Social Media & Education Project Update

So in the first 5 days of the project, I've gotten some decent responses.  I've got just under 100 responses and am hoping that this next week with faculty and students back to class I will be able to catch more people to fill out the survey.  I'd like to see this go to a much larger number of faculty and students in the ensuing month, so please keep forwarding this survey to other people--your help thus far has been great!

The project is looking at faculty and students who choose to interact during or after a course via social media.  Thus I'm interested in hearing from students who have interacted with faculty they have had for their courses and faculty who have interact with their students from the courses they teach.  I wanted to take a brief look at the current findings to show some interesting elements in the results thus far:

1.  Faculty vs. Students
This breakdown shows the different in faculty and students who have filled out the survey.  That more faculty than students have filled this out speaks more to who is more connected in my social networks.  It's also because I've been posting requests to fill out the survey on largely instructor & adult oriented places (e.g. LinkedIn groups, Google+ communities regarding higher ed and such).  If people have recommendation for different student sites and social networks to post on, I'd be happy to follow up with that.

Number and breakdown of respondents among faculty and students.\
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2.   Usage of Platforms
This question looked at the different platforms that students and faculty interacted with via social media.  The big one was Facebook with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blogging also putting in strong performances.  Others were not as popular.

Platforms that students & faculty use to engage
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3.  Student & Faculty Experience
This is one of the most interesting charts thus far in that it is confirming some of the things I suspected.  For many of us who use social media with our students and vice versa, it is found to be substantially more positive than negative.  Of course that's a premature conclusion and maybe not entirely amazing insight.  Next up will be looking at the actual remarks and thoughts that people shared to see what further insights are useful.

Reactions about experiences interacting via social media by faculty & students
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So those are some preliminary insights and thoughts.  However, I am hoping to get even more results, so please continue sharing.

For those interested in hearing a little bit more about the project, check out the original blog post.  You can also take a look at this blog post where my musings and thoughts about social media and education have helped me formulate and design this larger project.  

If you want to go to the survey directly, check out this link.

Finally, I also wanted to mention that during the last few days I've had some great people email me and give feedback or ask for clarifications.  Thank you for doing so as that's helped me clarify different things with regards to the project.  If you run into trouble or need some clarity, please don't hesitate to email me or to comment here on the blog with your questions.

Again, I appreciate all the help everyone has given me in the last 5 days and look forward to seeing more contributions by students and faculty over the next month.

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