Last week, two important things happened: my students started working on their first major paper assignment, and I signed up for twitter. In lieu of assigning a formal proposal, I decided to ask my students to tweet a draft of their thesis statement. Because a thesis statement encapsulates the clarity of the argument and the organization of the paper in a single sentence, this assignment offered a quick and easy way for me to gauge how students were doing in the writing process.
Using twitter was beneficial in a number of ways:
