Faculty’s Social Media usage in Higher Education Embrace Change or Left Behind

This paper addresses faculty members’ (academic staff) viewpoints on benefits, barriers and concerns of utilizing social media and also investigates differences with respect to their social media experience in teaching, age and the purpose of using social media. The data was collected through an adopted questionnaire from 324 faculty members of two public and two private universities in north part of Cyprus and was analyzed through descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA. Results revealed that, although faculty members appreciate benefits of using social media, they do have concerns and they are aware of barriers almost as to same degree as benefits of using social media. Those who are familiar and have used social media before think more about concerns than those who haven’t used it. Elder faculty members possess less concern about using social media than their younger and middle age colleagues. Furthermore, the purpose (personal, educational, professional) of using social media has no effect on faculty members’ viewpoints on benefits, concerns and barriers of using social media. Abundant literature on social media usage from students’ perspective and relatively limited studies examining teachers/instructors point of views on social media use particularly for developing countries constitute the primary motivation behind the emergence of such research. Faculty members should be endorsed to adopt social media for instructional and professional purpose and misconceptions about using social media and barriers should be eliminated to enhance conscious utilization of social media for teaching.