Department
Biology
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Abstract
A vital component of a CURE is feeling a sense of community. While our students often present to each other at the end of the semester, we have struggled with having them interact with a wider audience. A few students may present class results at a regional or national meeting; however, feasibility limits this opportunity to only a handful of students. Twitter has been used as a tool to disseminate scientific findings (1, 2). As a result of COVID-19, scientific societies have used Twitter to provide snapshots of research to be presented at their virtual meetings using “Twitter Posters” (Michael Morrison, https://osf.io/csxad/; https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQDL8r3r_d4). We modified this idea so that each student was given the opportunity to present their CURE findings to a broad audience using Twitter. The result was a flexible environment in which students learning both remotely and in-person could interact with each other. The Cell Biology Education Consortium (CBEC, www. cellbioed.com) hosted a virtual poster session on Twitter and opened the event to faculty and undergraduate research groups. Our goal was to encourage our students to use Twitter positively, promote undergraduate research, and share their findings with the public to increase science literacy. In addition, students were reminded to share their work respectfully. For many students, this was their first time telling someone outside their campus about their research. In total, 19 institutions and over 100 students participated. This broad range of participants allowed us to create a list of best practices and ideas for helping others utilize this resource (see Appendix 1). While Twitter was used exclusively in this case, our approach can span across other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Interestingly, the class Twitter poster format was used as a way to provide online and remote students a platform to present their research. However, as a result of having an organized poster symposium, this format was quickly integrated into in-person classes. Although these practices emerged as a necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the strategy shared in this paper is likely to remain and become widespread in the post-pandemic world due to the inherent challenges associated with in-person conference presentations.
Recommended Citation
Reyna, N.S., Pruett, C., Morrison, M., Fowler, J., Pandey, S., & Hensley, L. (2022) Twitter: More than Tweets for Undergraduate Student Researchers. Journal Microbiology & Biology Education, 23(1), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.00326-21
Publication/Presentation Information
Journal Microbiology & Biology Education, 23(1), 2022, 1-4