The Connection of
College Homework Assignments and Facebook
What
is Facebook?
Facebook
is one of the internet’s most popular websites to date. In less than ten years
Facebook has accumulated over one billion users. People use Facebook for many
different reasons. They can connect with old friends and family, meet new
people, update their statuses, post pictures, and express themselves in ways
that they are unable to do in person. In college and universities 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 on 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 the writing techniques that they used to get people to help them,
which aspect of Facebook seemed to be the most helpful (statuses or events), and
whether or not the group feature on Facebook has proven successful. The use of
language has changed over many years and I plan on discussing which aspect of
writing and language were most affective when asking your Facebook friends for
help on a particular assignment.
Teacher
Mandated Facebook Groups
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.
Method
of Research
To receive my data I decided to conduct one interview
with someone who can relate to my literature source and has used Facebook
groups to communicate with her classmates to get assignments done. The
interview took a different approach then my literature source because the
Facebook group worked for her group and I thought it would be interesting to
compare the two situations. I conducted my interview in a quiet setting in
front of a laptop. That way she could look back at the group and I could
physically see the progress that her group was making compared to my literature
source.
I also did an observation of different statuses and an
event. In doing this I hoped to gather different information on what approaches
work and what approaches do not. I found these statuses on my timeline over the
last couple of months. I was unable to get permission from the individuals who
statuses and event I observed so when I discuss I will be referring them as
simply “individual” and “him/her”. Although I was unable to get their names I
feel that analyzing their style of writing and their use of mechanics is
important to what type of approach works and what does not.
Different
Views of Facebook Use Regarding School Assignments
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. 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 to 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.
The language in this section of the interview was very
positive. The part of the interview where she laughs after saying “we all know
we're going to be on Facebook at some point during the day” shows that Facebook
is a positive experience in a college students life and although many people
use it solely for social purposes it is a good place to connect with classmates
who are working on the same/a related school topic. Her enthusiasm shows no
matter which aspect of Facebook you use it can be a good and helpful
experience.
This
reminded me of James Paul Gee’s example of a discourse community because I
believe that Facebook has two different discourse communities, one for social
use and one for groups. The way Facebook groups communicate about school
projects or other situations are completely different than from what the public
eye sees on their home timeline. On the discourse community of the Facebook
timeline you see social events of your friends, pictures and statuses. When
they post statuses about school assignments the status is usually very direct
and does not require much effort but when you are involved in a Facebook group
regarding a big assignment, such as the group M participated in, the information
discussed within that group is confined in one the space of that group. If
anyone from outside of that group were to join in they would not know the
content that was being discussed and why, which makes this a discourse
community.
I
also found this interesting in regards to my literature source because they say
that Facebook groups are not very helpful. The difference however, between my
source and my interview subject was that the students were asked to create a
Facebook group to connect with each other and my interview subject and her
group chose to do the Facebook group themselves. While analyzing the interview
and the literature source I came to the conclusion that when students are asked
to do something, regardless of what it is, they are reluctant to listen because
they want to do the project their way. When my interviewee did the Facebook
group all of the students in the group agreed to this and were willing to take
time out of their day to focus on their assignment through the Facebook group.
While
conducting my research I also 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 statuses. Out of the five statuses/events 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 the individual wrote 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
entailed 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. People assume that
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 take the time to look at it.
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. There are friends that are willing to help if the question is
strait forward and does not require too much time. 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 a lot more 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 frame we had to complete 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. I also believe this person
received so many responses because the answers to the question did not require
a lot of thinking so people were very willing to help out.
While
looking through Facebook I noticed that the people that have done this again
were people that received an ample amount of responses the first time around.
The individuals that did not receive good feedback seemed to be reluctant to do
it again although; I did come across one person who attempted it again. This
person changed their wording and although, they still did not use proper
punctuation or capitalization they did receive a few more responses then they
previously had and I believe it was because they gave a more detailed
description of what needed to be done.
In
regards to my interview subject the way you communicate with the other people
in your group is important. If you are willingly joining a Facebook group with
students in your class without being asked to, you will have the freedom to
write and discuss the content in any way that is comfortable for you and your
group to understand. When students are asked to join a Facebook group they are
less willing to do work and will more likely go off topic because they are in
the presents of a social media site and it is easy to get distracted if you are
not focused or do not care enough to focus.. The way you use language with your
group members is different because the participation was forced and you will be
less likely to complete the task that was asked of you.
Facebook
Can Be Helpful Depending..
This is important in writing studies because language is
changing. The way we look at writing now as opposed to the way it was looked at
many years ago has changed drastically. Social media sites have invented this
new language that we as users often write with when we are trying to receive
opinions from friends, for example; emoticons, the way of describing, and the
language we use to show how eager we are to receive information. Depending on
the specific language used on the Facebook status depended on the responses it
received. While very simple directions did not receive much input more detailed
statues received greater responses. These detailed statuses exhibited content
of social media language in addition to formal writing in a way that drew the
reader’s attention.
In conclusion I found through my finding that Facebook
can be a helpful source for college students if you word your directions and
descriptions of what needs to be done carefully and detailed. Mildly detailed
status/events will not give you the results you are looking for unless the
question you posted is straight forward and directly asked. In regards to
Facebook groups they can be very helpful if everyone in the group is willing to
compromise with one another and get work done without going off topic. When
students are asked to be a part of a Facebook group to work on an assignment
they are more likely to discuss off topic situations and not focus solely on
the material needed to be worked on.
The use of Facebook for help in class assignments have
proven to be effective when used correctly. I personally believe that college
students will continue to use Facebook to their advantage and keep asking their
friends for help on assignment. I still believe that the main focus on Facebook
is the social aspect of it but its use for academic purposes will continue to
be used and I feel that in the future students will come up with more creative
ways to gain information from their friends.
Work Cited
Villiers, M.R. (Ruth) de. "Academic Use of a
Group on Facebook: Initial Findings and Perceptions." Proceedings of
Informing Science & IT Education Conference (InSITE) (2010): 173-190.
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