ASSISTED LEARNING THROUGH FACEBOOK: A Case Study of Universitas Terbuka’s Students Group

This paper describes and give insight about the use of Facebook to assist learning in Jakarta and several countries outside Indonesia. There are so many problems that will arise based on the factual sight such users tend to find difficulties in searching, analyzing and accessing information that they need, particularly materials in their academic life. This paper explores how social network site (Facebook) has the potential to creating new resource in information and technology to assist learning in groups for finding information needs and also in distance learning system of Universitas Terbuka’s students who live in Jakarta, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Generally, most of students are working from Monday to Friday and even on Saturday and Sunday, they really have problems in having face to face tutorial or even try to get information about their academic life. This paper was conducted with several communities of Facebook groups, the result showed that they specifically used Facebook group to assist them to finish their academic life such as tasks, examination, group discussion or even information. As the most popular social network in Indonesia, Facebook which accessible, effective and efficient is one of many communities to assist students in making new friends and tutors as well as keeping in touch with information on upcoming events, competitions, seminars, library announcements, new books materials, registration, online tutorial, webinar, examination and other general information