Social Media for Teaching and Learning is a collaborative effort of Pearson Learning Solutions and the Babson Survey Research Group.

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ABOUT THE BABSON SURVEY RESEARCH GROUP

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Social Media for Teaching and Learning

By Jeff Seaman, Ph.D. and Hester Tinti-Kane

© 2013 Pearson Learning Solutions and Babson Survey Research Group

Pearson Learning Solutions

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table of contents

Acknowledgments

Executive Summary

Introduction

Detailed Survey Findings

Background

Overview: Faculty, Technology, and Teaching

Faculty and social media

Faculty personal use of social media

Faculty professional use of social media

Faculty teaching use of social media

Virtual communities

Barriers to faculty use of social media

Summary

Faculty Voices

Survey Methodology and Sample

References

Appendix

About the Authors

acknowledgments

Many thanks to the following individuals at Pearson for their continued support as we grow and evolve this project: Annabel Cellini, Gary June, Don Kilburn, Yasminka Nemet, and Seth Reichlin.

A special thanks to Annabel. With your ongoing support and inspiration, this research has expanded to include a series of sessions at national conferences, a live professional development event, and a series of case studies. All of this has provided me with an important opportunity to explore and share my area of passion and at the same time provide more value to our partners in higher education.

Thanks to Betsy Berkey for the beautiful design of this report and the associated infographic. Finally, thanks to Jeff Seaman and his team at Babson Survey Research Group for their valuable partnership on this research since 2009.

Hester Tinti-Kane

Vice President of Marketing and Social Media Strategy

Pearson Learning Solutions and Higher Education

executive summary

This series of reports began in 2009 with a few very basic questions—are faculty aware of social media, do they use it in any aspect of their lives, and most importantly for us, do they believe it is of value in their teaching? It quickly became obvious that awareness was not an issue; faculty are very aware of social media. Faculty who choose not to adopt social media simply do not view its value as being greater than its complications, which are discussed in more detail below.

A clear pattern has emerged from this series of reports—faculty are much more willing to embrace social media in their personal lives than they are to use it for professional or teaching purposes. The level of personal use of social media among faculty mirrors that of the general population.

Faculty professional use of social media has lagged somewhat behind their personal use but has increased each year. A majority of faculty now use social media in a professional context (any aspect of their profession outside of teaching). Use of social media for teaching purposes has lagged even more, but like the other patterns of use, it has increased every year. The number of faculty who use social media in the classroom still does not represent a majority, but teaching use continues its steady year-to-year growth. Faculty are sophisticated consumers of social media. They match different sites to their varying personal, professional, and teaching needs. In general, they see considerable potential in the application of social media and technology to their teaching, but not without a number of serious barriers.

Concerns about privacy, both for themselves and for their students, and about maintaining the class as a private space for free and open discussion, have been at the top of the list of concerns in all of the reports. Until faculty feel that this issue has been addressed, the wide-scale adoption of commercial social media tools in the classroom will remain limited. Concerns about the integrity of student submissions also cast a shadow on the adoption of these tools.

The larger universe of social media will continue to evolve. There is little reason to assume that future patterns of faculty personal use will not follow those of the general population, both in the choices of sites and their level of use. Likewise, the patterns of faculty use of social media for professional purposes do not stand out when compared to those in other industries. It is the use of social media in classrooms where faculty are unique.

It can be expected that the steady increase in classroom use of social media will continue, but unless some fundamental changes take place to address concerns about the privacy and integrity of submissions, this adoption will be very selective and continue to lag behind faculty use of social media in other aspects of their lives.

introduction

Over the years it has become increasingly important for those of us working in higher education to explore the exciting opportunities new technologies bring to institutions, educators and students. Since 2009, Pearson has been researching faculty use of social media. As a learning company that promotes the effective use of technology, Pearson is acutely aware of how important it is to understand these emerging media, the opportunities they offer to higher education faculty, and how their adoption can evolve—and is evolving— teaching and learning in higher education. Pearson’s ongoing collaboration with thought leaders from such organizations as the Babson Survey Research Group is enabling us to strengthen that understanding. As a reflection of our commitment to sharing our knowledge with the higher education community, the following pages contain the findings of our 2013 Social Media in Higher Education survey.

At Pearson we believe research and growth must go hand in hand. And as we’ve tracked the growth of social media, we’ve recognized—and tried to share—the exciting reality that the medium has allowed a new avenue for communication, valuable for teaching and learning, to spring up between students and professors and among students themselves, within single universities and across the world. As such, we’ve added a Social Learning interface to both Pearson LearningStudio and OpenClass™ learning management systems. Pearson LearningStudio integrates the latest features students need to engage peers and instructors—social profiles, avatars, chat, groups, remarks, activity feeds, and fully integrated Skype functionality for real-time discussion. On the OpenClass platform, instructors and students can engage and interact just as they would in Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networking applications. And social functionality is built directly into EQUELLA®, our award-winning digital content repository, so that educators can rate, share, tag, and comment on digital assets as they upload them to and search for them in the repository. To fully realize the potential of social learning, Pearson is continuously vetting programs and adding new capabilities.

Pearson’s goal is to produce better results for students and institutions, to prepare students to compete in an ever-changing global economy and to do more for more students by using technology and resources more effectively. In pursuit of our goal, it is critical that we both drive and support research concerning innovative teaching practices, regardless of whether it is conducted by Pearson. The more we know about effective uses of technologies for teaching and learning, the faster we can adopt these new practices, facilitate their proliferation across higher education, and increase student success. We anticipate that you will find the information herein as enlightening and inspiring as we did. We look forward to continuing our research, sharing it with you, and helping to establish the next wave of best practices together.

