College Faculty Survey Finds Their Use of Social Media Has Evolved

Pearson Higher Education and the Babson Survey Research Group conducted an annual survey of nearly 4,000 teaching faculty from all disciplines in higher education which examined both the personal and professional impacts of social media (via PRWeb).

The key findings of the survey (quoted below from the PRWeb report) include:

• 64.4 percent of faculty use social media for their personal live, 33.8 percent use it for teaching
• 41 percent for those under age 35 compared to 30 percent for those over age 55 reported using social media in their teaching
• Faculty in the Humanities and Arts, Professions and Applied Sciences, and the Social Sciences use social media at higher rates than those in Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science
• Blogs and wikis are preferred for teaching, while Facebook or LinkedIn are used more for social and professional connections
• 88 percent of faculty, regardless of discipline, reported using online video in the classroom

Faculty are becoming "more comfortable" about the wider adoption of social media, and are getting less and less concerned about the use of social media. The top two concerns are "privacy and the integrity of student submissions" according to the report. As you can see below Facebook is the most used Social Media tool for personal use, while Linkedin is the most used for professional use:

Chart source: How today’s  higher education faculty use social media by Pearson Learning (click to enlarge).

I'm delighted to see such a high percentage of Faculty using online video in the classroom. But I am also struck that with such high rates of adoption of Social Media among Faculty, and the near total adoption by students, that more effort is not put into trying to use the likes of Facebook and Linkedin for learning. There's a business opportunity for some young entrepreneur here.