Students' Adoption of Social Networks as Environments for Learning and Teaching: The Case of the Facebook

Abstract

Little is known about the conditions and consequences of using the Facebook in learning. This research attempts to describe such conditions and consequences when teachers experiment using it as students in a second degree course. Fifteen students/teachers aged from 24 to 53 years old participated in the course in which they were required to attend mathematical Facebook sites. The research findings arrived at using the grounded theory show that the conditions which affected the teachers/students' work in the Facebook were: (1) causal conditions: the course's requirement; (2) intervening conditions: the participant's image of the Facebook, the participant's work characteristics and the participant's competence in computers and the internet; (3) contextual conditions: The site's subject and the environment's characteristics or conditions. These conditions influenced students' learning actions and interactions in the Facebook, especially their level of participation. The actions/interactions of the participants, together with the various conditions influenced the consequences of students' educational work in the social networking site. These consequences varied, starting from discovering how to utilize the Facebook for teaching and being aware of the advantages/ disadvantages of doing so, to proceeding with the use of the Facebook in contexts other than those being suggested in the course.