This year we have added a series of case studies to our social media for teaching and learning research to uncover innovative strategies for use in higher education courses today. You can find these on our Teaching & Learning Blog at www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/blog.

detailed survey findings

BACKGROUND

There has been explosive growth in the number and use of social media sites among the U.S. population. Faculty have not been immune to the attraction of social media, as has been chronicled in the previous reports in this series.1 However, these reports have also noted that not all faculty share a positive opinion of social media, especially as it pertains to their teaching. This year’s study continues the annual examination of the use of social media by higher education faculty for personal, professional, and instructional purposes. Using a representative sample of teaching faculty from across all of higher education, the study probes their use of social media, as well as what value they see in including social media sites as part of the instructional process.

OVERVIEW: FACULTY, TECHNOLOGY, AND TEACHING

Faculty are neither unquestioning advocates of adding technology into their teaching nor unthinking luddites who dismiss all technology out of hand. Most faculty are quick to acknowledge the potential for technology, digital communications, or social media, but they also see its limitations and problems. Faculty do believe that “the interactive nature of online and mobile technologies can create better learning environments,” with 13 percent “strongly agree[ing]” and 46 percent “somewhat agree[ing]” that this is the case.

The Interactive Nature of Online and Mobile Technologies Create Better Learning Environments – 2013

One area about which there is wide agreement among faculty is whether the introduction of digital communication into their professional lives has increased their levels of communication. Faculty report that digital communication has increased communication in multiple aspects of their professional lives, with communication with students at the forefront. Over three-quarters of all teaching faculty report that digital communication has “increased” their communication with students, while only 4 percent believe that it has “decreased” this communication.

The Impact that Digital Communication Has Had on Your Communication with Students – Faculty 2013

As much as faculty consistently report a positive impact on communication, they also believe that there is a large potential downside to the introduction of all of this technology. A majority of faculty members agree that online and mobile technologies are “more distracting than helpful to students.” The potential for technology to be a distraction, instead of an empowering component of teaching, has been a common concern for faculty throughout the reports in this series.

Online and Mobile Technologies Are More Distracting Than Helpful to Students for Academic Work – 2013

Students’ ability to reach out to faculty outside of regular classroom and office hours, with the expectation of quick feedback, is expanding the faculty workday as well as placing additional stress on the teaching process. Faculty have been particularly vocal on the impact of technology on their work environment—fully 48 percent of faculty report that digital communication has increased their level of stress. Only 13 percent believe that their level of stress has decreased, with the remaining 39 percent reporting no change. In addition, nearly two-thirds of faculty report that digital communication has increased the number of hours that they work. An additional 27 percent see “no change” in the number of hours they work, and only 8 percent say that there has been a decrease in the number of hours that they work as a result of digital communication.

The Impact That Digital Communication Has Had On...

FACULTY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Like the general population, faculty might use social media for a number of purposes. This study asked faculty to distinguish between three different types of use: personal use only, with no relationship to professional and/or teaching responsibilities; professional (non-teaching) use; and finally, use in the classes they teach. Further details on what value, if any, they see in social media sites as well as how they use them in their classes are also explored.

Faculty personal use of social media sites is rather high; 70 percent of all faculty had visited a social media site within the past month for personal use, a rate that jumps to 84 percent when those who use social media sites less frequently than monthly are included. Using the same definitions as in last year’s report, faculty who say that they use social media less frequently than monthly (14 percent in the case of use for personal purposes, classified as “rarely”) have been excluded from analyses. All results presented from this point forward refer only to those faculty who responded that they made use of social media monthly or more frequently.

Faculty Personal Use of Social Media – 2013

In addition to purely personal use, faculty were asked about social media use in support of their professional careers (on the job but not while teaching) and about their use of social media in the classes they teach. Our survey shows that more than 55 percent of faculty make professional use of social media outside the classes they teach on at least a monthly basis. While a majority of faculty report that they make “at least monthly” use of social media for professional purposes, this rate remains lower than that of their personal use (70 percent). This difference implies that at least 15 percent of faculty who regularly use social media do so for exclusively personal reasons and do not use it in their professional lives. Roughly 30 percent of faculty do not engage in regular use of social media for any purpose.

Faculty Professionial Use of Social Media – 2013

Faculty are well aware of social media, and many use the sites for both personal and professional reasons. Do faculty also believe that social media sites have a place in their courses? To address that issue, faculty were asked about their use of social media in the classes they teach. It appears that many faculty members do make use of social media in their teaching; 41 percent report doing so..

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media – 2013

Faculty continue to increase their use of social media in all three categories explored—personal, professional, and teaching use. A comparison of 2013 with 2012 shows growth in all three types of use. Professional use had the largest year-to-year gain, followed by teaching use, then personal use. The increase in professional use (at over 10 percentage points) was almost double the gain in personal use; however, the rank order of personal, professional and teaching for 2013 remained the same as that of 2012.

Faculty Personal, Professional, and Teaching Use of Social Media – 2012 and 2013

FACULTY PERSONAL USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

As noted above, 70 percent of all faculty had visited a social media site within the past month for “personal use.” There is a very strong pattern of social media use by age among teaching faculty, a result that we also saw in 2012. The youngest faculty (under age 35) use social media for personal purposes at a far greater rate than the oldest faculty. Usage drops off with age, from a rate of 87 percent for those under age 35 to only 63 percent for those aged 55 or older. While the usage rates of older faculty may still lag behind those of the younger faculty, older faculty are catching up. There was a 30 percentage-point difference between the youngest and oldest groups in 2012. In 2013, this difference has been reduced to 23 percentage points.

Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Age – 2012 and 2013

There is a relationship between the rate of personal social media use and the discipline of the faculty member. Faculty who teach in Humanities and Arts have the highest rate of personal use (74 percent), while those in the Natural Sciences have the lowest (64 percent). The differences in personal usage rates by discipline narrowed over the past year. The personal usage rate for faculty in Humanities and Arts increased by less than 2 percent in 2013, while the rates for other disciplines increased 5 to 8 pecentage points in the same time frame.

Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Discipline – 2012 and 2013

Facebook is the most-visited site for personal purposes; 57 percent of faculty members report that they visit Facebook “at least monthly,” and nearly one-third of all faculty report that they are making daily use of Facebook. Other sites are used far less frequently. About one-quarter of all faculty members say that they make personal use of blogs and wikis at least monthly, with just 6.3 percent reporting daily use. Overall personal use of Twitter is just over 10 percent. While the overall personal use of LinkedIn and blogs and wikis are similar, faculty are somewhat more likely to use blogs and wikis on a daily basis (6.3 percent) than they are to use LinkedIn (3.3 percent).

Frequency of Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Site – 2013

Faculty personal use of social media has increased over the past year for each of the sites monitored by this study. LinkedIn had the largest year-to-year increase (5.6 percent), but the gains for Facebook and blogs and wikis were very close (4.6 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively).

Faculty Monthly Personal Use of Social Media by Site – 2012 and 2013

FACULTY PROFESSIONAL USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

In addition to their personal use of social media, faculty use of social media in support of their professional careers (any aspect of their job outside of teaching) was explored. Over one-half of all teaching faculty reported that they made “at least monthly” use of social media for professional purposes. Examining the relationship between professional use of social media and faculty age shows a pattern similar to that observed for personal use—the younger faculty have higher usage rates of social media than do older faculty. However, all age groups report increased use of social media for professional purposes this year as compared to last. The youngest faculty had the smallest increase in professional use (7.8 percent), while all the other age groups had year-to-year increases of greater than 10 percentage points.

Faculty Monthly Professional Use of Social Media by Age – 2012 and 2013

With regard to professional use of social media, the usage gap between disciplines appears to have narrowed in 2013. Those disciplines that had the lowest level of professional use in 2012 (Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Computer Science) were the fastest growing for 2013. Faculty in Professions and Applied Sciences are now at the forefront of professional use with a year-to-year increase of over 12 percent.

Faculty Professional Use of Social Media by Discipline – 2012 and 2013

More faculty report using LinkedIn for professional purposes than any other social media site. The pattern of use is different between sites; for instance, Facebook is used less frequently (23 percent) overall than LinkedIn (33 percent), but has slightly greater daily use. Professional use of blogs and wikis closely mirrors that of Facebook, while podcasts are less popular. Twitter, with just over 9 percent reporting monthly or more frequent use, comes in at the bottom of the sites tested.

Frequency of Faculty Professional Use of Social Media by Site – 2013

Faculty reported increases in use of all sites monitored for 2013 as compared to their usage in 2012. Growth ranged from a low of 3 percent for podcasts to a high of 9 percent for LinkedIn. However, it is important to note that while all sites saw some level of increased usage in 2013, the overall rates for professional use of social media sites remains well below the personal use rates that faculty report.

Faculty Monthly Professional Use of Social Media by Site – 2012 and 2013

FACULTY TEACHING USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Many faculty use social media sites for both personal and professional reasons, and a somewhat smaller proportion also believe that social media sites have a place within their courses. There is an interesting age pattern among the 41 percent of teaching faculty who report “monthly or more frequent” social media use in their classes. Unlike the patterns observed for personal use and professional use of social media, the pattern of teaching use by age group does not show the youngest faculty being in the lead. Faculty in the two middle age groups (35 to 44 and 45 to 54) both have higher rates of teaching usage than the youngest faculty members.

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Age – 2013

This is a different age pattern than was observed last year. The change is a reflection of the substantial growth in usage for the two middle age groups (over 11 percent increase for both groups) coupled with a small decline (one-half a percent) for the youngest faculty.

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Age – 2012 and 2013

Faculty in the Humanities and Arts, Professions and Applied Sciences, and the Social Sciences use social media for teaching purposes at higher rates than those in Natural Sciences or Mathematics and Computer Science. However, this difference has narrowed considerably over the past year, as faculty in the Natural Sciences or Mathematics and Computer Science have shown the greatest degree of year-to-year growth (12 and 8 percent, respectively).

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Discipline – 2012 and 2013

Faculty are relatively sophisticated users of social media—they pick each site based on their specific needs and its function. This series of reports has shown that the pattern of popularity of sites for teaching use is consistently different than the pattern for either personal or professional use. The most-used group of sites for teaching is blogs and wikis, while the sites most often accessed for personal use (Facebook) or professional use (LinkedIn) are used far less frequently for teaching purposes. Podcasts, the second most-used type of social media for teaching, are used at much the same rate for teaching as they are for personal or professional purposes.

Frequency of Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Site – 2013

As was the case when the year-to-year trends in the personal and professional use of various social media sites were examined, there has been an increase in the teaching use of every site monitored in 2013 as compared to 2012. The increases range from only 1 percent for Twitter and Facebook to over 5 percent for LinkedIn and blogs and wikis.

Faculty Monthly Teaching Use of Social Media by Site – 2012 and 2013

Faculty can choose among a number of different approaches for introducing social media into their courses – they can have their students merely act as consumers of the media, with no interaction, commenting, or creating of new media required. Faculty may also ask their students to consume the media and then provide comments, and they may also require their students to engage in some level of creation of the media. Likewise faculty may use social media as part of individual assignments, where each student is expected to act on their own, or they may craft group assignments, where multiple students are expected to work together.

Blog and wikis were the most used social media for teaching for both 2012 and 2013, so it is not surprising that they are also the most likely to be included in individual and group assignments. What may be surprising, however, is that faculty are more likely to require their students to be engaged rather than merely consuming content. Faculty require their students to create content for blogs and wikis more often than they ask them to comment or to merely read or consume.

