Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty

The popularity of social media and its rapid ascension into our daily lives is nothing short of astounding. Sites that weren’t even around 10 years ago are now visited every day. What’s more, 56 percent of the faculty surveyed said they expect their use of social media to increase this school year.

Do you friend your students on Facebook?

Do you tweet, or use Twitter in the classroom?

Do you network on LinkedIn, and participate in its groups?

Does your college or university have a social media policy?

For the past two years, Faculty Focus conducted a survey on Twitter usage in higher education. This year we expanded the survey to include Facebook and LinkedIn, while adding a number of new questions as well.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all have their strengths and weaknesses, and each are better used for some things than others. But how are the three being used in higher education today? It’s our hope that these survey results provide at least some of the answers while lending new data to the discussion.

Here are just some of the findings from Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty, a 2011 Faculty Focus survey of nearly 900 higher education professionals:

• Facebook is the most popular social media site for the people who took this survey. Nearly 85 percent have a Facebook account, following by LinkedIn at approximately 67 percent and Twitter at around 50 percent.
• Thirty-two percent have “friended” an undergraduate student on Facebook; 55 percent said they wait until after the student graduates.
• Eighty-three percent allow students to use laptops in the classroom; 52 percent allow smart phones.
• Thirty percent said their institution doesn’t have a social media policy. About 40 percent weren’t sure.
• Sixty-eight percent have talked to their students about managing their online reputation.

Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty

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Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty includes a complete breakdown of all the questions asked in the survey, as well as narrative comments. In many cases, the comments show a great divide between those who have embraced social media, and those who have not.

Here are just some of the comments, in their own words:

I am quite sure that students are learning less and less because they are distracted by Facebook (primarily) when they should be engaged in the class.

It is very risky for a professional educator to use social media as a learning tool.

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

• Student Engagement
• Instructional Design
• Online Education
• Classroom Management
• Educational Assessment
• Teaching with Technology
• Faculty Development
• Curriculum Development
• Trends in Higher Education
• And much, much more.

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How Administrators Can Avoid Social Media Landmines

Rather than shutting social media out of academic life, many institutions and individual faculty members are embracing these interactive tools … or at least striving to “peacefully coexist” with them.

Social media has created some exciting and innovative learning opportunities … but it’s also brought along potential risk. Colleges and universities entering the world of social media put themselves in danger of problems ranging from defamation and cyber-bullying to privacy violations and safety concerns.

It’s important to know the risks … and how to manage them. This seminar will show you how.

In How Administrators Can Avoid Social Media Landmines, you’ll discover how to capitalize on the opportunities social media tools provide, while protecting your institution, its faculty and its staff from possible pitfalls.

During this 90-minute audio presentation, you’ll learn:

• What faculty and staff need to know about the pervasiveness of social media on campus.
• How social media heighten the risk of problems relating to privacy, defamation, safety, cyber-bullying, plagiarism and more.
• What the law says about social-media transgressions.
• Recommended ”do’s and don’ts” of social media for all members of the campus community.
• How to build a comprehensive risk-management strategy for your institution.
• And more.

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The seminar is led by Deborah Gonzalez, Esq., founder of Law2sm, LLC, a legal consulting firm specializing in digital and social media, and Rob Jenkins, M.A., an associate professor of English and a columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Together, they bring a wealth of experience in navigating the treacherous waters of social media use in academia.

When you order the recording on CD, you also receive a copy of the transcript, all for the same price as attending the seminar live.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

This seminar is intended for:

• Instructors (face-to-face and online)
• Academic department chairs
• Associate deans
• Deans
• Academic VPs
• Chief academic officers
• And other social media users

Social media hold great promise as teaching tools … but they also present substantial risks. Learn how to use them effectively and safely on your campus. Get your copy of this timely seminar today!

