Learning in Facebook: First year tertiary student reflections from 2008 to 2011

Abstract

<p>This paper reflects on the use of Facebook as an online learning environment for first year design students from 2008 to 2011. Between 2008 and 2010 three student cohorts from the University of Adelaide engaged with their peers through forums hosted by Facebook, submitting work-in-progress imagery and critiquing peers' submissions. In 2011 the study expanded to include national and international collaborators with first year cohorts from Swinburne University in Australia, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore also participating, allowing students to interact with their global peers. The online forum facilitated increased peer interaction, particularly between local and international students, and improved academic performance as a result of consistent feedback from a range of sources. At the end of 2011 students from the four participating cohorts between 2008 and 2011 were invited to take part in a survey reflecting on and evaluating the learning experiences in Facebook. The results highlighted many positive outcomes regarding the online forum, and have led to the establishment of a series of recommendations for the future use of Facebook as a learning tool, outlined at the conclusion of this paper.</p><p> </p>

Collaborative writing revision process among learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in an online community of practice (CoP)

“…Being integrated in classroom-based courses, Facebook can assist ESL learners in their writing process (Haverback, 2009;Majid, Stapa, &Keong, 2012;Shih, 2011). There is also an extensive use of Facebook among learners as part of their out-of-campus or university practice of English (McCarthy, 2013;VanDoorn & Eklund, 2013). Facebook enables EFL learners not only to learn that language but also its culture (Mitchell, 2012).…”

The Pedagogic Architecture of MOOC: A Research Project on Educational Courses in Spanish

“…In this regard, taking into account the high number of students enrolled (Park et al, 2015) it is important to strengthen other types of strategies that favour the joint reconstruction of knowledge, fostering the creation of independent groups or peer assessment (Kellogg, Booth, & Oliver, 2014) given the difficulty of sustaining the presence of the teaching team and providing individualized monitoring. We have also identified the use of SNS as platforms that seek to foster communication between students (Lim & Ismail, 2010;McCarthy, 2013), although the functionality and variety found is notorious. Either way, the analysis of these resources highlights the need to rethink the potential of collaboration, exchange and group work.…”

A Pedagogical Critical Review of Online Learning System

“…In fact, Facebook is more focused on peer-to-peer interaction to enhance the learning experience in an informal atmosphere (Goodwin et al, 2010;McCarthy, 2013;Paris et al, 2015). In addition, many studies have shown that students have been using Facebook effectively to follow extracurricular and other activities (Ainin et al, 2015;Garcia et al, 2015).…”