How an art history class became more engaging with Twitter

When I was a college student, art history courses revolved around a 1960s-era carousel slide projector. Its monotonous humming and clicking in the darkened lecture hall often put my classmates to sleep.

For years, technology used in college art history classrooms was limited. Only in the past decade have departments transitioned from using the Kodak 35mm slide projector to computers with PowerPoint presentations.

As I prepared to teach my own art history course last year, I wanted to implement new technologies to make the lectures more interactive and relatable to a 21st-century audience.

How could I engage a large class, foster scholarly interest in art history and make the material relevant for today’s students? Could new and readily available technology help to achieve these goals?

I decided to incorporate Twitter, the 140-or-fewer-character micro-blogging site, into my curriculum. While other academic courses, especially marketing and management, employ social media, I had never personally encountered it in an art history classroom. ...