Abstract
Many students are looking to appropriate social networking sites, amongst them, Facebook, to enhance their learning experience. A growing body of literature reports on the motivation of students and staff to engage with Facebook as a learning platform as well as mapping such activities to pedagogy and curricula. This paper presents student opinions of the use of a Facebook strategy within higher education through the use of focus groups. Results show that the Facebook strategy is useful in promoting collaborative learning alongside the face-to-face delivery of content. Participants rebuked the perceived blurring of educational and social purposes, which is prevalent in the literature, with the current structure allowing a clear divide between their different uses of the site. The development of further guidelines for the use of Facebook for education is encouraged and recommendations are provided.
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The authors would like to thank all participants of the focus group, as well as other members of staff for insightful discussion on the subject matter.
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Menzies, R., Petrie, K. & Zarb, M. A case study of Facebook use: Outlining a multi-layer strategy for higher education. Educ Inf Technol 22, 39–53 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9436-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9436-y