SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION STUDENT CHANNELS STUDY: HOW DO COLLEGE
STUDENTS COMMUNICATE?
by
Kristen Leigh Martin
A Senior Honors Project Presented to the
Honors College
East Carolina University
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for
Graduation with Honors
by
Kristen Leigh Martin
Greenville, NC
May 2015
Approved by:
Dr. Mary Tucker-McLaughlin
School of Communication, College of Fine Arts and Communication
How Do College Students Communicate? – Kristen Martin
Abstract
College students use different channels of communication to stay in contact with friends and
family as well as coworkers and classmates. The channels of communication vary between
intimate, such as text messaging, and professional, such as email. This study examines the
channels of communication that a medium-sized southern university’s school of communication
students use to communicate in their different networks. To determine the methods of
communication, the students were surveyed on their social media usage and interactions with the
School of Communication. Students also participated in a focus group discussion to elaborate on
the survey results. A comparison of the data shows that students prefer to use social media and
other informal methods to communicate with their family and peers but would prefer to use more
professional methods to communicate with professors and other faculty.
I. Introduction
Walking across a university campus today, it’s not uncommon to see the majority of
students absorbed in their phones. With the constant addition of new social media applications,
such as Snapchat and Vine, college students have a barrage of sources to get news, communicate
with family and friends, and explore their interests. Many students are on at least one social
media site and many have downloaded the apps to their phones. College students are being
offered more ways than ever before to communicate with their peers and professors. However,
the traditional ways of communicating, such as email, aren’t completely obsolete. This research
aims to investigate how college students prefer to communicate with their different social groups
and if different methods will have to be used to communicate with college students.
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II. Literature Review
Social network sites are defined as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1)
construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other
users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and
those made by others within the system (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Social media networks have
been around since 1997 with the introduction of SixDegrees.com, a site that permitted users to
create lists of their friends and look at their friends’ lists. Social media sites have expanded
rapidly with the introduction of smartphones and social media applications that can keep users
more connected than ever.
Although these sites were originally designed with a social purpose in mind, they are
beginning to have a wide range of uses outside of the social spectrum. College organizations
typically use Facebook to set up groups for communicating with all of their members and some
professors have utilized Twitter hashtags to get student opinions on lectures. The use of social
media sites in the actual classroom is very limited. According to a study focusing on using
Facebook in higher education, students are more open to using Facebook in an educational
aspect and only a small percentage of faculty members would be open to the idea of using social
media in the classroom (Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman & Witty, 2010).
The capabilities that social media sites have is constantly expanding. Where students are
concerned, they could possibly impact students’ desire to learn and how they participate in the
classroom setting (Cheung, Chiu & Lee 2010). However, students aren’t completely comfortable
with faculty being on their social media sites. Hewitt and Forte’s study Crossing Boundaries:
Identity Management and Student/Faculty Relationships on Facebook found that 66% of
students were okay with faculty being on Facebook but the other 33% were concerned with
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How Do College Students Communicate? – Kristen Martin
keeping their personal life to themselves. Students were also concerned about interacting with
faculty online (2006).
Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe expanded the purpose of social network sites to “workrelated contexts, romantic relationship initiation, connecting those with shared interests such as
music or politics or the college student population (2007). Where students are concerned, the
possibilities for social media are varied. Research by Roblyer et al. demonstrated that social
media can be an excellent marketing tool for university events. It’s free, has survey tools, and is
also accessible to alumni. In their research, students and faculty don’t really want to use
Facebook in the classroom, but half of the students surveyed said it would be convenient (2010).
III. Methodology
Participants
This study consisted of two parts: a survey and a focus group. Survey participants
consisted of 92 communication majors who were recruited through email and online posts to
social media sites. They were asked to complete a 16 question survey. There were 16 freshmen
(17%), 16 sophomores (17%), 31 juniors (34%), and 29 seniors (33%). Six communication
students participated in the focus group and were mostly juniors and seniors. These students
were recruited through email and online posts to social media sites. They were asked to meet in
the School of Communication at lunch time one day to complete the focus group for one 30
minute session.
