Facebook in undergraduate education

LENANDLAR SINGHSENIOR LECTURER

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCEUNIVERSITY OF GUYANA

Facebook in Undergraduate Education: An Update

Moodle MOOC 6 ConferenceMay 05, 2015

@lenandlar [email protected]

Outline Context Related Work Facebook Group Design Facebook in Undergraduate Education @ UG Experiences Affordances References

Context: University of Guyana Recently developed a Moodle Platform! Lecturers are free explore any tool A range of technologies are adopted

Social Networking Yahoo Groups Blogs – sharing resources, some dialog Google Sites – sharing resources Peerwise Facebook (Most Popular)

Lecturers’ Experiences

Technologies are adopted for both formal and informal learning Blogs are used to post updates, share resources Yahoo Groups used to share files and

communicate with students Google sites used to share notes and other

resources Peerwise (used for implementing contributing

student pedagogy) Facebook Groups used to share files, discuss

course materials, communicate

Challenges for Lecturers Inadequate understanding of effective technology

integration

Little/no support

No reward – a struggle to remain motivated

Do at your own risk and at the expense of research

Related Work(1) Facebook can be used a teaching tool but

problems with accessing real effect (Boghian, 2013)

Facebook useful for reflecting on learning experiences (Chan et al., 2013)

Facebook was effective a learning environment to support collaborative learning (DeVilliers & Pretorius, 2013)

Related Work(2) Engineering Students found that FB supported their

learning(Al-Atabi & Younis, 2010)

Teaching and Learning using FB is a challenge for teachers and students alike (Gray, Annabel, Kennedy, 2010)

“Social presence is the most important factor that determines students’ usage of Facebook. The features of social presence indeed can also encourage students to collaborate and work

together.” (Cheung, Chee & Lee, 2011)

Related Work(3) McCarthy(2013) identified many ‘positive

outcomes’ associated with first year students use of Facebook as a learning tool

Johnston, Chen and Hauman (2013) - Students are more dependent on Facebook than Twitter and noted “changes in usage, attitude and perception of Facebook over time”

Related Work(4) : vs LMS Schroeder and Greenbowe (2009)

number of posts on Facebook was nearly four times more than on WebCT

postings raised more complex topics generated more detailed replies

DeSchryver et al (2009) - students assigned to Facebook did not write longer or more frequent postings than the students assigned to Moodle. “A possible reason was that the students did not like having discussions in a separate system—Facebook—as they had been using Moodle in the course” – Wang et al. (2012)

Related Work(5): vs LMS

Wang et al. (2012) – used FB Groups as LMS announcements sharing resources organizing weekly tutorials conducting online discussionsStudents satisfied with “affordances” BUT some limitations File Format Issues Thread Management Uncertainty about Privacy

Facebook in Undergraduate Education @ UG

Singh,L., & Gaffar,K. (2010). Using Social Software to Support Computer Science Education - A Case of Using Facebook Groups. Paper presented at the 17th Biennial Conference Caribbean Academy of Science (CAS) Conference, Antigua, November 15, 2010.

Singh, L. (2011). Structured vs Unstructured Use of Facebook in the Classrooms at the University of Guyana. In J. Mair (Eds.), Face the Future: Guyana and the New Media Revolution, (pp. 55-64). Arima Publishers.


Singh, L., Gaffar, K. (2011). Using Social Software to Support Computer Science Education A Case of Using Facebook Groups. e-Journal of the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, 5(1).

Singh, L., & Gaffar, K. (2012). Engaging Computing Students on their Turf - Facebook Groups at Work. Presented at the Connecting Online (CO12) Conference. February 3-5, 2012.


Singh, L. (2013). Guided Assessment or Open Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of Students’ Interactions on Facebook Groups. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 14(1), 35-43.

Singh, L., & Gaffar, K. (2013). On the Formal Use of Facebook in Education in Deutsch, N. (Ed.).(2013). Connecting online for instruction and learning: International perspectives. Charleston: Createspace.

