Effect of Facebook on Education

Table of Contents Chapter 1.0: The Introduction 1.1 The Introduction …………………………………………………………..2 1.2 The Statement of the Research Problem ………………………………….3 1.3 The Research Objectives ………………………………………………….3 1.4 The Research Questions …………………………………………………..3 1.5 The Research Hypotheses …………………………………………………3 1.6 The Definition of the Terms ………………………………………………4 1.7 The Limitation of the Study ………………………………………………4 Chapter 2.0: The Literature Review 2.1 The discussion on the sub-topics related to the study …………………….5 2.2 The discussion on the previous researchers ………………………………7 Chapter 3.0: The Research Methodology 3.1 The Research Design ……………………………………………………...8 3.2 The method of data collection …………………………………………….8 3.3 Sample and Sampling ……………………………………………………..9 3.4 The methods of data processing …………………………………………..9 The Bibliography .......................................................................................................10

Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Background of The Study Recently, there has been a growth of social networking sites right before the society’s eyes. Sites like Friendster, Myspace, High5 and the latest, Facebook, have users glued to the computer screen typing away comments and messages to friends and relatives. The term “social networking site” brings the meaning of a medium in the World Wide Web that connects anyone with the purpose to socialize. The users range from primary school children to even senior citizens of 50 years and above. Throughout the years, other than to socialize, it has been proven useful in so many ways, catering to health, social, and now even for educational purposes. There have been studies done to test and see whether the social networking site, Facebook correlates to students’ grades and performance in their academic achievement. Some of these studies are proven true, that there is a connection between students’ grades and their usage of Facebook but researchers are unsure whether it is a good correlation or not. And as of late, it is seen that nowadays, not only students use the social networking site, Facebook, but their lecturers as well. Some of them use for personal reasons; while others and most of them too, use Facebook as a way to connect to their students online. Lecturers and students’ meetings are now held in the virtual world, no longer practiced in the real world. This way is of course easier and faster and much more interesting, but that is not all Facebook has to offer. It provides users with games to play, and socializing purposes are believed to be the main reason why students have a Facebook account. Thus, having an account can be useful for education purposes but it can cause a big distraction. Students can get easily addicted to it, which leads to the act of procrastination and later, delay of submission of assignments. Moreover, this research not only focuses on the students’ point of view, but the lecturers as well. There are lecturers who are known to use Facebook regularly with their students and as

educators; the researcher would like to find out their personal views on this issue, as they are the ones who are responsible in shaping their students to become better and responsible students. This research on such issue may seem unimportant, but addiction to Facebook may lead to unnecessary bad consequences, and students and educators need to see this and address this problem before it gets worse. 1.2 The Statement of The Research Problem This study will mainly focus on investigating whether there are significant effects of the usage of Facebook on students and lecturers’ performance in the education environment. 1.3 The Research Objectives There are three research objectives that the researcher has come up with. These objectives will help maintain the focus of the study and its main purpose, as well as the outcome. The objectives are: 1. To know whether Facebook can assist students in improving their academic studies 2. To find out whether Facebook provide educational benefits to both students and lecturers 3. To seek the rate of importance of the social networking site towards the students and lecturers 1.4 The Research Questions In order to fulfill the objectives of the research, there are questions that are important to find the answers for, and they are: 1. Is there a significant improvement in students’ academic achievement when using Facebook regularly? 2. What are the educational outcomes of the usage of Facebook? 3. How important is this social networking site towards students and lecturers? 1.5 The Research Hypotheses

Like the research objectives and questions, there are also three hypotheses the researcher has come up with, to prove the validity at the end of the research. They are: 1. The usage of Facebook does help improve students’ learning habits and thus, their academic achievement. 2. There are educational outcomes from using Facebook. 3. It is a must to sign up for the social networking site as it is very important for students and lecturers to use. 1.6 The Definition of the Terms There are two categories of definition regarding the research, which are constitutive and operational. Constitutive definitions: Facebook: a social networking site created by Mark Zuckerberg, an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. Social network: a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. Operational definitions: Social networking site: A website where everyone can create an account and get to know people from all over the world, and serves many purposes such as business conferences, socializing, and education. 1.7 Limitation of the Study This study is limited to the students and lecturers of the Faculty of Education, Campus Section 17, Shah Alam, Selangor only. Thus, the result of the research cannot be generalized for other students of other faculties or UiTM campuses or other universities. It may be used but the users must keep in mind of the limited scope of the research.

