Microblogging in the Large Lecture Classroom: Facilitating Participation for Students with High Communication Apprehension

Can the use of social media facilitate student participation in the large lecture class? This paper explores this question by presenting original data collected in the context of a freshman Technology large-lecture course in which microblogging service Yammer was introduced mid-semester and used for student participation. Students were assessed pre- and post-intervention through online surveys that asked about perceptions of classroom interactions and learning, as well as measures of communication apprehension and technology readiness. We analyze the set of 69 pre- and post-intervention survey pairs in order to identify the relationships among communication apprehension, technology readiness, and comfort with classroom participation, both face to face and through microblogging.