Use of Social Media for Individual Assignments by Site – 2013

Faculty use of podcasts is very different from the pattern for blogs and wikis – faculty are twice as likely to ask their student to listen to a podcast then they are to comment on one. While blogs and wikis are used in about equal number of individual and group assignments, faculty use podcasts for individual assignments more often than they do for group assignments. Faculty do not make a great deal of use of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for either individual or group assignments.

Use of Social Media for Group Assignments by Site – 2013

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

This year’s report probed faculty about their engagement in and attitude toward virtual communities. The survey defined a virtual community as:

A community of people sharing common interests, experiences, ideas, and feelings over the Internet or other online collaborative networks. Virtual communities take on different forms and may leverage social media, forums, and blogs. Examples include: a LinkedIn or Google Group, Message Board, Chat Room, or User Group.

Faculty were asked if they were members of or participated in virtual communities of two types—those organized around their personal interests and those organized around their professional interests. Almost one-half of faculty reported that they participated in virtual communities for professional interests, with just under 40 percent saying they did so for personal interests.

Faculty Engagement in Virtual Communities by Type of Community – 2013

A consistent theme in this series of reports is how faculty who teach online courses are more likely to be engaged with social media that are faculty who do not teach online. The pattern of engagement in virtual communities follows this same pattern – faculty who teach online courses have greater levels of engagement for both personal and professional virtual communities.

Faculty Engagement in Virtual Communities by Type of Community and Online Teaching – 2013

BARRIERS TO FACULTY USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Each of the previous reports in this series noted that faculty have a high level of concern about a number of issues which hinder or prevent their use of social media in teaching. The picture is the same for 2013, as faculty continue to cite a number of barriers between social media and the classroom. The results for 2013 show the same two concerns topping the list as were noted for both 2011 and 2012—privacy and the integrity of student submissions. Over 72 percent report that “lack of integrity of student submissions” is an “important” or “very important” barrier, and 63 percent say “privacy concerns” are an “important” or “very important” barrier. The conclusion that faculty members have not widely or uncritically embraced social media for teaching purposes remains; they continue to have many concerns.

Barriers to Faculty Use of Social Media – 2013

In an effort to understand better the nature of their privacy concerns, all faculty who rated privacy as an “important” or “very important” barrier to teaching use of social media were asked a set of more detailed questions. These questions were aimed at determining what aspects they found the most troubling concerning privacy and social media in their classes. The results show that it is not a single issue that troubles faculty—they have high levels of concern with multiple aspects of privacy.

Faculty with concerns about privacy were asked about five different specific privacy issues for students and faculty. Over 80 percent of respondents stated that they “somewhat agree” or “strongly agree” that each of these five areas represents an important area of concern. The highest level of concern is about class discussions—over two-thirds of the faculty said that they “strongly agree” that having non-class members “view” or “participate in class discussions” is an issue. The degree of faculty concern was only slightly less that those outside of class would be able to “view other class materials.” A large proportion (over 80 percent) of faculty also reported that they were concerned about “personal privacy” for students as well as for themselves. However, this opinion was not as strongly held as those on class discussions, as most faculty only “somewhat agree” that they are concerned about risks to personal and student privacy. By contrast, the majority of faculty say that they “strongly agree” when asked about their concern for the privacy of class discussions and materials.

Privacy Concerns for Faculty Use of Social Media in Teaching – 2013

summary

We began our work to explore the use of social media in higher education because we wanted to understand how these new technologies were impacting the lives of faculty - their personal lives, their professional development and their teaching. We began in 2010 with a sample of about 900 Pearson customers. We did not create a report this first year, but simply presented the research at national conferences and shared the presentation over SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/PearsonLearningSolutions/pearson-socialmediasurvey2010). At last count, this SlideShare presentation has had almost 39,000 views and press coverage in 2010 and in following years has been significant and widespread from Inside Higher Education and The Chronicle of Higher Education to the New York Times and USA Today. In 2011, we built out a representative United States faculty sample including part and full time educators from all types of institutions in all Carnegie classifications. We produced a report for the first time, sharing more details about the work. In 2012 we added a live professional development event where we released the findings of the survey and brought in educators to share their best practices for using social media for teaching and learning. This year, we had over 8,000 faculty respond to the survey. We also added a series of case studies on best practices within specific disciplines and courses from individual faculty we discovered through our 2012 survey results.

Over the years, we have watched trends in faculty social media use. Early on we found that awareness of social media was extremely high and adoption of social media for personal use quickly followed in large numbers. Throughout the research we have (not surprisingly) seen faculty who teach online courses have a high level of adoption of social media across the board. While some social media sites have been removed from our lists (Flickr, SlideShare, MySpace), the major ones remain and continue to build in adoption year over year.

More interesting than the use of individual sites has been how and why faculty are choosing to use these new and evolving technologies. Online video, including YouTube, was and remains a social media site adopted and used broadly for personal, professional and teaching use.

There were internal discussions at Pearson debating whether YouTube was actually social media or not. On the one hand, it’s user-generated content that allows for creation and posting, rating, sharing and commenting just like blogs, on the other hand, most of its use is simply consumption of the content. This brought us to a larger question about the use of social media by faculty and some theories around the usage (or non-usage) of social functionality of social media. It seemed that early on, faculty were adopting social media but using it, and asking their students to use it, in a traditional media way - by simply consuming it. By this we mean watching videos, reading blog posts or wikis and listening to podcasts (to mention the types of social media consistently at the top levels for personal, professional and teaching use by our survey respondents). In 2010, Facebook appeared to be the one social media site where the social networking functionality was being used by faculty with students. As the years have gone by, we have continued to dive deeper to explore the use of the interactive functionality of social media. Our goals expanded from simply understanding how social media was being used by faculty to why it was being used. What was valuable in social media sites especially for teaching use?

