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Facebook Use by Undergraduates: An Educational Tool?

 by Facebook in Education on Friday, 12 February 2010 at 22:41The following is the third part of our series on different ways that educators are using Facebook.

You can read the previous posts here. Please note that that these educators are not 

representatives of Facebook and that the opinions expressed do not necessarily represent thoseof Facebook.

 Nicole Ellison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunication, InformationStudies and Media at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

The image of college students arranging study groups is not the first image that comes to mind

when thinking about Facebook use on campus. But our research suggests that students are usingthe site to support their academic, as well as social, goals.

Facebook is used by the majority of undergraduate students on a daily basis ± upwards of 90%

 by some estimates. These college students use the site in diverse ways to perform a wide range of social tasks (such as keeping in touch with high school friends or coordinating activities likesorority social events). Social scientists in a variety of fields have started to document these

 practices and to study their outcomes. For instance, here at Michigan State University (MSU) inEast Lansing, our research team has explored the social benefits of Facebook friends using the

µsocial capital¶ theoretical framework . We found that students who use Facebook more intenselywere more likely to report higher levels of social support and access to people outside of their 

immediate social circle, which we believe is linked to the features of the site that facilitatelightweight connections with a wide, diverse network of weak and strong ties. For instance, the

status update feature enables users to broadcast personal information and share links with subsetsof their network; the commenting feature facilitates interactions among these friends (who may

or may not know one another) when they respond to these updates.

In more recent research, we have focused on collaboration via social network sites (SNSs) ± howindividuals use these sites to get questions answered, share information and advice, and

accomplish coordination tasks (like finding someone to walk the dog while on vacation).Individuals have long used communication technologies like email and the telephone to do these

things, but as more and more of our friends, colleagues, and family members join SNSs and thetools continue to develop, we believe these sites will increasingly be used to support these kinds

of ad-hoc collaborative activities. This is due to a number of factors, primarily the reduced costsof interacting over SNSs (when compared to other communication technologies) and the larger,

more diverse networks they support (which make it more likely that your message will be seen

 by someone who is in a position to help).

As part of this emphasis on collaboration through SNSs, our research team is now exploring a

less-studied aspect of Facebook ± implications of use within educational settings, especially inrelation to students¶ use of the site to engage in collaborative activities. In a recent survey, we

explored the extent to which undergraduate students at MSU use Facebook to engage inclassroom-related organizing. We found that of the 227 students that participated in our survey,

over half said they were likely or very likely to use Facebook to arrange a face-to-face study

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group or to help manage a group project, and 49% said they were likely or very likely to"collaborate in a way your instructor would like." Our participants said they were most likely to

use Groups or private messages to coordinate group meetings and were most likely to use chatand private messaging to complete an assignment. It seems clear that many students are

repurposing Facebook¶s features, especially those that support social coordination, to facilitate

their academic goals. Students know that they are likely to find many of their peers on the site,and unlike email or course management services like Blackboard, students can find out moreabout one another through the profile in addition to sending messages and coordinating events.

(Our earlier research suggests that the identity information found in profiles, such as high school,musical preferences, and the Friends list, can help individuals develop common ground with

their peers by highlighting commonalities such as shared hobbies or mutual friends.) Theexisting set of features can be extended by applications designed for institutions of higher 

education, such as Inigral¶s ³Schools,´ which make it easier for students to find classmates andshare information without friending one another.

The use of Facebook to support learning inside and outside the classroom may be an untapped

resource for instructors and students; in our survey, about one-third of respondents said theywished that Facebook had more tools to help them with their schoolwork. It may also be true that

students are just beginning to understand the broader possibilities of Facebook use, as they take atool they¶ve grown familiar with and map it to other problems and tasks they face. Students who

are able to capitalize on the organizing features of SNSs may be at an advantage when they enter the professional sphere, where organizations are trying to use social media in ways that support

knowledge-sharing and culture-building.

As with other technologies, the process of determining ³best practices´ for using Facebook tosupport educational goals will be challenging, and in our future research, we hope to identify

 best practices instructors can use to encourage students to use social network sites in productiveways. Instructors may need to reorient themselves to working with commercial entities as

opposed to in-house tools and support, and will have to consider issues such as the ethics of exposing students to advertising messages, the availability of technical support, and whether they

wish to rely on third-party systems to archive graded student work. Some observers haveexpressed concern about the fact that SNSs might encourage cheating. We included a set of 

questions in our survey designed to measure this, and found that approved collaboration wasmuch more common than unapproved uses ± while close to half our respondents said they were

likely or very likely to use Facebook to collaborate in a way their instructor would like, less thatone-fifth said they were likely or very likely to use it to collaborate on an assignment in a way

their instructor would not like. Of course, students may use SNSs to procrastinate when theyshould be studying or may access Facebook during class when they should be participating or 

 paying attention, but it¶s important to remember that students have always found ways to procrastinate or be distracted. An alternative perspective argues that the fact that Facebook is so

engaging may mean that instructors should work to find ways to harness this engagement for activities that work in conjunction with, not against, their pedagogical philosophies and learning

goals.