Barriers to the adoption of social technologies in higher education

The advantages of social technologies in education have been amply explored in recent research, but it is just as important to understand the drawbacks that come with the adoption of social media in learning and teaching. This paper draws on the review of literature on privacy, information security, trust, technology acceptance and other fields which help us gain an insight into why social media integration into pedagogy is slow while its proliferation into other areas is overwhelming. We report the findings of a survey of UK students on their social networking behaviour, privacy and information security concerns. Social technologies are viewed differently by the faculty, as emerged from our qualitative study of technology adoption. In order to gain a balanced insight into concerns about social media adoption in learning and teaching we present the student and instructor views. Further research directions and practical implications are discussed.