I Social Media vanno all'università? Un'indagine sulle pratiche didattiche degli accademici italiani

This paper reports the results of a survey addressed to Italian academic scholars with the aim of identifying the teaching uses of Social Media in the field of university teaching practices. For this purpose, a survey instrument, already administered in the USA, was translated and adapted and sent to the entire Italian university scholar population. 6139 university researchers/teachers answered the survey, corresponding to a rate of 10.5%. The results demonstrate that Social Media use is still rather limited for reasons of various nature and highlight prevailing forms of teaching, mainly face-to-face based, to social and collaborative practices. Moreover, they also reveal factors of cultural resistance or of perception of uselessness of these tools. The latter may contribute to cause distress of the traditional models of the pedagogical relationship. A combination of factors of pedagogical, pragmatic and value nature seem to persuade teachers to prefer in presence teaching modes or, at most, traditional e-learning platforms. However, overall the results emphasize ambivalent attitudes towards the benefits and challenges of these tools in the context of higher education as already pointed out by the literature.