In 2011, we started looking into whether faculty were using social media in the class session or posting it for the class to review and found that 80% of faculty surveyed were using social media in some aspect of a course that they were teaching and 30% were posting content to be viewed by students outside of the class session. There was considerable consumption of social media content, but little usage of the social functionality like creating and posting, rating, sharing and commenting going on. To explore a bit deeper, we asked how faculty were using social media in their classes and 40% of those surveyed responded that they were assigning students to read or view social media sites. We also found that 20% of faculty surveyed were assigning students to use the social functionality by asking students to either comment on existing content or to create and post their own. In 2012, we saw that blogs, wikis and podcasts continued to lead the way for teaching use. We asked the deeper question of how these sites were being used in the teaching and learning process - were faculty asking students to view or listen to the content? Comment on it? Post or create their own? Our respondents told us that podcasts were being used the most in teaching with over 20% of faculty surveyed asking their students to listen to them. The next two types of social media sites being used in teaching were blogs and wikis and the faculty responded that they were asking students to comment on existing content and post or create their own content. This year, we explored the usage of social functionality for both individual and group assignments. Once again, blogs and wikis continued to be used the most and more of the social functionality in use with over 80% of respondents assigning individual students to create and post their own content to blogs and wikis, over 70% assigning individual students to add comments on blogs and wikis and over 58% assigning individual students to read blogs and wikis.

Starting in 2011, we began asking faculty about the barriers that may dissuade them from using social media in their teaching. Consistently we have seen the issues of integrity of student submissions and privacy rise to the top. This year, we asked some faculty to respond to additional questions about privacy concerns. We discovered that risks to the personal privacy of faculty and of students to be of most concern, followed by concerns of allowing others outside of the class to view class related content. Year by year the same barriers to social media adoption are reported, although they are decreasing.

So the work continues, four years in. It is an exciting and inspiring area for research and each year we are contacted by students looking to iterate upon this work. Social technologies can provide new opportunities to engage learners and many educators are discovering impactful strategies for using them in face-to-face, blended and online classrooms. We appreciate the support from Pearson and from the higher education community to continue to build out this important work, with the overall goal of promoting effective teaching and learning. We look forward to sharing more research in the future.

faculty voices

No structured survey instrument can capture all the nuances of opinion on complicated issues such as the impact of social media on faculty personal and professional lives. To partially address this, each survey in this series has included an open-ended question to allow faculty to provide more detail about their thought processes. We wish to thank the thousands of faculty who took the time to provide such complete and thoughtful responses. Many of these faculty also provided their permission for these comments to be included as part of this report.

All comments are identified only by the discipline of the faculty member and if they are full- or part-time. The quotes are included as they were entered, with only the most minor editing to remove any identifying information or correct typos. They have been selected to represent, as best as we can, the range of issues submitted.

As a researcher with a long experience in surveying faculty members, it is always a pleasure to see how much time and attention faculty put into their comments. The quotes interspersed in this report will hopefully provide the reader with a far better insight into the thought process of faculty members that the mere listing of numbers and provision of charts can do.

- Dr. Jeff Seaman

I think that privacy in social media is of paramount importance - students do have to realize that, and they do need to be taught responsible social use. (Full-time Computer and Information Science Faculty)

Courseware, web, e-mail, social media have all expanded learning possibilities but more than anything else in higher ed have contributed to increased classroom prep time and stress associated with learning the technology and figuring out how best to deploy it. (Full-time Social Sciences Faculty)

I admit that I am slow to change, but I appreciate the access to information that the Internet and multimedia provide. And of course, I cherish my time and my privacy, so there are times when I do not want to be bombarded with information that I have not solicited. On a social level, I prefer face-to-face, for that is the meaning of social--human interaction in a physical sense that utilizes the five senses and evokes emotional responses. (Full-time Linguistics / Language Faculty)

Technology will change the content of statistics courses entirely. (Full-time Mathematics Faculty)

I am very interested that you are looking at virtual communities. I am fascinated at the capabilities offered by virtual communities and would like to get more involved in examining their effectiveness and whether or not they can be truly useful in courses. I suspect that there is tremendous potential there. (Full-time Psychology Faculty)

As with many emergent technologies, I think there is a lot of potential in each of these questions. Social media CAN be extremely effective and it CAN be handled poorly. I have found that, if done well, it has been extremely effective for my particular population of students. (Part-time Other Faculty)

As this arena splinters into a variety of media options, some students access them all while others cannot afford functional computers. This is problematic when attempting to run a class of 45 to 50 students. (Part-time Social Sciences Faculty)

It is time that technology is integrated in the classes that we teach to effectively achieve maximum productivity. (Full-time Business Administration Faculty)

Although many students use social media, not all of them do and some of them have specific reasons why they do not wish to use it. If there are students who happen to use social media and they choose to use this to collaborate on course-related activities, that is fine, but I strongly disagree with any policy that would require (or even encourage) students to use it. As educators, it should not be our role to push students to use social media. (Full-time Natural Sciences Faculty)

Although students are tech savvy, they rarely seem to be interested in utilizing it for learning. Social media is distracting, and very difficult to deal with during class. (Full-time Business Administration Faculty)

The use of social media and the move to online formats of classes has been a hot topic at my university in recent months. The change is inevitable but there is great concern for quality of instruction being sacrificed for tuition dollars and enrollment increases. It will be interesting to see how this all changes how we do what we do. (Full-time Business Administration Faculty)

Authenticity is my #1 issue with online courses: I have seen how very easy it is to cheat. (Part-time Education Faculty)

I can see the potential benefit of using social media, but I tend to be a late adopter so that others can work out the kinks of using it effectively in class. I was an early adopter during my first few years of teaching and found the amount of time needed to get up and running often didn’t translate into time savings or effective/useful practice. So now, I’m more choosy. If I can see that it works somewhat smoothly and provides pedagogical or time saving benefit, I use it. Otherwise, I stay away from it. (Full-time Natural Sciences Faculty)

