Tweets with the #TELFest hashtag
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1 point
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Being Mentioned by someone else
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2 points
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Having your #TELFest Posts Retweeted
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3 points
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Tweeting a TELFie with the hashtag #TELFest (TELFest, Selfie)
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3 points
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Attending a drop in session
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5 points
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Each day we saw the top tweeters changing positions and there was healthy competition amongst TELFest participants.
To keep tweeters motivated, automated tweets were sent out every evening, informing them of their position on the leaderboard.
Twitter activity increased significantly compared to September 2014, there was a tenfold increase in the overall number tweets, a tripling of the number of tweeters and, on the Friday, TELFest trended in the Sheffield area, meaning that it was promoted to local users on the main twitter interface.
An additional benefit of promoting the use of Twitter through the leaderboard was that it helped to capture the variety of views and opinions shared by participants during the event. We were then able to use the tweets to create daily blog posts summarising these discussions using Storify, allowing us to produce a record of the day’s events for participants to look back on and to give some insight into the discussions for those unable to attend.
While the leaderboard was highlighted during the Gamification session as an example of a method to encourage participation and motivate learners, it is hard to say whether, in this case, the leaderboard led to an objective increase in Twitter usage. Early feedback indicates that its’ introduction did motivate some people to tweet more than they might ordinarily, yet others stated that they were unaware of the board. Another reason why the increase in the use of Twitter at TELFest this year cannot be solely attributed to the leaderboard is that we integrated Twitter directly into some of the workshops. It is however clear that the leaderboard did not appear to influence the number of colleagues attending drop-in sessions.
