Blog 23

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.