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Internet and Higher Education (INTRODUCTION (A second aspect is the social…
Internet and Higher Education
METHODS
Various on-campus student groups were solicited to
participate by stationing personnel in the university's student union building and inviting people to go to the online site and take the survey.
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 SurveyMonkey
link and lent their support to the study by encouraging their faculty
members to complete the survey; 62 of a possible 150 fulltime and parttime
faculty members (41% return) responded.
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 survey focused on whether or not each group had a Facebook
account and, if so, how much and forwhat purposes they currently used it
and whether or not they would be open to using it in the future as a
classroom support tool
Mann–Whitney U tests were used to compare
students and faculty as tohowlikely theywere to have a Facebook account
and, if they did, how often they checked their accounts.
INTRODUCTION
A second aspect is the social one. Faculty who see teaching as establishing
a relationshipwith studentsmay view Facebook-like technologies
as an efficient, even business-like way to accomplish that connection.
The study described here explores several issues related to
faculty and student acceptance and use of one such SNS: the community-building resource called Facebook.
The study reported
here was designed to gather preliminary evidence of the current
adoption of SNSs such as Facebook by students and faculty,
At first, Facebook.com was limited to college students at Harvard with a
university email address (Boyd&Ellison, 2008,p. 218). Later, the Facebook
phenomenon spread like wildfire when opened up to all college students.
This changed in 2005, when Facebook opened its doors to people outside the university network (Boyd
& Ellison, 2008, p. 218).
Facebook is similar to MySpace relative to user capabilities. As with
MySpace, the user can create a profile and provide information such as
personal interests, list schools in which the user attends, and upload
photos (Kwong, 2007, p. 55–56).
Many libraries across the United States are
using MySpace and Facebook to reach students, announce library events,
and answer research library-related questions.
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.
Yet despite its rapid growth and current popularity, it is still unclear
whether or not Facebook and similar resources have a future as a
mainstreamcommunication tools in our society, let alone as supports for
education.
Faculty perceive Facebook and its sister
technologies, both current and those to come, as additional opportunities
for educational communication and mentoring, SNSs may become yet
another technology that had great potential for improving the higher
education experience but failed to be adopted enough to have any real
impact.
RESULTS
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.
The most frequent indication for both groups was
checking Facebook 1–5 times per day, though about a quarter of each group
also checked their accounts less than once a day and another quarter
checked it 5–10 times a day.
Results of a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, college students tended to check both
email and Facebook with equal frequency (z=−.915, p=.36), while
faculty were significantly more likely to check email than Facebook (z=
−4.48, p=.00). These data indicate that students communicate as much
with Facebook as they do with technologies traditionally used in colleges
Students, however, are significantly more likely than faculty to
use Facebook to keep in touch with friends (x2=26.495, p=.00) and to
connect with people they have lost touch with (x2=4.729, p=.02).
The National School Board Association (2007) finds that use of
SNSs seems to be an emergent trend. “Almost seven in 10 districts
(69%) say they have studentWeb site programs. Nearly half (49%) say
their schools participate in online collaborative projects with other
schools, and almost as many (46%) say their students participate in
online pen pal or other international programs
Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and
student uses and perceptions of social networking sites
M.D. Roblyer, Michelle McDaniel, Marsena Webb, James Herman, James Vince Witty
Data from this survey, while limited as to the percentage of returnfrom
the total population, paint an interesting picture of Facebook and email
uses and perceptions among students and faculty. Findings are reported
here by research question of interest in this study.