Use Of Facebook In Learning Research Articles

Is facebook useful for learning? A study in private universities in Malaysia

Facebook offers a new learning environment, and is used for online academic discussions between distance learners; however, students lack the primary skills to use it academically due to its popular social use. This issue requires investigation into the drivers that affect undergraduate intentions and behaviour when using Facebook as students of private universities in Malaysia. The technology acceptance model (TAM) is adopted to demonstrate student perceptions of using Facebook for learning. Perceived enjoyment and self-efficacy are also integrated into the research framework to offer a deep understanding about the acceptance and use of new technologies. The determinants analysed are perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment and self-efficacy. Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) is used to analyse the data. The results show that all determinants have significant positive relationships with intention and behaviour to use, except for perceived usefulness. The research findings offer valuable and helpful implications that will contribute to universities, educational developers and academics regarding the effective use of Facebook for learning. This research successfully developed an extended TAM model and verified its applicability for learning in Facebook.

The Students' Perspective on the Use of Facebook in Writing Class

Technology nowadays has many functions in our life. This study aims to explore the students’ perspective on the use of Facebook in a writing class. This study was conducted at English Department, Faculty of Education, State Islamic College (STAIN) of Sorong, West Papua, Indonesia. Ten students of English Education Department (TBI) participated in this study. This study employed a qualitative method. Interview protocol is the main instrument in this study as guides for gathering data during the interview and ease the thematic analysis. This study explores the student perspectives on the use of Facebook in writing classes. Ten students shared their experiences in using Facebook and expressed their opinions about using Facebook in learning. They revealed eight subthemes related to four themes; the beginning of the students in using Facebook, the students’ purposes in using Facebook, their feelings towards the use of Facebook in learning, and their opinion toward the use of Facebook in writing class. Based on the students’ perspective towards the use of Facebook in their learning, this study revealed that most of the students had positive feeling to the use of Facebook in the writing class. This study is expected to give a contribution to English language teaching that Facebook can be a new medium in teaching writing for Islamic Higher Education.

FACEBOOK AS LOGISTIC SUPPORT TO LINGUISTIC INTERACTION

New technologies provide significant logistical support to contemporary learning process, particularly in the field of university education. Students, as part of the youth population in the process of education, use new media technologies daily, among which an important place belongs to Facebook. Although Facebook is not characterised as a technology through which one learns, and is primarily used for communication and exchange of information, a number of research point to the importance of Facebook as a logistic support to the learning process. The main objective of the research was to determine students' attitudes about the use of Facebook in learning and sharing information important to learn the German language in the process of university studying. The study included 120 students of Faculty of Philosophy, who learn German as a second foreign language. Data obtained from the research confirmed that students use Facebook to share information related to exams, to exchange translation and other specialised texts in German. As for study purposes, the results of the research show that students mostly use Facebook for information sharing in the field of experience exchange with older colleagues, and least for the exchange of scientific articles. Research findings indicate that more than half of the surveyed students recognised Facebook as a significant support in learning the German language. As a recommendation, the need for greater use of new media for learning and for providing adequate logistics of the learning process stands out, which is particularly important in the current reform of higher education.

Innovative Integration of Facebook Groups in Biomaterials Course: Perception of Dental Students.

Background:Calls for incorporating Facebook into the academic process to achieve educational purposes were done since more than 10 years.Objectives:This study was designed to assess the perception of the dental students towards the use of Facebook in learning of the Biomaterials course and to determine if there is a gender-based difference in the students’ perception.Subjects and methods:This cross sectional study was conducted on the 3rd year undergraduate dental students, at one of Saudi universities during the academic year 2016-2017 using a self-administered questionnaire that was distributed to all students with a response rate 100%. Data was analyzed using the SPSS version 16.Results:The female students were significantly more satisfied with the course than the male as they wanted to use Facebook to study the other topics of the Biomaterials course (p=0.01) as well as to study the other subjects (p=0.012) and they thought that Facebook can be used for scientific discussion (p=0.01).The willing to use Facebook in future learning was high among the female students but with no significant difference between both males and females. It was unexpected to find low agreement score among the participants on their preference to have assignments, movies, feedback or even reminders on Facebook with no significant difference between males and females.Conclusion:Integrating learning through Facebook groups into the dental courses was generally well-perceived among the dental students and specifically accepted for the Biomaterials course. Students were willing to apply such model in other dentistry subjects. Further investigation of the impact of the approach on students’ performance is recommended.

Where Facebook Meets Plagiarism: An Investigation and an Intervention

BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE Closed (student only) Facebook groups are commonplace amongst students and the social and academic benefits of such groups are well studied. The exclusion of staff from these Facebook groups could conceivably lead to inappropriate behaviour such as plagiarism but the occurrence of this is unknown. Many students have a poor understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, or the rationale for its avoidance (other than to avoid penalty). In this study we sought to explore the behaviours of students on Facebook groups, focusing on plagiarism. We also broadened our analysis to encompass an investigation of general plagiarism awareness in order to use the findings to inform the co-creation of a simple plagiarism intervention tool for use on Facebook groups. METHODS Our mixed methods approach encompassed seven student focus groups and a survey of 273 students at one UK University, as well as consultation of 11 HEI staff. Information and ideas drawn from the investigative phase of the project informed the design and co-creation of a plagiarism avoidance video resource. RESULTS AND LESSONS LEARNED We did not find plagiarism on Facebook to be a major concern despite wide use by students of closed groups to support learning. We did, however, find that interactive discussion on Facebook was minimal, and that membership was non-inclusive, and therefore suggest caution towards formal use of Facebook in learning. We also found that >40% of our students held misconceptions and anxieties about what constitutes plagiarism and about how to avoid it, and that University guidelines on plagiarism are not improving understanding. Plagiarism confusion was heightened for students new to our University, although further research into the generality of this observation is required. We advocate good scholarship education that actively engages, but is not limited to, students in their first year of study, and present our own anti-plagiarism tool that is suitable for deployment via Facebook groups.

Adding to the mix: Students use of Facebook groups and blackboard discussion forums in higher education

This paper reports on a case study of the use of Facebook in learning and teaching in higher education. Facebook was used as a venue for online discussion to support the existing Learning Management System (in this case Blackboard) in the unit Internet Collaboration and Organisation as part of the Internet Communications degree taught fully online through Open Universities Australia (OUA). Students’ posts to both Facebook and the Blackboard discussion forum were analysed for content, length, and when throughout the study period they were posted. This is significant as much of the previous work in this area has relied on students self-reporting, rather than direct observation of student behaviour. These results were then compared to earlier instances of the same unit that ran within the previous twelve months, one fully online with OUA only using the Blackboard discussion group, and a second taught at Curtin University with both blended learning for students at the University’s Bentley campus as well as fully online for external students, that utilised both Blackboard and Facebook. The results show that Facebook greatly increases the level of student activity in online discussions, both absolutely and in the level of sustained activity across the unit’s study period. Facebook groups also had a different pattern of content from Blackboard. In Blackboard discussion is more focused on the set unit learning content, in Facebook students were using the groups to discuss administration and assignments and also bring in additional material from outside the units set learning materials. Facebook posts, while more sustained over the semester, were shorter in length. This study found that the addition of a Facebook discussion forum does not noticeably impact on the use of Blackboard’s discussion forum, but rather adds a new dimension to the mix of online interaction. The paper concludes that there is value in using both of these forums for student interaction, but unit design needs to take into account the different affordances of each to maximise their utility.