I am senior lecturer in English at the University of Wolverhampton and have been an advocate for the past few years of teaching using blended learning - integrating online learning activities alongside face-to-face teaching.

Two of my courses on Victorian literature feature a number of assessed online discussion forum activities. They get 100% participation - much of it enthusiastic.

Online learning spaces are neutral - just like a 'real' classroom is. It's what you do in them that matters. I use face-to-face classes as a spur to take our study of any given topic further online, thus extending it into areas of reflection and research not possible within the constraints of a seminar discussion.

The important question to ask regarding e-learning is: What does an online space make possible by way of teaching that my class couldn't do face-to-face? One effective answer to this is that online spaces allow students to role play and inhabit characters in a way that would be a rather embarrassing drama workshop if tried in the classroom. So in a discussion forum my entire class of 30 students can all 'be' one of the characters from Charles Dickens's Bleak House, and, in character, debate the motion 'This house believes the law is an ass'. To do this with flair they have to get under the skin of their character. In other words, they have to read the novel carefully and well, which is exactly what I want them to do. This kind of ludic, playful and creative activity is also something I have come to regard as very much having a place within the more critical discipline of English studies.

I've only recently joined Twitter, but before I had a Twitter account I tried teaching with the spirit of Twitter. Students on my Fin de Siècle (late nineteenth century) course all had to choose a Twitter name for one of the characters in the texts we'd studied thus far and then 'tweet' in character. So Dr Jekyll (@Doubleface), Dracula (@likeabatoutofhell), Dorian Gray (@PrettyBoy), Basil Hallward (@ClosetCase), Mina Harker (@SecretarialVamp), numerous liberated New Women (@MsDisillusion @RichBitch @ModernMuse or @TravellingTotty) and, my particular favourite, Lady Narborough (@PartyStarter) all logged on to my Fin de Siècle Twitter session. I should emphasise that we did this within a Virtual Leaning Environment (VLE) discussion forum and not on Twitter, but just like on Twitter they could only 'tweet' up to 140 characters in any message.

Dracula, who was already a tweeter in 'real life', immediately started 'hashtagging' - using a hashtag to mark keywords or topics and categorise tweets. His first tag was #freshmeat. I asked Dracula to explain to those of us not on Twitter about hashtagging - which he did - and, of course, everyone else then joined in. This was a great example of a student taking the lead and making the online activity even better for all the class. Needless to say, my class loved this online session. More than 400 'tweets' were sent within a week. At best Twitter's brevity encourages witty, to-the-point comments, and these were there in abundance.

What I don't know - and I'm hoping readers of this post are going to help me here - is how to make this work for a class within Twitter itself. I'm aware of the 'walled garden' metaphors that are sometimes used to describe VLEs – work that goes on within them is screened from the wider world. The positive of this for me as a lecturer is that my class has a safe online space that they know is their space (and no one else's), and within those boundaries they can do their learning. This can seem antithetical to the endless connectivity of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

However, Twitter wasn't per se designed with teaching in mind. So it's the job of those of us who do use online learning spaces and tools and social media to work out how - if at all - it's possible to teach with them in our different disciplines and contexts.

Rosie Miles is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Wolverhampton and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2011. She blogs at www.msementor.co.uk and tweets as @MsEmentor

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