Between Tradition and Innovation: How Gender and Age Shape Faculty's Conceptualization of Social Media in Academia

Abstract

Both gender and age are now considered to be factors that influence the views and use of social media tools within teaching, professional development and academic tasks of educators in higher education. The purpose of this quantitative study is to describe the patterns of such faculty who teach in English-medium higher education programs, within the context of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Independent-samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were used to compare differences between the four themes of use—in professional uses, social uses, academic uses and resources access, educational effectiveness and engagement, and information reliability. The professional and social usage of social media was higher among the male than the female faculty members as well as among the younger faculty members, and perceived educational effectiveness was higher with age than gender, expectations being the highest among younger faculty. Particularly female faculty and younger faculty were slightly more likely to rely on the information shared on social media. The results indicate that ICT knowledge and educational qualifications were positively correlated with technology proficiency and there was no independent relationship between gender and technology proficiency, or between age and technology proficiency. Because the sample was a large, geographically uneven convenience sample rather than a probability sample, these patterns should be read as exploratory rather than as national estimates. These results indicate that there is not likely to be a single pathway to successful technology integration that will work for everyone in the faculty community, but that there will be differentiated professional learning opportunities that will meet the needs of senior faculty, junior faculty, female faculty, and male faculty.