A barrier that I experience is finding social media content with legitimate curricula value to the course. I would use social media more if the content was more valuable to course discussion. Just because some person has an opinion which is displayed on a social media site does not mean it deserves discussion in class. (Part-time Computer and Information Science Faculty)

It is extremely important for us to understand student’s needs and change in learning patterns to stay in touch with them and provide quality teaching and learning experience. We need to utilize the technological tools before we are considered useless and being unable to connect with the students of 21st century. (Part-time Engineering Faculty)

We are on the brink of an instructional revolution mediated by technology. It will be interesting to see if our educational system has the creativity to make the huge change that is possible that will improve education for both students and instructors. I spent the past academic year learning to use some of the new technology: HW systems, prepared discussion forums, online gradebooks, ran an iPad pilot project in lecture and lab. Although I barely scratched the surface of possibilities it took a huge amount of my time. Learning new systems is hugely time intensive and I did not think it was worth it. I had so many other things I could have done that would have had a much more fundamental impact on instruction. It would be nice to have a group that could make using technology really easy and quick allowing us to implement the changes we want while having time to accomplish all the important things we need to do for our instructional systems. (It would be great to have a team to direct because I have many more ideas than I have time to implement. (Full-time Natural Sciences Faculty)

The use of social media allows me to stay in touch with students at times that are convenient for all of us. I find my response times to students’ needs is much less using social media. (Part-time Medicine Faculty)

I am a former journalist and I experienced the paradigm shift of new media technology. Digital media is the future. I believe that online delivery will definitely be the next technological paradigm shift in higher education. It is inevitable. As with everything there will be gains but some things will be lost. It can’t be resisted. The question for higher education will be how do you make a living at it. This was the same question for journalism and I believe the answer is still that we don’t know. The major driver is cost because the ability to continue to pay more and more for a college education has reached the limit. I believe that all courses where vigorous classroom discussion is not essential will be delivered online exclusively. The changes in higher education will be very disruptive for faculty. Education will be delivered with significantly fewer professors. I will not deny that I am concerned but I know that I will have to reinvent myself before my career is at its end. (Full-time Humanities Faculty)

Social media, like any other instructional technologies, have value in our classrooms. However, we need to use them wisely and assess their impact carefully. Otherwise, we can end up with students failing to make connections between the intended student learning outcomes and their social media activities. (Full-time Natural Sciences Faculty)

I’ve found that incorporating social media into my classes makes me more readily accessible to students in a way I wasn’t previously. I spent a lot of time trying to keep social media out of my classroom, which was a mistake. I’ve used Twitter, in particular, as a way to engage my students but also Pinterest. I’ve found that Twitter allows them to feel more engaged with my class as well as more comfortable with me. In addition, when I use it with Storify, it allows me to see places I could improve my teaching. I’m really happy with how I’ve integrated social media with my class. (Part-time Social Sciences Faculty)

I find social media very useful for communication, for groups, for planning and sharing. But I have not found a way to integrate in the classroom, perhaps because I have not thought about it. (Full-time Social Sciences Faculty)

Almost 100% of students now have cell phones or smart phones in the classroom--as well as their own computers. While I am one of the few professors who allow some classroom use of mobile devices, I remain somewhat reluctant to fully embrace and use the potential of personal devices because of the lack of control and monitoring that the teacher has with the content, use of, etc. (Part-time Computer and Information Science Faculty)

I struggle to find a balance between my personal and professional digital profiles. I am online with groups for academic endeavors, social events, hobbies, and many more. Some of which I would share with students and colleagues, others I rather keep private. (Part-time Social Sciences Faculty)

We all need to embrace the use of technology including social media, but do so cautiously. (Full-time Social Sciences Faculty)

Teaching students to think and learn through social media is a vital job of instructors today. We must prepare our students to be the best citizens possible as they enter the workforce and the world. (Full-time Humanities Faculty)

I think technology can add significantly to the classroom, both face-to-face and online courses. However, there is little support for faculty in the use of technology and no protection of intellectual property in course creation or content. Online courses are considered less rigorous by administration (only one may be included in faculty course load) and are not paid at the same rate as face-to-face classes. No compensation or release time is given for online course creation. (Full-time Social Sciences Faculty)

Social media has become very important to my teaching. As I teach in a visual design field (Communication Design), Pinterest has been one of the more successful social media tools for teaching. Twitter has become more important than Facebook. When I tried assignments in Facebook, it seemed like students were more concerned with their personal accounts being used. When I use Twitter, often, they do not already have an account, so they don’t mind the intrusion into their personal lives as much. (Full-time Communication Design Faculty)

Professors are hungry for access to new technology. Most often, we undertake innovations on a class-by-class basis without any institutional support structure. (Full-time Social Sciences Faculty)

I am very interested in learning about how to use social media tools in my courses. I think it would enhance student engagement and learning. The professional development opportunities at my institution have not been as helpful as I’d like - although, this might be my lack of experience to blame... I need support beyond the “one shot” workshops. I wish there were ongoing opportunities to learn as we utilize new technologies. I’m not knowledgeable enough or comfortable enough with technology to push past the problems that arise with trying new technologies on my own. (Part-time Education Faculty)

At 64 years old and approaching retirement, it is embarrassing to ask for help now. But I wish I could learn more about computers and online education. (Full-time Arts and Literature Faculty))

I feel like I need to engage in more social media besides using videos from you tube but it all seems so complicated and overwhelming. My preference is to engage in more learner-centered activities. (Part-time Education Faculty)

Social media will become an aspect of higher education, even if nobody knows exactly how yet. (Full-time Natural Sciences Faculty)

I believe that every learning delivery method has a place and that no one is supreme over others. Each has strengths and weaknesses and so a balance should be sought in offerings and a good fit between learner and methodology developed. (Full-time Other Faculty)