Measures
The 16 survey questions and 6 focus group questions were adapted from previous studies
and information uncovered in the literature review. The first five survey questions dealt with
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general social media usage, more specifically how often it’s used, which sites are used, and if
they had used social media for an educational purpose. The next seven questions dealt with how
students interact with or wish to interact with their school. Students were asked if they would
want to communicate via social media with the School of Communication and what type of news
they already received and wished to receive from the School of Communication. The last three
questions were demographical questions about what type of devices students used, how they
typically used their devices and what class they were classified as. The focus group questions
were more open-ended and written to spark conversation in the group. Students were asked how
they received information from the university and their school and what information they
received. They were also asked what information they wanted to receive as well as how often
and other specifications. Next, they were asked about their social media usage and the purpose of
each of their social media as well as how they would feel about using social media to
communicate with university faculty. The last questions concerned their opinions on face-to-face
meetings and what information could be discussed at them.
This research was composed of mixed methods with a quantitative survey component and
a qualitative focus group component. This research method was chosen to get general
information about how college students prefer to communicate as well as more specific types of
communication they seek out. The survey was created through the university's Qualtrics survey
program and emailed out to the entire School of Communication courtesy of an advisor. Students
were given a two week period to fill out the survey and were sent reminders periodically. The
survey was closed after two weeks and a report with all survey questions printed out. Charts and
graphs were created to track the major trends in the data and determine major communication
decisions. Changes were made to the focus group questions based on survey response answers.
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Eligible students were emailed information about the focus group and how to sign up through
Google Forms if they wished to participate. They were given two weeks to sign up before the
day of the focus group. Six students were gathered for the focus group and were seated in a
classroom setting with a video camera recording their responses. The video data was transcribed
into a written format and analyzed for key phrases that verified or disproved the survey results.
IV. Results
General Social Media Usage
Survey
Ninety percent of respondents said they are always browsing on social media or are on
social media more than once a day. Of the nine social media sites listed on the survey, five were
used by over 50 percent of the respondents. Of these five, Facebook was the most popular with
88 percent usage, Instagram at 79 percent usage, Snapchat at 69 percent usage, Twitter at 66
percent usage and Pinterest at 62 percent usage. When asked which site they used the most
frequently, 34 percent selected Instagram and 33 percent selected Facebook, with Twitter coming
third at 16 percent. Over half of the respondents have used social media for an educational
purpose. Chart 1 illustrates the different ways that respondents have used social media
educationally. The top two social media educational purposes were using it for projects or
classes at 36 percent and communicating with classmates and groups at 32 percent. Other
educational usages were getting information in relation to their major at 12 percent, using it in
relation to internships and assistantships at 4 percent, extra credit at 3 percent, and advice,
scheduling and faculty postings, all at 2 percent each. Seven percent of respondents weren’t sure
exactly how they had used it educationally.
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How Do College Students Communicate? – Kristen Martin
Chart 1: Educational usage of social media
Advice (2%)
Faculty postings (2%)
Scheduling (2%)
Extra Credit (3%)
Internships/Assistantships (4%)
Other (7%)
Information (12%)
Groups/Communication (32%)
Projects/Classes (36%)
Focus group
Two of the participants said they use social media every day and one participant said a
lot. One of the participants uses social media with his job covering university sports and said, “I
don’t know how many times I’ve tweeted today. They’ve had purposes though.” Two of the
respondents said they mainly used social media for conversing about sports and communicating
with other people who were interested in sports. One participant said that Twitter was the way to
go “when you’re talking about information and to access information.” The group was in
consensus that sites like Instagram weren’t for information and were for sharing photos. One
participant said “I like Instagram because of the community.” Participants said that they would
only follow university social media accounts if they know what to expect from the account in
terms of what information would be posted. Some participants said they would follow accounts
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How Do College Students Communicate? – Kristen Martin
if they would have internship postings, especially on Twitter. One participant stated, “The way
that it’s [Twitter] packaged is good. I think if people just know about this. They’re on their
phone, ‘Okay, what jobs are available? Let me scroll through a Twitter timeline.’ That’s easy.”