What is known?

Facebook is easy to use Facebook can support elements of learning and

student engagement Facebook works best for Informal Learning

opportunities work Do not use Facebook like your traditional LMS – It is

NOT!

Analysis: Facebook Group Design Features

Analysis: Facebook Group Design

Enrolment Management


File Management


File Management


Search


Discussion Management – Doc

Analysis: Facebook Group Design Discussion Management – Thread

Analysis: Facebook Group Design Discussion Management – Thread


Other Features Polling/Asking Questions Tagging e.g @Lenandlar

Group Chat – not very intuitive No Threaded Forums – was presented in earlier

versions

Facebook Activities in Undergraduate Education @ UG Groups form the basis for all support activities

Set up for all classes Students locate group and ask to join

Communication Notices, updates, etc

Resource sharing Lecture notes, other reading materials

Discussions Any topical discussion allowed

Some tutorials – some formal use was explored, Group Chat

Sample Groups

Inside a Facebook Group

File Sharing

Why Facebook/Groups? Students always on Students expect some element of social engagement Quick and easy way to communicate with students, sharing

information, post updates, etc Low overheads – easy to set up, easy to use Separate from personal Facebook profile (you don’t have to

engage outside of groups)

Facebook as LMS? Facebook Groups support some aspects of Learning

Management Threads/Discussions File Sharing Searching Enrolment Management

Biggest challenge User Management

Who are legitimate group members? Locating Content

Finding discussion topics

Affordances

A central space for 24/7 contact among students and between students and lecturers

A space that could help first year students adapt quickly to university life

A way for lecturers/instructors to develop working social relationships with students

A space to model social learning

References Al-Atabi, M., & Younis, O., (2010). Use of Facebook to support module delivery for

undergraduate engineering programmes. Proceedings of the 2010 AaeE Conference, Sydney.

Boghian, I. (2013). Using Facebook in Teaching. In M. Pătruţ, & B. Pătruţ (Eds.) Social Media in Higher Education: Teaching in Web 2.0 (pp. 86-103). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-2970-7.ch005

Chan, R.C.H., Lee, C.W.Y. Chan, B., Leung, C.K., & Chu, S.K.W. (2013). The application of blogs and Facebook in scaffolding the internship learning process. Paper presented at the CITE Research Symposium 2013, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Cheung, M.K.C., Chiu, P., & Lee, M.K.O.(2011). Online social networks: Why do students use facebook? Computers in Human Behaviour, 27, pp. 1337–1343

Cheung, C. M., Chiu, P. Y., & Lee, M. K. (2011). Online social networks: Why do students use facebook?. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(4), 1337-1343.

References DeSchryver, M., Mishra, P., Koehler, M. & Francis, A. (2009). Moodle vs. Facebook: does using Facebook for

discussions in an online course enhance perceived social presence and student interaction? In I. Gibson et al. (Ed.), Proceedings of society for information technology & teacher education international conference (pp. 329–336). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

deVilliers, M.R., & Pretorium, M.C.(2013). Evaluation of a Collaborative Learning Environment on a Facebook Forum. The Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation, 16(1), pp. 56-70

Gray, K., Annabell, L., & Kennedy, G. (2010). Medical students' use of Facebook to support learning: Insights from four case studies. Medical teacher, 32(12), 971-976.

Johnston, K., Chen, M., Hauman, M. (2013). Changes in use, Perception and Attitude of First Year Students Towards Facebook and Twitter. Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Management, p. 135

McCarthy, J. (2013). Learning in Facebook: First year tertiary student reflections from 2008 to 2011. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(3), pp. 337-356

Schroeder, J. & Greenbowe, T. (2009). The chemistry of Facebook: using social networking to create an online community for the organic chemistry laboratory. Journal of Online Education, 5, 4.

Wang, Q., Woo, H.L., Quek, C.L., Yang, Y., & Liu, M. (2012). Using the Facebook group as a learning management system: An exploratory study. British Journal of Educational Technology. 43(3). p 428–438