As the business community is finding out, the use of social media could be highly over rated in the educational setting. (Full-time Computer and Information Science Faculty)

Social media is a major part of the college community where I teach. It’s here to stay, so best to figure a way to incorporate the technique. But always with respect and politeness for the classmates, professor, and the subject. (Part-time Arts and Literature Faculty)

I create my own class blogs using wordpress.com, which I prefer over the resources/tools in Blackboard. All of my students create blogs (Blogger or Wordpress) to post their writing instead of submitting hard copies. In working with my actors, Facebook seems to be the only ready and sure means of communication. (Full-time Arts and Literature Faculty)

I am technologically savvy and use electronic media in all of its forms daily in my classroom and in my communication with my students. It’s an integral component in my lesson plans. However, I am also careful to make sure that neither I nor my students rely on them so heavily that they become a crutch. Technology can only facilitate learning, not replace it or act as a shortcut to learning. I have seen the demise of critical thinking skills over the years in my students; in large part this is due to the easy access of information on the Internet. They have come to equate information acquisition with knowledge and learning; in fact, these facts-at-their-fingertips stunt their intellectual growth, and they are not able to advance to higher levels of cognition. (Full-time Linguistics / Language Faculty)

Social media strengthens my courses in many ways. Since media literacy is a large component of my courses social media enables me run a “living classroom.” Students discuss their own presence and impact on social media at the same time they create content to share. Very exciting! (Part-time Arts and Literature Faculty)

I need time and support to get up to speed on technology and my department does not provide any incentive to use it besides applying for student assistant helpers. I need time off of teaching then I could do it. (Full-time Education Faculty)

survey methodology and sample

The sample for this study is comprised of teaching faculty from all disciplines in higher education and was selected to be representative of the overall range of faculty teaching in U.S. higher education. A multiple-stage selection process was used for selecting a stratified sample of all teaching faculty. The process began by obtaining data from a commercial source, Market Data Retrieval3, which claims that its records represent 93 percent of all teaching faculty. Just over 1.5 million teaching faculty (defined as having at least one course code associated with their records) were included at that stage. Via information from the Carnegie Classification for each institution, faculty were then randomly selected from the master list in proportion to the number contained in each Carnegie Classification to produce a second-stage selection of 100,000 teaching faculty members. A number of them had e-mail addresses that were either no longer current or were eliminated because they were on opt-out lists, estimated to be between 12 and 15 percent of the total list. The number of messages that ended up in spam filters is, of course, also unknown.

A total of 8,016 faculty members visited the online survey Web site and began the survey, of whom 7,969 provided a sufficient number of responses to be included in the study. Two-thirds of the respondents report that they are full-time faculty members. Just under one-quarter teach online, slightly over one-half are female, and over one-quarter have been teaching for 20 years or more. A set of response weights were calculated to adjust for any differences in response rates by Carnegie Classification. The weights made small adjustments to the results so that inferences could be made about the population of all higher education teaching faculty in the United States.

To provide the ability to track changes over time, many questions used in the 2013 survey were identical in wording and format to those used in 2011 and 2012.

references

1.Hester Tinti-Kane, Jeff Seaman and Mike Moran, 2011, Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today’s Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media, Pearson, and Hester Tinti-Kane, Jeff Seaman and Mike Moran, 2012, Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today’s Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media, Pearson.

2. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 72% of Online Adults are Social Networking Site Users, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/social-networking-sites.aspx

3. Market Data Retrieval, 6 Armstrong Road, Suite 301, Shelton, CT 06484 http://www.schooldata.com/

appendix

OVERVIEW: FACULTY, TECHNOLOGY, AND TEACHING

The interactive nature of online and mobile technologies create better learning environments

Strongly Disagree

Somewhat Disagree

Somewhat Agree

Strongly Agree

7.7%

33.1%

45.9%

13.3%

The Impact that Digital Communication Has Had on Your Communication with Students – Faculty

Increased

No Impact

Decreased

78.9%

16.6%

4.4%

Online and mobile technologies are more distracting than helpful to students for academic work

Strongly Disagree

Somewhat Disagree

Somewhat Agree

Strongly Agree

9.2%

34.7%

41.2%

14.8%

The Impact that Digital Communication Has Had on…

Increased

No Impact

Decreased

Your Level of Stress

47.6%

39.4%

13.0%

Number of Hours You Work

65.1%

27.3%

7.6%

FACULTY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Faculty Personal Use of Social Media – 2013

Monthly +

Rarely

Do not use

70.3%

13.6%

16.1%

Faculty Professional Use of Social Media - 2013

Use

Do not use

55.0%

45.0%

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media – 2013

Use

Do not use

41.0%

59.0%

Faculty Personal, Professional, and Teaching Use of Social Media – 2012 and 2013

2012

2013

Teaching

33.8%

41.0%

Professional

44.7%

55.0%

Personal

64.4%

70.3%

FACULTY PERSONAL USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Age – 2012 and 2013

Age

2012

2013

55+

53.9%

63.0%

45-54

65.4%

73.4%

35-44

76.4%

80.2%

Under 35

84.7%

86.6%

Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Discipline – 2012 and 2013

Discipline

2012

2013

Natural Sciences

57.2%

65.0%

Mathematics and Computer Science

59.6%

64.2%

Professions and Applied Sciences

63.6%

70.8%

Social Sciences

66.4%

72.3%

Humanities and Arts

71.7%

73.5%

Frequency of Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Site – 2013

Site

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Twitter

3.8%

4.1%

2.6%

Podcasts

3.5%

6.3%

7.6%

LinkedIn

3.3%

10.9%

10.1%

Blogs and Wikis

6.3%

9.6%

9.0%

Facebook

32.7%

16.2%

8.2%

Frequency of Faculty Personal Use of Social Media by Site – 2012 and 2013

Site

2012

2013

Twitter

7.9%

10.5%

Podcasts

14.5%

17.3%

LinkedIn

18.8%

24.4%

Blogs and Wikis

20.3%

24.9%

Facebook

52.5%

57.0%

FACULTY PROFESSIONAL USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Faculty Professional Use of Social Media by Age – 2012 and 2013

