Focus of this paper is how the open micro blog service Twitter can be used as backchannel in a formal educational setting and what impact it might have on facilitating knowledge transitions when used by the students in learning activities.

Looking at learning as a result of "participation" in a social context as the present community structure is a core element in many of our most influential learning theories (e.g. Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978; Wenger, 1998). Wenger claims that learning is a complex process that combines activities as talking, thinking, feeling, doing and belonging. Learning is primarily a social process and this motivates emphasizing participation and collaboration in the learning situation. Yngve (1970) defined backchannel as the part of a conversation where the person who has the turn understands that the listening part also is involved by giving response in different ways. In this paper, we claim that backchannel is "a line of communication created by people in an audience to connect with others inside or outside of the room, with or without the knowledge of the speaker at the front of the room" (Cliff Atkinson, 2010, p 17). The impact of new technology in learning situations will be determined as much by the individuals mediating their objectives through technology as by the existing tools and the present community structure (Bellamy, 1996).

Learning in formal educational settings means a community system that includes rules to be followed. The division of work reflects the different roles that individuals have in the system (Bellamy, 1996). Activity systems, such as a group of learners, encounter contradictions that require some form of qualitative change. When an activity system undergoes a change it creates a new practice, which was not there from the beginning (Engeström, 1996). Engeström (1987) describes this dynamic phase of the activity theory as "learning by expanding". In an activity system "contradictions" occurs periodically. The contradictions require qualitative reorganization. New qualitative stages arise as solutions to the contradictions. On the basis that human activity has its roots in human needs, contradictions and object orientation, activity theory explains how new knowledge can be developed. This contradiction is a social dilemma, which can only be solved by collective actions from which new forms of activity occur. The new activity undergoes three stages: the state of needs, the state of motivation and the change of needs and activity.

The aim of this paper is to describe from a group of learner’s perspective how a backchannel conversation using Twitter in designed learning activities affected the learning process and changed the actual activities. Both the aspects of communicative and collaborative significance are highlighted over two levels; the synchronous and the asynchronous ones. In addition, the paper will highlight and describe the dynamic phases of the transitions that the new activities undergo over the three stages of “needs”, “motivation” and “needs and activity” (Engeström 1987).

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