Evaluating the use of Facebook to increase student engagement and understanding in lecture-based classes

Autor: Benjamin J. Dyson, Sara Cowan, Adrianna Tassone, Kristin Vickers, John Turtle
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Higher Education. 69:303-313
ISSN: 1573-174X
0018-1560
DOI: 10.1007/s10734-014-9776-3
Popis: Both lecture delivery and Facebook use are ubiquitous aspects of higher education from staff and student points-of-view, respectively. An attempt was made to integrate the two by setting up a Facebook group and delivering contemporary news stories in preparation for in-lecture discussion in a large-scale (1,200 students across 5 sections) Introduction to Psychology class. Each section experienced two-thirds of the class with Facebook intervention and one-third without, thereby each section served as its own control group. Overall, Facebook intervention did not yield higher self-report of course engagement or understanding for those portions of the course. Only those individuals who never viewed the Facebook postings reported lower engagement and understanding of the in-lecture discussion, in addition to a lower appreciation of the link between the Facebook content and the lecture material. Our data suggest that successful integration of social media into the classroom is a challenging one and the relative success or failure of these interventions may stand or fall on the basis of a complex interaction between a number of factors including the timing of content delivery, the integration of social media content with course assessment and the students’ own perspective on using social media for academic purposes.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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