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Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty…
Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites
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Introduction
Even as electronic technologies accelerate the pace of their encroachment into every aspect of our lives, the education community continues its decades-long struggle to establish the role these innovations should play in effective teaching and learning.
Traditionally, students come to school “powered-up” and wired with the newest technologies available
a recent report (Kleiner, Thomas, Lewis, & Greene, 2007) on educational technology use in teacher education programs by the National Center for Education Statistics concluded that faculty reluctance remains a major barrier to effective integration of technologies in teacher preparation
Though the movement toward online instruction has somewhat altered this picture in recent years, since most institutions currently offer at least some online courses (Allen & Seaman, 2008)
Flynn, 2009; Stansbury, 2009; Young, 2009,many educational institutions seem to be sold on the idea of communicating with students in this way. They have their own Facebook pages and actively seek to link with those of their students.
Methods
To compare student and faculty uses of Facebook, as well as their perceptions of its utility as a classroom support tool, data were gathered via an online survey administered to personnel at a mid-sized, southern public university.
The 120 students who completed the survey represents a convenience sample of the university's student population. Five department chairs in the university agreed to email their faculty members the Survey Monkey link and lent their support to the study by encouraging their faculty members to complete the survey; 62 of a possible 150 full time and part time faculty members (41% return) responded.
The survey focused on whether or not each group had a Facebook account and, if so, how much and for what purposes they currently used it and whether or not they would be open to using it in the future as a classroom support tool.
Results
Data from this survey, while limited as to the percentage of return from the total population, paint an interesting picture of Facebook and email uses and perceptions among students and faculty. Findings are reported uses and perceptions among students and faculty. Findings are reported here by research question of interest in this study.
Results of a Mann–Whitney U test found that students and faculty differed significantly (z=−4.548, pb.01) on how likely they were to have a Facebook account. Some 95% of students had an account, while about 73% of faculty had one
Results of a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test comparing students' use of Facebook and email with faculty uses of the same technologies indicated that students and faculty do differ in the frequency with which they use these communication mechanisms
These data indicate that students communicate as much with Facebook as they do with technologies traditionally used in colleges (e.g., email). However, even faculty who have Facebook accounts do not turn to them for daily communication as much as they do email.
Conclusions
Results of this small-scale survey in one location indicate that faculty and students differ somewhat in their current and anticipated uses of SNSs such as the currently-popular Facebook.
Students seem much more open to the idea of using Facebook instructionally than do faculty. However, as the rapid evolution in societal perceptions and uses of the Internet has shown in the last decade, attitudes toward technologies tend to change over time
Yet despite its rapid growth and current popularity, it is still unclear whether or not Facebook and similar resources have a future as a mainstream communication tools in our society, let alone as supports for education.