The use of social media as a corporate function has increased over the last few years, making professors take steps to acclimate students to using social media in a professional manner.
John Forde, professor and head of the Mississippi State University Department of Communication, said he has “Twitter sessions” in his classes. In these sessions students are encouraged to tweet their thoughts and questions under the hashtag #MSUPR.
“I do my regular lecture in class and have the power point going and encourage students to tweet,” Forde said. “I have added extra credit for input in class, and I’ve added the Twitter sessions to that.”
According to research conducted from 2010 to 2013 by Babson Survey Research Group, 40 percent of faculty members in America use social media as a teaching tool, and 55 percent of faculty members use social media for professional communication.  
Amanda Powers, associate professor and the interim head of the Mitchell Memorial Library research department, said she highlights the importance for students to be able to use social media professionally.
“The idea is to make (students) aware of how important their social presence is,” Powers said. “It’s not really intended to scare people into cleaning it up, although that’s certainly a part of it, but also how to leverage it to have all the tools at your disposal.”
In BSRG’s research, faculty members listed their main concerns about the increase of social media was the integrity of students and privacy risks involved. 
Mary Beth Hunter, senior anthropology major, said having students use social media in class could be distracting.
“I don’t know about having everybody tweet in class,” Hunter said. “If it was a big lecture, it would be a barrage of stuff, could be negative or funny. I guess if everyone stayed on topic it would be a cool way to talk about things.”
Forde also said overall, students tend to like having social media in the classroom, but does echo Hunters concern for distracting other students.
“Students seem to really like it, the feedback I’ve gotten has been very positive,” Forde said. “The only somewhat negative comments people have made are some people find it hard to follow on Twitter and in class.”