Chapter 2: The Literature Review The researcher has done some research and readings on relevant articles and other researchers’ studies that are related to this research. Some of them are retrieved from online journals as well as articles. 2.1 The discussion on the sub-topics related to the study As mentioned in the introduction, having an account at a social networking site online does give a lot of benefits to oneself. According to the researchers at the University of Minnesota, they have found that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook do give educational benefits to its users. The study had found that 94 percent of students used the Internet, 82 percent go online at home, and 77 percent had a profile on a social networking site. The students listed technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, being open to new or diverse views, and communication skills when asked what they had learned from using social networking sites. The samples for this study ranged from students of 16 to 18 years of age, from 13 urban high schools in the Midwest in the US and the data were collected over six months. After the study was conducted, the researchers from the University of Minnesota did a follow-up and randomly selected a subset. The researchers asked the students questions about their Internet activity especially the online forum, MySpace which is the most frequent site they go to, that provides users with email, web communities, and audio and video capabilities. Based on their answers, the researchers had found that students who use social networking sites “are actually practicing the kinds of 21 st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," says Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the University's College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study. The outcome of using a social networking site is that “students develop a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content, and thinking about online

design and layout.” Besides that, they also share their creative original work like poetry and film, and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The Websites offer tremendous educational potential." From the study’s results, not only does it prove that social networking sites offer more than social fulfillment or potential job contacts, Greenhow also added that they have implications for educators, who now have a vast opportunity to support what students are learning on the Web sites. She also said that “now that we know what skills students are learning and what experiences they're being exposed to, we can help foster and extend those skills.” Educators would always want to know where their students are coming from and what they are interested in so they can build on that in their teaching. Greenhow said that “by understanding how students may be positively using these networking technologies in their daily lives and where the as-yetunrecognized educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected, and meaningful to kids." However, only a few students were aware of the academic and professional networking opportunities that the Web sites provide. Others might think that the social networking sites are just for socializing purposes only and not more than that. Educators should see this as an opportunity to work with students and their experiences on social networking sites. To strengthen the argument that social networking sites are useful and beneficial for students, a study done by researchers in Ohio State University has concluded that there is no evident “relationship between use of the popular social networking site and diminished grades.” Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University and a fellow this year at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society said that they have not found any evidence that Facebook use correlates with lower academic achievement. The study was conducted on three different groups, which were a sample of more than 1,000 undergraduates from the University of Illinois, Chicago; a nationally representative cross

sectional sample of 14- to 22-year-olds; and a nationally representative longitudinal panel of American youth aged 14- to 23. They were unable to detect a “significant negative relationship between grade point averages and Facebook use.” Nonetheless, using Facebook excessively does not necessarily bring good outcomes on academic performance. Students must know how to limit themselves when using the social networking site or else, their performance in class might deteriorate. But it is just the same as spending excessive time on another activity, said Hargittai. Students’ performance will decrease either way, not only because of Facebook. However, he added that they need to “do more research with more nuanced data to better understand how social networking site usage may relate to academic performance." 2.2 The discussion on the previous researches The social networking site, Facebook was created rather recently which was on February 4th, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, the Co-Founder of Facebook. Because of this, not that many research has been done on the topic and also because educators had never thought of Facebook being a medium for students and lecturers or teachers until now. Nevertheless, the researcher has found some other researches that may be useful in guiding the process of this research. As stated in a research done by Nadzrah Abu Bakar, “the integration of computers in education has been discussed widely and much attention has been devoted to the role of computers in the classroom especially in finding a better way to implement effective ways to incorporate computers in the classroom. Technology in the classroom is widely believed to help teachers promote a constructive class environment and it is viewed by many researchers to have an influential effect on the teaching and learning process (Muir-Herzig, 2004). However, the integration of computers in the classroom may be difficult by some and may not be found effective in teaching and learning when introduced within the traditional curriculum setting (JulesVan Belle and Soetaert, 2001).” From what is stated above, it can be implied that technology of using computers is helpful to help students learn in class. But nowadays, not only does the technology restrict its usage to only using CD-ROMs or watching slideshows, but also with social networking sites. It is not impossible for

