Twitterchats

Twitter Chats

Anglia Learning and Teaching brings together our teaching community around the university to discuss and share good practice. As well as our events, we host discussions on social media to build and support the community. Taking part in our Twitter chats is a great way to discuss ideas with colleagues around the university and perhaps beyond, make new contacts and learn from one another.

What is a Twitter Chat?

A Twitter Chat is simply a scheduled online event in which people participate in a discussion on an agreed topic, organised around a hashtag, at a particular time. Each Twitter chat will have a specific theme and will be facilitated by a moderator, posting questions and retweeting responses to keep the discussion flowing. Twitter chats are a great fun way to connect with others and discuss, and the 140 characters tweeted in real time means that they are fast paced, organic and pithy!

Anglia Learning and Teaching Twitter chats

We aim to launch a regular Twitter chat using the #LTAChat hashtag, focussing on topics associated with learning and teaching at Anglia Ruskin. From time to time, we may have special guest moderators to share their expertise or perspectives, or topics associated around issues addressed the events we run as a way of prolonging the debate. To begin with though, we will host a one-off Twitter chat as a way of helping our #ARU10DoT participants practise their Twitter skills and learn about how Twitter chats work!

How do #LTAChat Twitter chats work?

We will decide a topic (suggestions are welcome!) and promote the chat from two weeks in advance. Twitter chats will be held on a Wednesday lunchtime, from 12.30-1.30. The moderator will begin the chat by welcoming participants, and give it structure and momentum by posting questions to prompt discussion. After the session, the Twitter chat will be summarised in a Storify and posted on Twitter and on the #ARU10DoT blog.

How do I take part?

To take part,

• log onto Twitter at the scheduled time. Search for the hashtag #LTAChat to find and follow along with the discussion (using a third party client app such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Tweetchat in which you can create a column for this hashtag might help you keep track of the Chat)
• use the hashtag #LTAChat in all your tweets so that other participants can see them
• tweet to introduce yourself to the other participants to let them know who you are, and that you’re joining in. You might also want to tweet to say you are participating in this Twitter chat, so your followers aren’t confused by your Twitter chat tweets or can mute you if they don’t want the high volume of your tweets in their timeline over the hour.
• Reply to the moderator’s questions or responses and questions from other participants as you wish, or ask questions of your own.
• Retweet any responses you find particularly interesting so that others are more likely to pick them up too. You might also want to favourite any tweets you might want to come back to later, after the Twitter chat has ended.

Tips

• Twitter chats can be fast and furious, with tweets appearing as fast as people can type, often in a non-logical order as discussions branch off. Don’t worry about reading or responding to every tweet!
• You don’t have to stay for the whole thing, or arrive on time (though arriving part way through might be confusing. Don’t wait to orient yourself, though, join in with whatever tweets capture your interest!). Remember to greet other participants when you join, and tweet to say that you’re leaving in case participants wonder why you aren’t responding.
• Click on the ‘conversation’ icon under a tweet to see what it’s a response to – you can see the whole thread forwards and backwards by doing this. It might help to add context, or to pursue a particular line you’re interested in.