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All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

That’s the intention of a number of forward-thinking professors — from Professor Monica Rankin’s in-class Twitter experiment in 2009 with her history students at the University of Texas at Dallas (reported here) to Professor Reynol Junco’s recent study which saw students in a first-year seminar course who used Twitter for educationally relevant activities outside of class achieve a higher GPA than the control group.

In the article The Effect of Twitter on College Student Engagement and Grades, published in November 2010 by the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Junco revealed the findings of the 14-week study by concluding that it “provides the first piece of controlled experimental evidence that using Twitter in educationally relevant ways can increase student engagement and improve grades, and thus, that social media can be used as an educational tool to help students reach desired college outcomes.”

Junco, an associate professor of academic development and counseling at Lock Haven University, has been using Twitter for about two years. Like many people, including this author, he admits that he didn’t “get” Twitter at first.

“I didn’t realize Twitter’s potential for connection, communication, and scholarly exchanges for at least six months,” Junco says. “Then, I became active in a number of Twitter-based educational chats and communities and developed connections with other researchers and educators. It was only then that I realized the educational and interpersonal potential of Twitter.”

Setting up the Twitter study
Junco and study co-author Greg Heiberger conducted the study across seven sections of a one-credit course for first-year pre-health professional majors. The 70 students in the experimental group used Twitter as part of the class and the 55 students in the control group did not. Participation was voluntary.

Interestingly, while Facebook is wildly popular among college students, none of the students in the study had used Twitter before the study began and had to be taught the basics of setting up an account, tweeting, retweeting and replying to messages, using hashtags, and managing privacy settings.

Using Twitter for educationally relevant activities
With the experimental group, Twitter was used for various types of course-related communication and collaboration activities, including: continuing class discussions, book discussions, class and campus event reminders, academic and personal support, and organizing study groups and service learning projects.

The researchers selected 19 questions from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to measure student engagement before and after their participation in the study and found a much greater difference in the engagement scores of the group using Twitter —a 5.12 difference for the experimental group’s score compared to the 2.29 difference for the control group.

In addition, students gave the researchers permission to access their academic records to record their GPAs for that semester and the students in the Twitter group achieved an overall GPA of 2.79, compared to 2.28 for the control group.

Junco says he was surprised by the effect on grades, and by how well students used Twitter – often continuing their conversation well beyond what was required and in more depth than in-class discussions. Shy students in particular reported feeling more comfortable communicating their ideas via Twitter than talking in class. Another big surprise, Junco says, was how Twitter “helped break down barriers between cliques that carry over from high school,” citing as an example a friendship between an extroverted athlete and an introverted fan of comic books.

“In our experience working with first year students, these kinds of connections between students from diverse backgrounds don’t happen so quickly and easily,” he says.

Advice for using Twitter in your teaching
If you’re considering using Twitter with your students, Junco offers the following advice:

“I think the most important thing is to focus on how you will use the technology in the classroom and not on the technology itself,” he says.” While we found interesting results using Twitter, we believe that the pivotal factor was how we used it in educationally-relevant ways. Our research team is currently looking at how we can expand our study to come up with materials to help professors use social technologies in educationally-relevant ways.”

In this video, Junco and some of the students who participated in the study share their thoughts on the experiment:

Resources:

Junco, R., Heiberger, G. and Loken, E. The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387. Access the PDF of the article »

At the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Professor Junco talks about some of his early findings from the study. View the video »

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Is Twitter a powerful learning tool or a colossal waste of time? It depends whom you ask. In its second annual survey on the popular micro-blogging technology, Faculty Focus found a great divide in how professors perceive Twitter, including whether it should be used in the classroom or is best reserved for networking with peers.

The 2010 Faculty Focus survey of nearly 1,400 higher education professionals found that more than a third (35.2 percent) of the 1,372 respondents who completed the survey in July-August 2010 use Twitter in some capacity. That’s up from 30.7 percent in 2009.