Participants said that different social media sites needed to be utilized in different ways. One
consensus was that photos are very eye-catching on social media. One of the participants pays
attention to posts that reflect what’s going on in pop culture: “I think it’s clever when people tie
an event that they’re doing with the world.” Another participant agreed and added, “The cleverer
something is, especially on Twitter, the more retweets it’ll get, which means it reaches more
people.” All of the participants did not want to interact with their professors on social media.
One said, “I feel like that would so be weird tweeting my professor.” Another participant said, “I
don’t want my professors to know when I’m not paying attention to them or when I’m talking
about them” while another said, “That’s your personal life. That’s like showing your professor
your underpants in a way.”
Communicating with University Officials
Survey
Half of the respondents said they hardly ever or never read newsletters from the School of
Communication. However, 83 percent are very interested or somewhat interested in being able to
access a news website for the School of Communication. The majority, 70 percent, do not follow
the school on social media but 34 percent are very interested in receiving School of
Communication news on social media. At least 75 percent of respondents want to receive news
concerning course information, career information, important upcoming dates and internship
information from the school. The majority of respondents (77 percent) would prefer not to
receive updates via text messaging from the school. Chart 2 shows the preferred methods of
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How Do College Students Communicate? – Kristen Martin
receiving news. Seventy percent of students prefer receiving news by email, with social media
coming in second at 12 percent. Seventy-four percent of respondents would like the option of
communicating with the School of Communication via Facebook and other social media
platforms.
Chart 2: How Students Prefer to Receive News
from School of Communication
Email
Social media
School of Communciation website
Text messages
Blog website
Other
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Focus group
The majority of the respondents said they receive most of their campus information from
emails and Blackboard. Others said The East Carolinian gives some information and a few social
media accounts. Several participants said they get a lot of spam-like mail from organizations
such as SGA that doesn’t really apply to them. One participant said, “I didn’t get the cap and
gown information because I thought it was SGA mail or one of those spam mail so I straight
deleted it because of the way it was packaged.” In order to not delete important emails,
participants suggested two possible fixes: flag the email as important or create more
understandable subject lines. When asked what information they would prefer to receive from
the school, participants had a variety of answers including internships, opportunities outside of
the university, when public speakers would be on campus, and organization opportunities. One
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important suggestion was more information about classes, including when they were making
changes to the curriculum. One participant said the school stopped offering a class he was
supposed to take but he didn’t know it and was almost set back a semester. Some participants
said that they have stopped reading emails from their advisors because it seems they only
concern information about registration or dropping/adding classes. Participants would like to be
informed about new information concerning the college weekly, but only if it’s new information.
They all agreed that any information sent out should be in a concise format because it was easier
to read. One participant said that a Buzzfeed-style newsletter would be effective “because then
you could skim through the stuff you don’t want to read but then if you see something that
catches your eye, you can read more about that.” Participants said that if emails were
personalized with their name at the top they would pay more attention because if they know that
it’s been sent to everyone it loses its value a little. They said that university staff should consider
that many students may be reading these emails on their phones and should take that into
consideration when sending out important information. Several participants hated being sent
PDFs because you have to wait for them to load and they don’t load efficiently on mobile
devices. Instead of attaching PDF files, they suggested embedding links in an email for readers
to click on at their leisure. Another method of communicating that participants were interested in
was face-to-face communication. One participant said they would be interested in hearing their
professors’ experiences and stories working in the communications field as well as advice in
person. Another said, “I think building a relationship is important so that you can build
networks.” Many participants agreed that faculty needed to make an effort to communicate faceto-face with students and make it more known when they would be available to talk. After
discussing how to better communicate face-to-face with faculty, the participants agreed that the
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school should host a meet-and-greet reception each year where all of the professors and students
could get to know each other. One participant said, “It would be a good opportunity and would
make it easier to talk to them” [professors].
