Introduction
Facebook is one of the internet’s most popular websites to date. In less than ten years Facebook has accumulated over one billion users. Facebook was initially made for students who attended Harvard University to navigate and find each other but quickly escalated to other colleges in the area. It gradually started making its way to other colleges around the country and is now open to anyone who is the age of thirteen and older. Today people use Facebook for many different reasons. They can connect with old friends and family, meet new people, update their statues, post pictures, and express themselves in ways that you are unable to do in person. In college and university students also use Facebook to help them with class assignments/projects. This is something that you have not really seen being done in the past but it has become relatively common in the social media site of Facebook.
Throughout the years of my navigation on Facebook not only have I noticed pictures and status being posted about a person’s social life but I have also seen people post statuses asking their friends to answer surveys or they would post a question as a status asking for advice on a topic related to an assignment they had. I have also been invited to many "events" on Facebook asking me to fill out surveys to help college students in their classes. I have used this method myself to help me on class assignments. I needed opinions on a certain topic I was writing a paper about and posted it as a status on my Facebook page. I received an ample amount of opinions and used what people told me on Facebook in my essay.
In this paper I plan on looking at other people who have used Facebook to help them with class assignments and whether it has been helpful or not. I plan on analyzing their writing techniques to get people to help them, which aspect of Facebook seemed to be the most helpful (statuses or events), and what type of help they were looking to receive. For example; opinions of their friends, actual facts or resources their friends have used to get facts. In my experience using Facebook to help with class assignments I have found it extremely helpful. I feel that because most of my Facebook friends are my age they can relate to the assignments I have. Asking other students opinions can be beneficial because they may feel about a certain topic the same way as you do but at the same time open a door to different opinions and different points of view on a topic.
Literature Review
I could not find many articles that pertained to my topic. Most of the articles I came across were about social media sites in general and how college students use them socially. After a long search I finally found an article that was very similar to my research question. The article I looked at in regards to how individuals use Facebook is Academic Use of a Group on Facebook written by Ruth de Villiers. This articles main focus is how post grade students use the groups on Facebook in “discussions on academic, content related topics” (de Villiers, 173), whether is appeared to be helpful or not, and if contact between students was easier using the group feature on Facebook.
Selwyn (2009) conducted a study on Facebook and “how students communicate on Facebook in relation to their studies” (de Villiers, 175). He talks about how the electronic use of Facebook can be beneficial in communication but also mentions how using Facebook can be controversial when using it for academic purposes.
His study points out how SNS can be used educationally to support communication between students in the same learning situations and also for educator-learner dialogue. In particular, SNSs provide channels for informal and unstructured forms of learning
Selwyn observed 600 students who did this by continuously logging onto Facebook and monitoring their use. He found that some of the conversation was centered around specific assignments and academic talk but he also observed general discussion about scheduling and criticizing university seminars and academic staff.
Selwyn also found that students liked to talk about aspects of their school that are easily assessable on the school website. Students in the group also gave peer-to-peer guidance that was “based on the students’ personal interpretations, not on official guidance” (de Villiers, 175) and some of the information given was inaccurate. But the students in the group did receive some positive feedback when looking for journals and resources for certain assignments. Selwyn found that most of the comments in the Facebook group were complaints and the students were not as focused on their studies as they should have been. This was not all the students, however. The students that took the assignments seriously did not engage in the unrelated conversation and only participated in the group when the discussion was about the school work.
Mazer, Murphy and Simonds (2009) investigated the credibility of teachers who participate in social media websites
Self-disclosure is defined according to the extent of personal information made public on an SNS by a teacher, for example, high self-disclosure involves showing pictures of one’s social situations, and communicating personal preferences and relationships
Students who found teachers on Facebook found them to be more credible and easier to get contact. “The study suggests that when personal information is publicised, students induce similarities between themselves and the teacher” (de Villiers, 175). This can be constructed in many views and is controversial because some researchers believe that by being able to obtain personal information on your teacher can cause students to not take the teacher seriously and make the teacher out to be something he/she is not.
In conclusion this article discusses how students interact with one another over Facebook. Some of the findings in the experiments were positive such as, being able to connect to your classmates and teacher and gain ideas from your peers, but others were negative. For example; the students were found discussing unrelated topics and some of the information obtained from their peers were inaccurate. Facebook groups can have its ups and downs when regarding school work so I believe that what is author is trying to convey to the readers is to stay off Facebook when trying to complete school work.
