Students judge professors on what they post on Facebook

PTI May 7, 2013, 07.16AM IST

NEW YORK: Professors, please note! While your Facebook profile may help you connect with students, you may have to be careful about what you post on the site!

College students judge professors based on their Facebook profiles, a new study has found. For instance, a professor with a socially oriented Facebook profile may be viewed as more popular but less skilled by potential students than other professors, according to the study.

Many professors use the site to reach out to undergraduates as well as for their own social reasons, said Winthrop University psychologist Merry Sleigh and her students Jason Laboe, also of Winthrop, and Aimee Smith of Kent State University.

 To understand how a social media presence might influence a professor's teaching career, the researchers created six fake Facebook pages, all of a fictional 39-year-old male professor, 'Live Science' reported.

Each page had a specific focus: Either the professor was portrayed as primarily politically conservative, politically liberal, religious, family-oriented, socially oriented or professional.

One hundred and ten undergraduates were randomly given one of the profiles to rate for the professor's skill, friendliness, popularity and appropriateness and their likelihood of taking the professor's class and how much they respected him.

Professors with professionally oriented profiles were viewed as most skilled, whereas social and conservative professors were seen as the least skilled. Social professors were also seen as the least likely to be difficult, while politically conservative professors were viewed as most likely to teach a tough course. Students disliked professors who wore their politics on their sleeves . They also had little respect for social professors and felt family-oriented ones were the most respectable.