OERlabs Openbook/Lessons lOERned (Twitter)

Project Twitter

With the Twitter account @OERlabs we operate an additional information and communication channel besides our blog and podcast on the project homepage. Since there is an active OER community on Twitter, we mirror the content of the project homepage on the one hand and provide a more direct and personal insight from our events on the other. This enables the OER community to participate in the OERlabs project and to contribute suggestions and take part in the discussions. In the contributions to our Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues the endeavour to offer a pleasant atmosphere for discussion has become clear, which stands out positively from committee meetings. For this reason, Twitter activities should not only provide information but also give an impression of the atmosphere and thus the working methods on site. Twitter offers the possibility either to inform briefly and concisely or to give an insight into broader blog entries. In addition, it is important for the OERlabs project to be transparent towards its own work and not to wait for (final) project reports before reporting on its own actions. True to the networking concept of our Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues (MSD), we also give guests and their work on open educational resources a stage.

It has proven helpful to remind project team members of Twitter before the start of the event, as a few project team members didn't have any social media experience and therefore don't think about tweeting during events. The same people had to get used to formulating on Twitter and handling tags and hashtags. Therefore, it makes sense to give them an introduction by more experienced Twitter users, because unlike blog posts, there is no possibility of a correction loop before publication, especially since tweeting at events happens in the moment. Depending on the situation, you can take suitable photos and then practice tweeting with adding photo comments. Nevertheless, it is difficult to persuade people with little or no social media affinity to tweet in the project context to do so on their own.