Meanwhile, the percentage of people who never used Twitter decreased from 56.4 percent in 2009 to 47.9 percent in 2010. The remaining 16.9 percentage consists of those who tried Twitter, but stopped using —up from 12.9 percent in 2009.

Of those who currently use Twitter, the most common activities include “to share information with peers” and “as a real-time news source.” Instructional uses, such as “to communicate with students” and “as a learning tool in the classroom” are less popular, although both activities saw increases over the previous year.

Non-users expressed concerns that Twitter creates poor writing skills and could be yet another classroom distraction. Many also noted that very few of their students use Twitter. Finally, a new trend that emerged this year centered on the belief that many feel they already have too many places to post messages or check for student questions/comments. As one professor put it, “I have no interest in adding yet another communication tool to my overloaded life.”

In terms of future use, just over half (56.8 percent) of current Twitter users say they expect to increase their use during the coming academic year. Only 2.5 percent say their Twitter use will likely decrease, and 40.7 percent say it will stay about the same.

As we learned from last year’s survey, people have very strong feelings when it comes to Twitter. Not much has changed in that regard. Some still see it as a platform for people to make mind numbing pronouncements on the minutia of everyday life, while others say they use Twitter to build a strong personal learning network (PLN), communicate with students, and stay current.

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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Here are just a few comments from faculty on how they use Twitter effectively:

Greatest learning tool since Socrates spoke… No I’m not kidding. The access to industry leaders and educators I have developed is second to none!

I find Twitter can be a useful academic tool. It provides immediate access to a world of ideas regarding the implementation of technology into pre-service teacher education.

I’ve found Twitter useful for increasing students’ time thinking about course related content through tweeting supplemental content links and for some very limited student interaction. I’m hoping to encourage more student input.

Twitter has been the most effective, efficient, and cheapest professional development I have had in years.

Twitter is a useful educational tool, administrators need to reward faculty that push their teaching forward using innovative methods, otherwise other faculty see no value in expending time and energy on yet another thing to do.

I’m quite happy with Twitter and what its ability to facilitate dissemination of information to groups in real time, but getting students to adopt it has been the biggest drawback.

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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Here are a few of the comments from educators who don’t use Twitter:

Too superficial, too instantaneous, leaves no time or space for reflection

My goal as an educator is to get students to think deeply and extend their attention spans. This tool is completely antithetical to both. It is a sign of what is wrong with education today.

Don’t need any more distractions for students. Keep the classroom free from this nonsense.

When I asked my students if they would like me to start using Twitter, they almost universally said ‘no’. Instead, they felt it would be more useful to use Facebook.

I may be an old codger, but between land lines, cell phones, Skype, email, Blackboard, and Facebook, I have enough to keep me busy.

We use Moodle on campus which allows us to communicate using forums, blogs, wikis, etc. I don’t think it is necessary to use every tool available just for the sake of using them. You need to ask yourself if using the tool is actually adding value to the work that you do.

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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In 2007 Twitter users, as a whole, made about 5,000 tweets a day. By 2008 the number had increased to 300,000 per day, before growing to 2.5 million per day in January 2009. Just one year later, in January 2010, the figure jumped to 50 million tweets per day.

I think that is what people mean by the phrase “hockey stick growth.”

Despite its rapid growth, however, Twitter can be a bit puzzling to someone on the outside looking in. With its quirky lingo, written (and unwritten) rules, and very real potential for being a classroom distraction, some instructors feel Twitter is a can of worms that’s better left unopened. And yet, as an educator, you can’t help but be curious to see what all the fuss is about, not to mention the desire to add something new to your student engagement toolbox.

In an effort to demystify the Twitter universe for faculty considering leveraging the power of the micro-blogging platform in the classroom, Kerry Ramsay, a professor at Loyalist College, presented a seminar on Using Twitter to Enhance Collaborative Learning.

