In 2012, Pearson Learning Solutions and Babson Survey Research Group collaborated in order to describe how higher education faculty use social media (https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/blogswikispodcasts.pdf). The study looks at the personal, professional, and teaching uses of social media. This blog post will discuss their findings in regard to the teaching aspects.
Their survey found that only 33.8% of faculty use social media in their teaching. Of that 33.8% they broke down use by both age and discipline. As would be intuitive to many of us, faculty under 35 were the most prominent group for their use in teaching. Among the discipline categories, the STEM-focused discipline instructors tend to use social media less than their Humanities and Arts peers.
What does social media mean in this study? Pearson and Babson describe social media in 5 groups:
Blogs and Wikis
Podcasts
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
I find this breakdown of social media to be curious. In my mind, social media is defined by the platform not the content. However, the interactions that are possible through blogs, podcasts, etc. are similar to that of typical social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This Quora (a Q&A forum) post, https://www.quora.com/Why-is-YouTube-considered-a-social-media-platform , a user begs the question "Is YouTube a social media platform?"
Another user responds, "...it enables interactions from users by liking, replying, sharing and commenting on each video", leading to the answer being yes. Social media is about the creation of content and how others interact, respond, or use the content. The researchers in this social media study also included videos in the teaching use of social media. They looked at not only if video was used, which disciplines use it most, where it was found, and more.
While faculty use video during class, they also had students consume videos outside of class or even create videos in order to contribute or demonstrate knowledge. Faculty found videos in a variety of ways, showing us that finding educational material takes a village. The selection methods of faculty as well could be a teaching point for students on how to filter information found online.
All of the graphs used in this blog were created as a result of the study conducted by Pearson Learning Solutions and Babson Survey Research group.