Participants’ Experiences and Interactions on Facebook Group in an EFL Course in Taiwan

Abstract

Educational practitioners have attempted to use online technology such as Facebook (FB) in recent years to incorporate learning into students' daily social media usage. Past studies have explored FB affordances for informal learning, with a lack of investigations on interactive patterns among course participants, especially for learners in East Asian contexts. To fill the research gap, this study adopts the community of inquiry model (CoI) in an attempt to find out (1) how interactions on a FB Group facilitate the formation of an online learning community in Taiwan, and (2) students' and teacher's experiences of using FB Group for English learning. Content analysis of the group page through thematic coding, and Chi Square tests resulted in significant relations among interaction types, initiation type, and response type for the posts. Semi-structured interviews further yielded more positive than negative experiences associated with the FB usage. The results are discussed in relation to three elements of the CoI, with an indication of a strong teacher presence for fostering the online learning environment in this particular learning context.

Facebook as a learning environment for language teaching and learning: A critical analysis of the literature from 2010 to 2017

“…The next thrust of studies reports on Facebook as a space for interaction (i.e., Annamalai, ; Arzu, ; Lantz‐Andersson, Vigmo, & Bowen, ; Lantz‐Andersson, ; Lin, Kang, Liu, & Lin, ; Oliver & Nguyen, ; Omar, Embi, & Yunus, ). Note that the studies in this category did not attempt to evaluate the efficacy of Facebook for language teaching nor did they examine students' perception of Facebook as a language learning environment.…”

“…Nonetheless, she found that these interactions with peers and teachers improved the vocabulary, syntax, and mechanics in students' essays. Both Lin et al () and Omar et al () analysed the level of students' interaction on Facebook. Lin's et al (2016) study revealed that students were motivated and actively contributing to Facebook‐based discussion but were more careful before posting their ideas.…”

Promoting Oral Presentation Skills Through Drama-Based Tasks with an Authentic Audience: A Longitudinal Study

“…However, empirical validation of the above stipulation has only started to accumulate during the past decade, mostly in the realm of L2 writing. L2 writing studies have revealed that the inclusion of (online) audiences outside the classroom walls prompts English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to develop an enhanced audience awareness (Hung, 2011;Warschauer, 1999), improve their writing outputs (Chen & Brown, 2012;Lin et al, 2014;Pilkington et al, 2000;Wang, 2015), enhance their motivation (Chen & Brown, 2012;Lin et al, 2016) and develop confidence in their writing abilities (Choi, 2008;Phinney, 1991).…”

Facebook and Moodle Integration into Instructional Media Design Courses: A Comparative Analysis of Students’ Learning Experiences using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Model

“…Educators and scholars, such as Mazman et al (2011), McCarthy (2010), and Junco (2013 have identified the need to conduct a thorough research of learners' socio-cognitive background differences, specifically in regard to gender, in this mediating relationship, by using web-based transactions. Accordingly, learning practitioners would be benefitted by qualitative studies During the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in the impact of the CoI model on the learning experience via Facebook (Kucuk & Sahin, 2013;Lin et al, 2016) or Moodle (Mouzouri, 2016;Parker, 2016). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the students' learning experience when the CoI model is used to facilitate interpersonal and interactive relationships among users via Moodle or Facebook.…”

“…To summarise, the CoI model seems to foster the construction of a common knowledge for different educational disciplines when Facebook (Lin et al, 2016) or Moodle (Mouzouri, 2016) are used in the learning process, with SP and TP being the most important indicators for developing interpersonal and interactive relationships among users.…”