80 Percent of College Faculty Now Using Online Social Media

80 Percent of College Faculty Now Using Online Social Media

Four out of five college instructors use social media such as Facebook, blogs and Twitter, according to a new survey by the Babson Survey Research Group in collaboration with New Marketing Labs and Pearson Learning Solutions.

Half of the 1,000 college faculty participating in the survey say they are using social media in the classroom.  Podcasts, blogs, and wikis are the primary digital media used in the college lesson plans.

The social media benefits for online college faculty are greater than for face-to-face teachers because their only student interaction happens through the web. Younger faculty are only slightly more likely to use social media in the classroom than older faculty (those who have been teaching at least 20 years).

Other findings:

• Most (59 percent) have more than one social network account, with 25 percent having accounts on four or more networks

• More than 30 percent use social networks to communicate with their students

• The most common social media activity is watching a video or podcasts in the classroom

• Social sciences and humanities faculty are more likely to use social media in the classroom than those in mathematics, science, business or economics.