After covering the basic terminology, Ramsay, who has applied social media in a variety of contexts to help create a collaborative learning environment for her post-graduate students, explained why Twitter makes sense in the college classroom, including how it can be used for research, networking, and to maximize classroom connections.

One of the most common uses for Twitter in the classroom is as a discussion tool, particularly in large classes where it’s often hard to get students to participate. Ramsay notes that Twitter won’t replace classroom discussions, but rather enhance them by establishing a safe format for both introverted and extroverted students to share their opinions. For example, an instructor could ask students to summarize key points of a recent reading, and use the tweets as a starting point for discussion.

In some cases, instructors may chose to have students tweet comments or questions during a lecture. Known as backchanneling, this requires a willingness on the part of the instructor to give up some control to the students who now have an easy way to share their opinions as well as offer links to supporting information in real time. In order to maximize the power of the backchannel, Ramsay recommends having a TA monitor the live Twitter stream, and respond in a timely manner. You also will need to create a hashtag for the class to use.

Despite the many benefits of using Twitter to enhance student engagement and collaboration, there are challenges as well, including:

• Keeping students focused on the topic
• Learning how to write clear, concise tweets within the 140-character limit
• Ensuring comments remain constructive and professional

“Learning how to use Twitter can be a humbling experience, and it takes a little time to get comfortable with it, but don’t give up,” Ramsay says. “Ask a colleague for help, practice with your friends and family, and before you know it you’ll have the confidence to use it in the classroom.”

To see a YouTube video on how one professor uses Twitter in the classroom, go here »

Conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group, in collaboration with New Marketing Labs and Pearson, the “Social Media in Higher Education” survey was given to a random sample of Pearson customers. Of the 939 respondents, more than 80 percent have at least one social networking account, while approximately one-third use the tools to communicate with fellow educators and/or students. Those who teach online are more likely to use social media for professional purposes.

When it comes to awareness and use, clearly not all social media tools are created equal. The survey asked about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Slideshare, and Google Wave. Not surprisingly, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are the most recognizable names, with more than 90 percent of faculty have heard of them. But while familiarly was high, the number of faculty actually using these technologies, whether to communicate with students or peers, was much lower.

For example:

• Facebook has about equal use in communicating with fellow educators (18%) as with students (12%). Over 61 percent of faculty responding having a Facebook account.
• YouTube is used far more often for communicating with students (21%) than for communicating with fellow educators (9%). Approximately 40 percent have a YouTube account.
• Twitter is among the best well known among the social networks examined (94%), but has a low rate of faculty having accounts (18%).Plus it gets little use to communicate with students (2%) or fellow educators (4%).

So if they aren’t Tweeting with or “friending” their students, what are faculty doing? Well, a majority (52%) report using video, podcasts, blogs and wikis as part of their classes. In fact, watching a video or listening to a podcast is the most common activity for both faculty personal use (72%) and for use within a class (46%).

“College faculty have embraced social media and a majority have integrated some form of these tools into their teaching,” said Jeff Seaman, PhD., co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group. “While some faculty remain skeptical, the overall opinion is quite positive, with faculty reporting that social media has value for teaching by over a four to one margin.”

Other findings of the survey include:

• Top social media for communicating with peers: Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, YouTube
• Top social media for communicating with students: YouTube, Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn
• Watching a video or listening to a podcast is the most common activity for both faculty personal use (72%) and for use within a class (46%).
• Social media use is higher among faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences than those in Mathematics, Science, Business and Economics.
• Faculty teaching online courses are more likely to have social network accounts and to use them to communicate with fellow educators and with students.
• Older faculty (those teaching more than 20 years) make substantial use of social networks; in fact, older faculty’s use of social media is only slightly lower than that of their younger peers.

“Educators have a responsibility to broaden the perspective of their students, regardless of the content matter,” said survey participant Dr. Maria Claver, assistant professor of Gerontology at California State University, Long Beach. “Without the inclusion of social media in our hybrid course, we would not be able to both expose students to aging issues around the world and provide students with a forum in which they can learn about global aging issues by partnering with gerontology faculty from other countries.”