lecturers to use the service of Facebook too, for his or her students. Furthermore, in the research, it is stated that from educators’ perspectives, with a variety of computer-based activities, it can help facilitate students’ needs and challenge their learning practices (Warschauer and Healey, 1998). Nonetheless, many findings concluded that letting the students use computers in the classroom without any concrete activities that relate to language learning and without any understanding of the conditions of using computers in the classroom may hinder the total utilization of them (Bromley, 1998; Gunderson and Anderson, 1999; Hartschuh, 1999; MuirHerzig, 2004). Facebook can easily be used without having any concrete activity of the usage, thus lecturers need to think of ways on how they can incorporate such medium in the classroom. Other than using it as a medium to teach, the lecturers can use Facebook as a way to help assist students’ in their learning by having forums and such on Facebook. Chapter 3: The Research Methodology This chapter will discuss on the research design, the method of data collection, sample and sampling, and the methods of data processing. 3.1 The Research Design This study will use the research design of experimental and survey research. The reason for this is because this research would like to focus on the conditions of students and lecturers when using Facebook and the aftermath, thus making it experimental and the ways on finding out the results will be done through interviews and observation, thus classifying it under survey research. 3.2 The Method of Data Collection There will be two ways of collecting the data for this research. They are through interviews and observations. 3.2.1 In-depth Interviews The method of interviews will be conducted on three chosen lecturers who are known among

the students to use Facebook regularly for classroom purposes. Among the questions that will be asked are on their views on the social networking site, their personal opinions and what they think are the outcomes of using Facebook for academic purposes. 3.2.2 Participant Observation This method will be conducted on four chosen students who use Facebook on a regular basis. They are required to report their daily usage of the social network site. There are some aspects that will be examined during the observation, such as the duration of going online in Facebook, their learning habits, sleeping habits, their purpose of going online and their test results. From these two methods, the researcher will compile and evaluate the answers or responds from students and lecturers and the results will be compared and summarized in order to answer the three research questions. 3.3 Sample and Sampling The samples for the research will be the students of ED220 program in Faculty of Education, Campus Section 17, Shah Alam. However, not all students will participate in this research. The respondents that will be chosen are from Semester 3, 4, 5 and 6. The reason why students from the specific semesters are chosen is because it is believed that during these stages or semesters that the students are starting to or not already well-equipped with how the education system or ways in the faculty operate. Furthermore, they have gain more experience than students of Semester 1 and 2. On the other hand, students of Semester 7 and 8 are not chosen as they are considered ‘seniors’ and are engaged with practicum and their thesis. 3.4 The Method of Data Processing There are several methods in gathering the data as there are two ways in collecting the data. For the interviews of the lecturers, their answers will be analyzed and compared. The researcher

will try to find the similarities as well as the differences of each lecturer’s answers and come up with findings and conclusions. As for the observation, it can be expected that not all of the three students’ results are the same, but this is what makes the research more interesting. The results of the observation of the three students will be compared but it is believed that it cannot be generalized to all. The Bibliography 1. Abu Bakar, Nadzrah (2007). English Language Activities In Computer-Based Learning Environment: A Case Study In ESL Malaysian Classroom. Retrieved October 18th, 2009 from http://myais.fsktm.um.edu.my/474/1/Nadzrah_Abu_Bakar.pdf 2. Northwestern University (2009, May 8). Facebook Use Not Found To Correlate Negatively With College Grades, New Study Shows. Retrieved October 11th, 2009 from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507164403.htm 3. University of Minnesota (2008, July 10). Retrieved October 10th, 2009 from http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories2/Educational_benefits_of_social_netwo rking_sites.html 4. Zakaria Kasa, Aida Suraya Md Yunus, Azizan Asmuni, Suhaimi Napis, Bahaman Abu Samah, Mohd Zul, Mohd Yusoff, Mohd Rizal Mohd Khanafie, Hasmah AbdulWahab, Sayid Mohamad Nazari Sayid Ismail (2005). KESEDIAAN PELAJAR INSTITUT PENGAJIAN TINGGI MENGGUNAKAN KOMPUTER DALAM PEMBELAJARAN. Retrieved October 18th, 2009 from http://myais.fsktm.um.edu.my/5402/1/9.pdf 5. Retrieved October 19th, 2009 from http://dissertationblog.com/samples/dissertation_proposal_us.pdf