Data Analysis (not done)
In regards to my data I have interviewed one person. The interviewee will be referred to as "M" and I, the interviewer will be referred to as "R". In this interview I will focus on her group use of Facebook to help with class assignments and the specific event where she used Facebook independently to help her in class assignments. I also looked at pieces of information I collected from Facebook's actual site. I have gathered four status updates and one event invite and will focus on the different reactions from their Facebook friends and how particular aspects of how the individual presented the status/event impacted the type of/number of answers they received. The names of these individuals will not be given in this presentation of the data.
In my interview with M we talked about how she used Facebook to help her with class assignments. She told me that she has used it before and one of the first times she used Facebook for a schools assignment was when she had to work on a group project and they made a Facebook group to communicate.
R: What do you typically use Facebook for?
M: For social networking with my friends, my family, my coworkers and my classmates.
R: Oh so you connect with classmates? What do you usually talk you them about?
M: Well for one of my classes we were working on a group project, and we made up a Facebook group with our class name in it and sent each other power-points and communicated through the Facebook group to get the project done
R: Oh okay, yeah I know a lot of college students do things like that.
M: Yeah it's very helpful because we all know we're going to be on Facebook at some point during the day (laughs)
R: That's cool.
She told me that it was very helpful because she was able to communicate with her classmate knowing they were right there and they would stay on the Facebook group interacting with each other until they were finished with what they intended to do. She also told me that because of the Facebook group she did not have to worry about meeting up with her group in person.
While conducting my research I analyzed different ways people worded their statuses/events while asking for their friends help. Some people used formal language and some people used “social media language” meaning it was informal and they used emoticons in their status. Out of the five statuses that I analyzed only two of the statuses were formally used. The other three used social media language to try to get people to help them out. Another aspect that I found interesting was out of the five statues/events three of them were surveys and two of them were just questions stated as a status. There was also only one event as opposed to four statuses.
In one particular status all the individual wrote was something very simple that did not give much detail about what needed to be done when referring to a link for her friends to take a survey, this only received one comment. Another individual posted a more formal status explaining to his/her friends what the survey entails and about how long it was going to take. This individual used a little bit of social media language with two emoticons but most of her grammar was accurate and she had capitalizations in the right places. This individual received four comments on the status. While comparing each of the statuses I realized that people are not going to want to be bothered on social media sites with other peoples school work if it is not well explained. This discourse community is mainly for social use and if you post the school work you are doing without the proper punctuations and capitalizations people will be more likely to overlook it because it was not seriously presented. Unless the person puts a detailed description of what needs to be done people are not going to want to be bothered.
Out of the five statuses/events I analyzed three of them were surveys and two were just questions. While looking at the four statuses (I will talk about the event later) I noticed that more people are willing to comment on a status that is just asking a simple question rather than directing you to an external link to take a survey. In the two Facebook statuses asking to take a survey they only received a total of five comments together. When I analyzed the two questions that were posted they had a lot more comments and people willing to give their input. The formal/informal writing did not seem to come into effect here because both statuses had a lot of good answers.
I personally posted up a Facebook status asking “Should junk food be allowed in public schools? Why?” While analyzing the answers I received on the status some were helpful while other people who posted answers were taking it as a joke. One person posted a silly comment on my status that he/she knew would not help me in my paper, but other people posted very useful information. One person posted a very detailed reason answering my question that I found to be extremely useful and used this in my paper. It is answers like the one that this person posted that I used as a helpful resource in my paper. I received other very insightful responses and I was pleasantly surprised at how many people were willing to help me.
The one event I analyzed however got the most responses of any of the statuses. I believe that it is because you can explain that people will be willing to read, in an event then on a status. This individual gave an extremely detailed description of exactly what needed to be done, told us how long it was going to take and gave the time period we had to do it. This person received around twenty responses and each response was short and but gave exactly what the individual was looking for, which is all this person wanted.
Referring back to my interview, my subject stated that using Facebook to help you in school assignments is good when asking for opinions on the specific topic but not when you are trying to gather specific research. Based on the five statuses/events that I analyzed I feel that most people would agree with her statement because each status/event that I looked at was either based on a survey or an opinion question where people would give the individual their input. In my opinion, I believe that people do not want to ask questions to their friends that are too in depth or require too much detail because they are aware that most people go on social networking sites to connect with friends, not to do homework. Although I have come to the conclusion that Facebook can be helpful in many ways regarding receiving help in class assignments I believe that people will only go so far when asking their friends for help.