To view a presentation of the results of the Pearson Social Media in Higher Education Survey, visit: http://www.slideshare.net/PearsonLearningSolutions/pearson-socialmediasurvey2010.

Using Twitter to Enhance Collaborative Learning

After initially dismissing Twitter as just another social networking time suck best suited for self-absorbed celebrities, more and more professors are giving it a second look. And that’s a good thing because, used properly, Twitter can make classroom projects more collaborative, creative, and engaging.

In the past 12 months alone, Twitter use has grown by an astounding 422%. Innovative professors can use Twitter to help make “dull” course materials suddenly take on new relevance.

Students and faculty can use Twitter to monitor trends in real time, develop professional networks, and increase personal involvement with course material. For example, one of the most popular ways to use Twitter is to ask students to summarize key points of a reading in a tweet and then use that as a launch pad for classroom discussions.

The possibilities are endless … all it takes is a little basic know-how, some creative ideas, and the willingness to try something new.

In Using Twitter to Enhance Collaborative Learning, Professor Kerry Ramsay introduces faculty members to the fundamentals of Twitter and lead participants through an inspiring discussion of the many inventive ways that Twitter can be utilized to improve college teaching and learning.

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During this seminar, you will learn:

• How to get started with Twitter
• Which people and groups to follow
• What TweetDeck is and how it saves time
• Exciting ways to apply Twitter to your college courses
• How “140 character” messages can work well with assignments
• Strategies to develop a Twitter following
• Twitter applications for research and assignments
• How Twitter can be leveraged to increase classroom participation and discussion
• Ways to use Twitter in both large and small classroom settings
• How to apply Twitter for your own teaching, research and networking purposes

Who will benefit?
This audio online seminar is appropriate for anyone interested in teaching with Twitter, including:

• Faculty members in all disciplines
• Instructors
• Lecturers
• Distance educators and online faculty
• College administrators
• Instructional designers and trainers

As faculty members, it is important to seek out new and relevant ways to engage students. This seminar will show you the most effective ways to start using Twitter in your courses.

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The findings, available in the downloadable report Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty, show relatively strong adoption rates among higher education professionals. On the other end of the spectrum, the results also reveal a large number of faculty question the value of using the micro-blogging service in an academic setting.

Key findings of the report include:

• 21.9 percent of respondents say they are “familiar” or “very familiar” with Twitter.
• Of those who use Twitter, 21 percent say they “frequently” use it to collaborate with colleagues; 15.6 percent do so “occasionally.”
• Of those who use Twitter, 7.2 percent “frequently” use it as a learning tool in the classroom; 9.4 percent do so “occasionally.”
• 71.8 percent of current Twitterers expect their usage to increase this school year.
• 20.6 percent of current non-Twitter users say there is a “50/50 chance” they will use Twitter as a learning tool in the classroom in the next two years.
• 12.9 percent of respondents say they tried Twitter, but stopped using it because it took too much time, they did not find it valuable, or a combination of reasons.

Depending on how they answered the question “Do you use Twitter?” respondents were asked a unique set of follow-up questions. The 20-page report released today provides a breakdown of the survey results by question, including comments provided by survey respondents when available. The comments further explain how they are using Twitter, why they stopped, or why they have no interest in using it at all.

Although the majority of faculty do not currently use Twitter, their reasons are varied. Many questioned its educational relevance and expressed concerns that it creates poor writing skills. For others the reasons boiled down to the simple fact that they either don’t know how to use Twitter, or don’t have time to use it.

One of the more interesting findings from the survey is the high percentage of faculty who use Twitter, even if they’re still experimenting with the best ways to incorporate it into their courses. What also became quite apparent was how strongly Twitterers and non-Twitterers feel about the technology.