Age

2012

2013

55+

37.8%

49.2%

45-54

46.1%

58.7%

35-44

52.5%

62.7%

Under 35

55.7%

63.6%

Faculty Professional Use of Social Media by Discipline – 2012 and 2013

Discipline

2012

2013

Mathematics and Computer Science

35.2%

44.4%

Natural Sciences

36.2%

51.1%

Social Sciences

48.6%

54.8%

Humanities and Arts

50.2%

56.2%

Professions and Applied Sciences

47.6%

60.2%

Frequency of Faculty Professional Use of Social Media by Site – 2013

Site

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Twitter

2.6%

4.1%

2.7%

Podcasts

1.2%

4.1%

9.0%

Facebook

5.5%

10.2%

7.6%

Blogs and Wikis

4.6%

9.9%

10.8%

LinkedIn

4.4%

14.5%

13.9%

Frequency of Faculty Professional Use of Social Media by Site – 2012 and 2013

Site

2012

2013

Twitter

5.7%

9.4%

Podcasts

11.0%

14.3%

Facebook

18.5%

23.4%

Blogs and Wikis

19.0%

25.3%

LinkedIn

23.8%

32.8%

FACULTY TEACHING USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Age – 2013

Age

Use

Do not use

55+

35.8%

64.2%

45-54

45.4%

54.6%

35-44

49.6%

50.4%

Under 35

41.0%

59.0%

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Age – 2012 and 2013

Age

2012

2013

55+

29.5%

35.8%

45-54

34.1%

45.4%

35-44

38.3%

49.6%

Under 35

41.5%

41.0%

Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Discipline – 2012 and 2013

Discipline

2012

2013

Mathematics and Computer Science

26.7%

34.7%

Natural Sciences

24.3%

36.1%

Social Sciences

36.8%

40.0%

Professions and Applied Sciences

37.3%

43.0%

Humanities and Arts

39.7%

45.8%

Frequency of Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Site – 2013

Site

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Twitter

0.7%

2.0%

1.4%

Facebook

1.0%

3.3%

4.2%

LinkedIn

2.3%

5.0%

3.8%

Podcasts

1.3%

5.5%

9.5%

Blogs and Wikis

4.2%

11.2%

11.5%

Frequency of Faculty Teaching Use of Social Media by Site – 2012 and 2013

Site

2012

2013

Twitter

2.7%

4.1%

Facebook

7.6%

8.4%

LinkedIn

4.5%

11.1%

Podcasts

14.2%

16.3%

Blogs and Wikis

21.6%

26.9%

Use of Social Media for Individual Assignment by Site – 2013

Use

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

Podcast

Blogs/Wiki

Read, watch, listen

16.5%

6.6%

8.7%

57.5%

58.6%

Add comments

16.0%

5.3%

7.5%

25.4%

72.8%

Create

11.9%

4.6%

7.4%

23.2%

81.5%

Use of Social Media for Group Assignment by Site – 2013

Use

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

Podcast

Blogs/Wiki

Read, watch, listen

19.4%

5.6%

7.7%

39.9%

65.4%

Add comments

17.9%

4.7%

7.2%

21.2%

75.8%

Create

13.6%

4.5%

7.0%

22.3%

82.5%

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

Faculty Engagement in Virtual Communities by Type of Community – 2013

Type

Engagement

Personal Interests

39.0%

Professional Interests

49.3%

Frequency of Engagement in Virtual Communities by Type of Community and Online Teaching – 2013

Type

Do not teach online

Teach Online

Personal interests

36.8%

45.5%

Professional interests

46.4%

58.0%

BARRIERS TO FACULTY USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Barriers to Faculty Use of Social Media – 2013

Barrier

Very Important

Important

Lack of support at my institution

15.2%

20.6%

Takes too much time to learn or use

16.2%

25.2%

Lack of integration with LMS

19.4%

25.9%

Inability to measure effectiveness

20.0%

32.4%

Grading and assessment

26.9%

30.8%

Separate course and personal accounts

36.8%

21.8%

Concerns about privacy

38.8%

23.9%

Integrity of student submissions

43.9%

28.5%

Privacy Concerns for Faculty Use of Social Media in Teaching – 2013

Concern

Strongly Agree

Somewhat Agree

Risks to the personal privacy of faculty

34.6%

48.9%

Risks to the personal privacy of students

36.0%

50.6%

Others outside of class should not able to view class-related content

61.1%

25.3%

Others outside of the class should not be able to view class discussions

66.3%

23.1%

Others outside the class should not be able to participate in class discussions

71.3%

20.0%

about the authors

Jeff Seaman

Jeff Seaman is co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, which conducts regional, national, and international research projects, including survey design, sampling methodology, data integrity, statistical analyses, and reporting. He has worked in education information technology for over 20 years. In addition to teaching at Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin, and the Wharton School, Seaman has created and headed information technology organizations for the University of Pennsylvania and Lesley University. The client list for his consulting includes Harvard, Tufts, Boston University, Brandeis, and the University of Pennsylvania as well as such technology vendors as IBM and Microsoft. He has served on advisory boards for many technology companies, including Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.

Hester Tinti-Kane

Hester Tinti-Kane is a change agent for marketing at Pearson. She is a blogger, a podcaster and a national speaker at online learning and marketing conferences. Hester holds a bachelor’s degree from Bennington College, a master’s from the University of Hartford and an MIT Sloan executive certificate in Management and Leadership.