López Goñi, IgnacioMartínez Viñas, María JoséAntón, JosefaCid, Victor J.Martín González, AnaBrown Jaque, MaryuryGarcía Lobo, Juan M.Sánchez, ManuelVilchez, Juan IgnacioRobledo Mahón, TatianaSeder Colomina, MarinaTapia Paniagua, Silvana TeresaHernández de Rojas, AlmaMira, AlejandroGallego Parrilla, José JesúsLópez Díaz, Teresa MaríaMaicas i Prieto, SergiVillalobo, EduardoQuindós, GuillermoBalboa Méndez, SabelaLópez Romalde, JesúsAguilar Pérez, ClaraTomás, AnaLinares, MaríaZaragoza, ÓscarGil Serna, JéssicaFerrer Espada, RaquelCamacho, Ana I.Vinué Lara, Jorge2020-06-092020-06-092016López Goñi, I., Martínez Viñas, M.J., Antón, J., Cid, V.J., Martín González, A., Brown Jaque, M. et al. (2016). Twitter as a tool for teaching and communicating microbiology: The #microMOOCSEM initiative. J. Microbiol. & Biol. Educ., vol. 17, 3, 492-4941935-7877http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22912Social networks are already being exploited for searching, storing, and sharing knowledge, demonstrating that they are an efficient vehicle for social learning. Consequently, they could be implemented as a competent tool for formal learning. Twitter is among the 10 most popular online social networks, integrating a community of over 500 million users around the world. Twitter has already been used in several educational programs and evaluated as a positive teaching experience with an outstanding potential in academic and educational environments (1–6). However, there are scarce examples available in the literature about its use in science teaching and communication. In this work, we present and analyze the application of Twitter to create an online space for communication and learning of basic microbiology. With this aim, a team of professionals in the field has imparted, to our knowledge, the first worldwide open access microbiology course via Twitter. Here we assess the results of our experience of using this social network as a tool for teaching, promoting, and communicating scientific knowledge to a wide audienceeng©2016 Author(s). Published by the American Society for Microbiology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ and https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode), which grants the public the nonexclusive right to copy, distribute, or display the published workhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/TwitterMicrobiologyMicroMOOCSEMjournal article10.1128/jmbe.v17i3.12001935-7885open access