How to involve more members in my mobile group?

In my previous post I described how I got my Twitter group off the ground and students were beginning to sign up and make their initial posts. I think now I've got 12 students signed up. To encourage students to respond I tried to post a steady stream of useful language learning links as well as put up a question of the day for them to answer.

Two of the students have really taken to it and they are following the links, responding to the questions, and it's great. But from the rest there doesn't seem to be the same level of interest and they haven't really posted at all.

I need to try to find out why the other students don't seem so engaged. Maybe they thought this group was going to be something different, maybe more SMS based, but I've been trying to avoid doing everything through SMS because of the potential cost to them of responding via text.

Maybe they just aren't reading the tweets! I'm not sure that every member has regular access to a computer, so today I wrote to all of them by SMS and explained how they could send and receive tweets via their mobile phone - as this is after all supposed to be a mobile phone group. Anyhow I think a short survey might be useful to find out what their expectations might be

This week I will continue with the Twitter feed but also try something else to see if it interests or involves more of them. Maybe something via text, a Word of The Day or something similar. Anyhow, I'll keep trying and see what interests/involves them..

PollEverywhere: a tool for conducting a survey on mobile phones

This survey tool is just something I've stumbled across but I can see it being an interesting way to get students' opinions via their mobile phones. Getting students to fill out questionnaires/surveys (particularly feedback on a course) can often be pretty painful so I'm thinking this alternative format might intrigue them enough to get involved. Plan to try this in the next few weeks so will report back on how successful it was.