The majority (55.9 percent) of people who took the survey are professors or instructors, with another 4.3 percent who designated themselves as online instructors specifically. Nearly one-fourth (23.6 percent) are academic leaders, such as department chairs and deans. Sixteen percent selected their role as “other” and this included individuals in faculty development, academic advisement, instructional design, marketing, admissions, assessment, and library services.

Go here to access Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

It happened seemingly overnight, but suddenly the education community is all a-Twitter. Or is it? That’s what Faculty Focus set out to learn when it launched in July 2009 a survey on the role of Twitter in higher education. The survey asked college and university faculty about their familiarity and use of the micro-blogging service, if any, as well as whether they expect their Twitter use to increase or decrease in the future.

In higher education, many of the first adopters were professionals involved in marketing, admissions and alumni relations. Today a growing number of professors use Twitter to connect with like-minded colleagues around the country (or world) as well as in the classroom to keep students engaged, communicate important deadlines, and encourage succinct dialogue.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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The Faculty Focus survey of nearly 2,000 higher education professionals found that almost a third (30.7 percent) of the 1,958 respondents who completed the survey are using Twitter in some capacity. More than half (56.4 percent) say they’ve never used Twitter. The remaining 12.9 percent of respondents say they tried it, but no longer use it.

Interestingly, while the majority of faculty do not currently use Twitter, their reasons are varied. Many questioned its educational relevance and expressed concerns that it creates poor writing skills. For others the reasons seemed to boil down to the simple fact that they either don’t know how to use Twitter, or don’t have time to use it.

Key findings of Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty include:

• 21.9 percent of respondents say they are “familiar” or “very familiar” with Twitter.
• Of those who use Twitter, 21 percent say they “frequently” use it to collaborate with colleagues; 15.6 percent do so “occasionally.”
• Of those who use Twitter, 7.2 percent are “frequently” using it as a learning tool in the classroom; 9.4 percent do so “occasionally.”
• 71.8 percent of current Twitters expect their usage to increase this school year.
• 20.6 percent of current non-Twitter users say there is a “50/50 chance” they will use Twitter as a learning tool in the classroom in the next two years.
• 12.9 percent of respondents say they tried Twitter, but stopped using it because it took too much time, they did not find it valuable, or a combination of reasons.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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Depending how they answered the question — “Do you use Twitter?” — respondents were asked a unique set of follow-up questions. The 20-page report provides breakdown of the survey results by question, including comments provided by survey respondents. The comments allowed faculty to further explain how they are using Twitter, why they stopped, or why they have no interest in using it at all.

It is clear that those educators who’ve had a good experience with Twitter are eager to share comments or anecdotes with others, as well as stretch their imagination to find new applications for using the tool to engage students inside and outside of the classroom.

Here are just a few comments from faculty on how they use Twitter effectively:

Currently, we have a Russian instructor using it to tweet on every day activities. His students respond in Russian. It gives him a chance to correct mistakes and it gives the students daily practice in writing and understanding the language. Students from other universities have joined in to make it a very dynamic learning tool.

Turned a traditional assignment into a Twitter assignment. Received more quality and quantity of student input using Twitter.

I use Twitter to encourage students to participate in class. It can be a good tool as long as the professor uses some structure in the discussion – such as posting questions about a reading for the students to answer.

Of the survey participants who answered the question “What are your reasons for NOT using Twitter?” more than 161 added comments to further explain their position. Typically, the comments fell into the following categories:

• No interest in or time to use it
• Concern it creates poor writing skills/has little education value
• Privacy/security issues
• Haven’t used it yet but willing to experiment
• Think it’s a fad that will pass

Here are a few of the comments from educators who don’t use Twitter:

My students don’t need another reason to distract themselves

The only role Twitter would have in education would be to further dumb down the curriculum and the student body.

It seems like another Web 2.0 technology that people are adopting simply because of its buzz factor and not a true ability to support teaching and learning.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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