Table 3 Benefits of Twitter and blogs compared
From: Taking social media to a university classroom: teaching and learning using Twitter and blogs
Advantages of Twitter over blogs | % |
 Twitter allowed students to get instant response through alerts of their phone ringtones than a blog that required them to log in | 51.6 |
 Communicating using Twitter was instant because of the availability of Twitter application on students’ phones | 46.9 |
 Twitter is more beneficial since it helped students interact with friends and read and listen to news than blog | 42.2 |
 Twitter made students think critically as they knew inappropriate tweeting could distort the meaning of their tweet which needed 140 or less characters | 40.6 |
 Twitter had more participants than the blog and it had immediate responses from other fellow classmates | 34.4 |
 Interactive learning that did not require students and their friends to be physically present | 34.4 |
 Twitter was easier than blogs because it could be done even on basic phone | 29.7 |
 Feedback was instant, as at least some fellow students were always online, including the lecturer. | 20.3 |
Advantages of blogs over Twitter | % |
 On blogs students got a summary of what they had learnt in class which helped them to understand the concepts better | 46.9 |
 Helped students to reflect about what they had covered in class | 43.8 |
 Blogs enabled students to publish more content as compared to twitter which is limited by number of 140 characters | 43.8 |
 It helped students publish their essays and share other forms of media content course works such as video and audio | 42.2 |
 On blog, students got information of various groups while in Twitter they only got information from friends they followed | 37.5 |
 Helped students to learn summarizing skills by summarizing what they had covered in class. | 37.5 |