More than a third (35.2%) of college faculty members now use Twitter in some capacity, an increase from 30.7 percent in 2009, according to a new survey from Faculty Focus.

 Nearly half (47.9%) of those surveyed said they have never used Twitter, down from 56.4 percent in 2009. The remaining 16.9 percent said they tried Twitter but stopped using it – a four percent increase from 2009.

Faculty are most likely to use Twitter as a real-time news source or to share information with peers; with half saying they do so “frequently.” Among those who have never used Twitter, 68.8 percent question its educational relevance.

Other highlights from the survey include:

* 29.7 percent of respondents say they are “very familiar” or “extremely familiar” with Twitter, a 7.8 percent increase from 2009.

*56.8 percent of current Twitter users say they expect to increase their use during the coming academic year.

*76.1 percent of Twitter quitters stopped using the technology because they didn’t find it valuable.

“Interestingly, one of the new trends to emerge this year was this feeling of technology overload,” said Mary Bart, editor of Faculty Focus.

“We had a number of people comment that they already have enough ways to communicate with students and they simply don’t want another application that needs to be monitored and maintained. As one professor put it, ‘There’s already too much electronic clutter in my teaching life. I don’t need to add another source.’”