LTHEchat – The Story of a Community of Practice through Twitter

The original idea for an ongoing tweetchat for professional development came from Dr. Chrissi Nerantzi. The idea emerged through the success of the #BYOD4Lchat, a daily feature of the 5-day openly-licensed course Bring Your Own Devices for Learning (BYOD4L), first offered in January 2014 and based on flexible, distance and online learning (FDOL) Offered Monday to Friday from 8-9pm UK time #BYOD4Lchat always created a real buzz. Chrissi saw the potential for a tweetchat on its own, outside a course that would have the potential to develop a community around it. Courses have such a short lifespan, she thought. What about a community approach to professional development? If we want our academics engaged in ongoing professional development could a weekly tweetchat be an attractive option? Could it work? She wanted to give it a go! When the idea matured a little bit in her head, she shared it with Sue Beckingham over a Skype meeting and then with Dr. David Walker and Peter Reed in an email signing as Chrissi and Sue. She wanted the tweetchat to become a truly collaborative project from the outset and therefore creating the conditions for co-ownership were important to her. The Learning and Teaching in Higher Education tweetchat, or #LTHEchat, came to live. The name came from a core module Chrissi led while working at the University of Salford. Chrissi, Sue, David and Peter became the steering group and decided to run a 3-month pilot and see how it went.