Any Questions? An Application of Weick's Model of Organizing to Increase Student Involvement in the Large-Lecture Classroom

Microblogs, with their interactive nature, can engage students in community building and sensemaking. Using Weick's model of organizing as a framework, we integrated the use of micromessaging to increase student engagement in the large-lecture classroom. Students asked significantly more questions and asked a greater diversity of questions when micromessaging was available to them. The microblog format facilitated student-to-student connectedness, where students could post questions to the microblog alongside questions from their peers. This communication strategy provided increased requisite variety to match the equivocal nature of the large-lecture, medical humanities classroom.