to work on different aspects of Twitter collaboratively. We decided that the focus group would meet every other Monday, and that we would send an email or short survey to the group on alternating Mondays. We wanted the consistency of meeting face-to-face, but also wanted to value the time that would be spent sharing work via Twitter.
During our first meeting, we shared our first change idea: tweeting five times that week and writing effective Twitter bios. We all revisited our profiles and updated them for purpose and maximum impact. Whitaker, Zoul & Casas described the importance of an educator’s Twitter profile: “You are promoting who you are and what you are interested in professionally in the hope that you can connect with other “real” people looking for similar support” (2015, p. 5). As a group, we looked at example profiles, usernames, and photos. We set up our accounts to indicate to potential followers what we would have to offer to their curated stream. Our goal was to add value to the educational conversation and by creating robust profiles, other users would be able to see if connecting would be valuable for their own PLN.
At the beginning of our fourth PDSA cycle, we were feeling excited by the feedback and growth teachers were feeling within their PLN. The graph below shows the total number of tweets, following, and followers, of our combined focus group members. Of note here is the increase in followers to these users based on the activity on their account at the end of that one week cycle.
| PDSA Cycle 3 | Tweets | Following | Followers |
| Pre-data | 495 | 799 | 503 |
| Post-data | 546 | 919 | 570 |
The purpose of our fourth PDSA cycle was to test out the leverage point of using specific hashtags and mentioning specific users when tweeting in order to connect more deeply and reach a wider audience. One criticism of Twitter is that at times, it can be seen as a platform similar to the bullhorn- people shouting out their messages to a large audience. It can certainly be used in this manner, but there are also techniques and ways to form deeper connections. We wanted to show our focus group that authentic connections were available through this venue and give them tools for accessing those connections.
At this point, we were feeling very connected with the work at our school and even saw some additional teachers outside of our focus group tweeting more often. As researchers, we were ready to tackle the difficult task of connecting within our larger organization. At the end of January, the @hightechhigh Twitter account had 4200 followers, followed 78 people, and tweeted about six times per month. The 4200 followers indicated that people wanted to know what was happening at our schools when they were not here. Tweeting five to six times per month was not fulfilling that audience of 4200’s desire to hear more about our work. Additionally, following 78 people indicates that the connections were not mutual. We wanted to increase the connectivity that our teachers felt and this felt like the right place to start.
On February 1, 2016, we were able to take over the @hightechhigh Twitter account. We began by creating a list within that account for any teachers who are part of High Tech High as an organization. This list would be an organizational tool. Whenever we look at the Twitter feed, it is filled with any user we follow. By creating a list, we now have a curated list of just the people who work within HTH. As we built this list, we were very careful to like and retweet as much of the work coming from our colleagues as possible. The momentum began to build. The account went from six tweets per month to about one hundred and that helped fuel additional teachers to tweet their work more frequently. Even teachers who were unaware of our project began talking about how great it was to have a more active organization Twitter account.
One connection tool that many educators utilize on Twitter are the educational chats. They range from quite broad- #edchat (general education chat) on Tuesdays to very specific- #TMchat (Thinking Maps chat) on Tuesday evenings. Our sixth PDSA cycle asked our participants to join a Twitter educational chat of their choosing and report back to us on how it worked for them. We used our meeting time together to discuss the technical aspects of Twitter chats and to select one for the week to join.
This change idea did not end up working. Only one teacher participated in a chat and the others reported feeling intimidated and unsure of how to move forward. They were unable to find the time to join one. Up until this point, our group had done everything we asked and more. The fact that the Twitter chat didn’t happen was actually interesting and gave us a great challenge with which to grapple.
For our next focus group meeting, we were unable to gather in person, so we had the idea to meet on Twitter and participate in a chat as a part of our meet-up. We created a hashtag, #HTeNCchat and asked everyone to meet on TweetChat at a specified time. Several teachers were still at school and were able to meet together in the same room to support the technical aspects of the chat. Wendy moderated the chat and used a question and answer format commonly used in educational Twitter chats. The impact of this chat, spurred by the failed PDSA cycle of asking everyone to join a chat on their own, was exciting. When given the support- time set aside and technical assistance in-person, our focus group enjoyed this format for connecting. While it was only intended for our group of seven, eight additional teachers who follow our work on Twitter ended up chiming in as well. If doing this work again, we would definitely use an in-person Twitter chat to support the idea of joining a larger one in the future.
Our final PDSA cycle involved using the @hightechhigh account during an international conference of educators present at Deeper Learning 2016. This is a conference held at High Tech High as a gathering of educators interested in the Deeper Learning network of schools. Over 1,000 educators gathered in person during the event and we utilized Twitter as a back-channel communication device and community-builder for the participants present and to provide transparency for those who were unable to make it. During the three days of the conference, our tweets had an average of 5,000 impressions per day. Our monthly average is 1,300. Our change idea of utilizing Twitter in a very prominent way also lead to the hashtag #deeperlearning trending on Twitter. As researchers, we are interested in being a part of the larger educational conversation and Twitter gave us that connection during the conference. Conference attendees were sharing resources, insightful moments, overall impressions, questions, and take-aways with a wide audience throughout the conference. The impact of the robust @hightechhigh account made this step possible and exponentially more impactful than if we had not had access to that account.