V. Discussion
The purpose of this research was to determine college students’ communication
preferences. The results of this study were almost consistent with previous research and with my
hypotheses that college students prefer intimate communication with peers, but prefer more
professional communication with professors. However, it is only professors whom students do
not wish to communicate with via intimate channels, such as social media. They are completely
comfortable communicating with more anonymous university accounts.
Social media is a perfect forum to share information in a different format than emails,
especially since 90 percent of survey respondents said they’re on social media more than once a
day. Since this is a huge chunk of students’ lives already, it would only make sense to integrate it
more into their educational lives. Emails can get lost in inboxes or as one participant pointed out,
they can easily be deleted by mistake.
When using social media as a communication tool, it’s important to keep in mind that
different sites have different purposes. Students seemed very intrigued with the idea of an
internship twitter account that posts different listings each day was brought up. However, they
were against a Facebook page that posted with the same frequency.
In general, students want all of their communication to be as succinct and concise as
possible. Many respondents spoke about how PDFs weren’t a good choice for sharing
information at times because they sometimes don’t load properly on phones. The students said
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that any information sent out or websites created should consider that many students check their
email and social media accounts on their phones, which has a completely different format than a
desktop computer.
Although students are on social media a lot, they’re still interested in traditional methods
of communicating with their professors. One method they were very in favor of was face-to-face
communication. They want to build and maintain relationships with their professors and get
advice and experience stories from them to help with their own careers.
The results of this survey were very similar to other studies in that students didn’t want to
communicate one-on-one with their professors on social media. Students were very interested in
getting event information from social media, which is similar to Roblyer et al.’s study that said it
would be an effective marketing tool (2010). The research, pictured in Chart 1, also corroborated
that students like to use social media to communicate in groups with classmates.
Limitations
This study had several strengths, yet there were several limitations that should be taken
into consideration. Originally, the survey was created to reach at least 100 people with a
preferred pool of 125 and the focus group was supposed to consist of approximately 10-15
students. Also, the participants from this study originated from one university and one major.
The results may not be generalizable to the rest of the university or to other universities. When
answering the survey, respondents chose not to answer some questions, which skewed the
overall data in relation to percentages who answered other questions. Since the pools of
participants were selected from the school of communication, their answers on how they choose
to communicate could vary greatly from how other majors prefer to communicate.
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VI. Conclusion
Although these results may not hold true for every university, they show that college
students prefer traditional methods, such as email or face-to-face meetings, to communicate with
faculty. The findings that college students want to interact with anonymous university accounts
is helpful for university officials because it is yet another way that they can interact with their
student population and share important information with them. Since students are more
comfortable interacting with the university than they were back in 2007, it is possible that in
another 10 years, students and faculty will have more interactions via social media.
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Works Cited
Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. Retrieved January 27,
2015, from Wiley Online Library.
Cheung, C., Chiu, P., & Lee, M. (2010). Online social networks: Why do students use facebook?
Computers in Human Behavior, 27(4), 1337–1343-1337–1343. Retrieved January 27,
2015, from Science Direct.
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social
capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer‐
Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143-1168.
Hewitt, A., & Forte, A. (2006). Crossing boundaries: Identity management and student/faculty
relationships on the Facebook. Poster presented at CSCW, Banff, Alberta, 1-2.
Roblyer, M., McDaniel, M., Webb, M., Herman, J., & Witty, J. (2010). Findings on Facebook in
higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of
social networking sites. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(3), 134-140. Retrieved
January 27, 2015, from Science Direct.
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