The use of online social networking (OSN) for higher education

© 2013 Dr. Suraya HamidThe emergence and popularity of social technologies in the past few years has motivated some lecturers to appropriate these technologies for Online Social Networking (OSN) educational activities for higher education. Social technologies or Web 2.0 technologies include social networking sites, blogs, microblogs, and wikis. OSN for higher education use is defined as a range of educational activities enabled by appropriated social technologies and operationalised by a group of people. Despite the availability of implementation cases of OSN use discussed in the literature, an in-depth study investigating why and how lecturers appropriate social technologies is still lacking. Further, extant research provides a limited discussion of students’ experience and use of OSN for educational activities. Motivated by an increasing interest in OSN use amongst academics, as well as the research gaps stated above, this research aimed to: explore and understand why lecturers appropriate social technologies; investigate the processes used by lecturers to appropriate social technologies; investigate students’ experiences of using appropriated social technologies; and explore and understand the benefits, challenges and opportunities of OSN use for lecturers and students. The data collection was divided into two main studies. In Study 1, interviews were conducted with sixteen Malaysian lecturers and fourteen Australian lecturers. In Study 2, a total of nine focus group discussions with students were held in Malaysian and Australian universities. The data from both studies were analysed manually using thematic data analysis. The findings of this research increase current understanding of the factors motivating lecturers’ appropriation of social technologies. Lecturers were found to appropriate social technologies in a range of practices from an ad-hoc to a systematic approach. Lecturers also experienced several outcomes that can be seen from the aspects of benefits, challenges and opportunities. Students also encountered several outcomes in terms of benefits and challenges arising from their use of OSN for educational activities. The implications of the research are discussed from the perspectives of its theoretical and practical contributions. As the empirical evidence reported in this thesis was based on the real-life experiences of the main stakeholders (i.e. the lecturers and the students), the thesis contributes to advanced evidence-based OSN research within the higher education field