Playbook: Twitter for education
Since launch of our new application and onboarding process for the Twitter API platform in late July, we’ve heard a lot of concern from the educator community about potential barriers and challenges to onboarding their students and potential challenges/pitfalls. The launch of this new onboarding experience was in no way intended or expected to deter or hinder this use of our platform and we have quickly invested in trying to better understand the concerns of this community so that we can learn and improve.
While the current solution is not perfect to support your needs, it is workable and per feedback from your peers, is very reasonable. We’ve put together the following playbook to simplify and help guide you, the educator, and your students through the process and allow you to continue your educational programs and endeavors.
While our API platform and tooling will continue to evolve, we will continue to consider how we can maintain and improve the experience for this developer audience.
Getting Access
1) Apply for “Organizational” access
Today, our application process supports two different application types, “personal” targeted at more hobbyists and “organizational” targeted at businesses and “groups” of developers working together. To support educational and classroom experiences/access, we are going to leverage the “organizational” workflow and tooling. You the educator, should go through the application process at http://developer.twitter.com/apply.
Please ensure honesty, transparency and clarity in the application process to ensure we can approve your application in a timely manner.
2) Collect Twitter @handles from students
To use Twitter’s API platform, a valid Twitter account is required. Note that this is a new requirement for developing with our API.
3) Invite students to join your account
Within an approved organizational account we offer the ability to build “Teams” to collaborate on your project. Within the “Team” section of the developer portal’s top right dropdown navigation, invite all of your students to your team with the “Developer” role using their @handles.
While it may be ideal to invite students to participate based on their email addresses, we unfortunately don’t support this functionality today.
4) Have each students create a Twitter app
Once a student has joined the developer account, they can create an app through the Twitter app dashboard. We encourage students to only create a single app unless they have multiple use cases that they are exploring.
5) Access the APIs
Once students have created a Twitter app, they can access our standard APIs in the same manner as before.
6) Revoke access
At the end of the course / semester, you can remove the student members of your team from your account and repeat steps 2-5 for your other classes going forward. At this time, students will be able to continue using their Twitter apps, but would need to go through the application process themselves to create new apps or leverage our premium APIs.
FAQs
What if a student “goes off the rails”?
If a student goes off the rails with their app in a way that may trigger enforcement action, action is likely to be taken on the individual user and we can refer to your application to avoid disruption for the entire account/other students.
Similarly, as the rate limits are per app (not per account), the actions of each student are limited to their own work (ie. if they hit rate limits, only their app will be impacted).
Will there be a limit on the number of students I can invite?
No
Will students be able to see my own Twitter apps?
No, currently there is no way to share or see other’s Twitter apps through the Twitter app dashboard.
Will students be able to make a purchase on the account?
No, only account admins can make a purchase / manage billing for our premium APIs.
Download the Playbook: Twitter for Education pdf below:
