Social Media Use in Higher Education

Submitted by Tina Kempin Reuter on Tue, 2010-05-18 16:18

A survey conducted by Pearson on “Social Media in Higher Education” generated highly interesting and somewhat surprising results:

  • Almost 100% of faculty have heard of social media.
  • 80% of professors have at least one account on Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Slideshare, or GoogleWave.  60% of those had more than one account, 25% used at least four (I personally fall in the last category).
  • Facebook and Twitter are the best known social media tools (followed by Skype and YouTube), but Facebook is by far the most used network (about 60% use Facebook, only 18% use Twitter).
  • 52% of faculty use social media as a teaching tool.
  • Over 70% of professors think that video, podcasts, wikis and blogs are helpful teaching tools.
  • Roughly 30% use social networks to talk to other educators or to communicate with students.
  • There were relatively few differences in social media use comparing different disciplines (business, math & natural sciences, and humanities and social sciences)

Most faculty surveyed see the benefit of social media for teaching and learning, mainly because students are familiar with the new technologies and use them for both academic and recreational activities. Social media functions as a way to extend the classroom, to break up the class time, as a means for review and reinforcement, and to encourage students to contribute to the class topic in a different way than classroom participation.

About 10% of faculty asked to participate in the survey responded (94% of whom were teaching, 58% in the Arts and Sciences, 42% in Professional and Career). Given the relatively small sample size, I am not sure how reliable the survey is. In addition, given that professors who use social media are also the most likely to check their emails, be online, have an interest in the topic, and participate in surveys like the one conducted by Pearsons there is probably a bias toward social media use. Nevertheless, it shows the there is a good portion of professors who use social media in the classroom and who value the contributions of technology.

I have no doubt that the virtual classroom tools such as Elluminate and other online collaboration software benefit from these findings. It shows that it is not only students who are becoming more and more comfortable with learning technology, but also the faculty sees the value and benefit of social networks. At the same time, the core question will remain the same: What are best ways to generate, transfer, reflect on, and absorb knowledge? Technology can certainly facilitate these objectives, but I believe that it will remain a supplement – a support structure – to teaching. The key is to use available social media tools in the most efficient and effective way to benefit academic learning and avoid situations in which technology becomes the main focus, a distraction, or an obstacle.