The article “Where do you Learn?” Tweeting to inform Learning Space Development published in Educause Quarterly shows us an innovative way to use Twitter for data collection. The research described in the article has used Twitter discover the places where students learn. Instead of answering the question “what are you doing?”, serveral students were asked to share where they were learning. I think this is a real nice method of data collection becasue it is real easy to publish tweets at the same time that the action is performed. Survey’s or diary like methods usually are filled in long after action such as the learning place.
Yesterday, i read a post by Jeffrey Keefer on autoethonographic research. Though i’m not very familiar with the research method it sounded like an interesting way to perform research. Reading the article today about using twitter, I’m wondering in what way could this else be used for (auto)ethnographic or narrative forms of research? I’m thinking it could be a very practical method for me as consultant to use during change processes/ implementations within organizations as I’m still looking for practical, low-cost ways to continue my research efforts while i work at a consulting firm. At the same time using tools like twitter helps not only to collect data in order to work analytically in a change proces. It also helps to get a head start in people using web 2.0 tools in a very productive way.
