Abstract:

Today, communication is digital, especially with young adults. Generation Z and Millennials entering college bring a more technological dependent and driven mentality. Professors are having to update themselves to effectively communicate to these technologically attuned younger generations. Not only are our student more up to date year to year, but the working society around us forces us to become more digital professionally and personally. This is affecting how we educate as well. With professors incorporating more use of technology and social media in the classroom, a question arises concerning the professional versus personal boundaries on digital communication with students. In this study, we examine where students perceive boundaries where professors may invade their personal privacy through, most often innocuous attempts to better communicate.

A survey was developed and 103 respondents from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk were obtained. The survey contained five sections related to:
1) Social Media use (USE),
2) General view of channel privacy (PER) of each channel,
3) Comfort level with using channel to communicate with professors (COM),
4) Comfort level with using channel for class assignment (ASN),
5) rational for discomfort,
6) demographics.

Two qualifying questions and two attention checks were included in the survey to ensure validity of the responses. In general, the results suggest that students view non-social media (personal phones and emails) as significantly more private than social media channels. Among the social media channels, Facebook was surprisingly viewed as the most private. Students were most comfortable communicating with their professors through their personal email and mobile phone–even though generally these were considered the most private of the channels. They were least comfortable using Instagram and Twitter to communicate with their professors. Largely, the same is true for using these channels to complete assignments. Interestingly, the rational that the students gave for discomfort was highest for general privacy concerns and a desire to keep school separate from their private life, with about half of the students indicating this rationale. They were least concerned about other students having access to their personal accounts. About 10 percent of students have never used Facebook for class purposes, with about 50 percent using it ‘often’ for class purposes. YouTube ranked at the most used for class purposes at nearly 70 percent ‘often’ using it, and 27 percent ‘occasionally’ using it. The least used were Tumblr and WhatsApp/Viber (over 60% never used) and LinkedIn (50% never used).

Keywords:

Privacy, digital communication, pedagogy.