Homewood MJ, ‘Twitteryvision: Using Twitter Live Chat to Build Communities of Practice as a Legal Learning Tool’, Teaching Legal Education in the Digital Age (Routledge 2022)
This paper analyses an action research project conducted by the author involving the use of Twitter for the purposes of providing real time, synchronous feedback on student understanding of a module within an undergraduate law degree. When reviewing the activity, it is submitted that the research project morphed into something bearing the characteristics of a Community of Practice (Wenger, 1998). This paper, therefore, draws on the research of Wenger to set out the characteristics of a Community of Practice and to look at the project to determine if such a community was indeed established. Further, it considers how learning takes place in such a community and whether such learning could occur in the project with reference to Hoadley and Kilner’s (2003) C4P framework. Finally, it touches upon the design for distributed cognition framework (Hoadley & Kim, 2003) and identifies aspects of the project illustrating how such design supports the development of a Community of Practice.
In so doing it seeks to add to the body of knowledge concerning social theories of learning with specific reference to the use of and particular characteristics of Twitter.
This paper analyses an action research project conducted by the author involving the use of Twitter for the purposes of providing real time, synchronous feedback on student understanding of a module within an undergraduate law degree. When reviewing the activity, it is submitted that the research project morphed into something bearing the characteristics of a Community of Practice (Wenger, 1998). This paper, therefore, draws on the research of Wenger to set out the characteristics of a Community of Practice and to look at the project to determine if such a community was indeed established. Further, it considers how learning takes place in such a community and whether such learning could occur in the project with reference to Hoadley and Kilner’s (2003) C4P framework. Finally, it touches upon the design for distributed cognition framework (Hoadley & Kim, 2003) and identifies aspects of the project illustrating how such design supports the development of a Community of Practice.
In so doing it seeks to add to the body of knowledge concerning social theories of learning with specific reference to the use of and particular characteristics of Twitter.