Faculty Focus, an online resource dedicated to effective teaching
practices for the college classroom, today announced results of its
second annual survey on Twitter usage and trends in higher education.
The survey of nearly 1,400 college faculty members found that more than
a third (35.2 percent) of the 1,372 respondents use Twitter in some
capacity. That’s an increase from 30.7 percent in 2009.
“Interestingly, one of the new trends to emerge this year was this
feeling of technology overload”Meanwhile, just under half (47.9 percent) of those who completed the
survey say they’ve never used Twitter, down from 56.4 percent in 2009.
The remaining 16.9 percent say they tried Twitter, but stopped using it
— a four percent increase from 2009.The findings, released today in the report Twitter in Higher
Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty show
adoption among higher education professionals continues to grow.
However, the results also reveal that a large number of faculty still
question the value of using the micro-blogging service in an academic
setting.Key findings of the report include:
- 29.7 percent of respondents say they are “very familiar” or “extremely
familiar” with Twitter, a 7.8 percent increase from 2009.- Faculty are most likely to use Twitter as a real-time news source or
to share information with peers; with approximately half saying they
do so “frequently.”- Of those who’ve never used Twitter, 68.8 percent question its
educational relevance.- 76.1 percent of Twitter quitters stopped using the technology because
they didn’t find it valuable.- 56.8 percent of current Twitter users say they expect to increase
their use during the coming academic year.
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