Dear teacher, what should I write on my wall? A case study on academic uses of Facebook

AbstractLoved equally by the young and the not so young, the social networking site Facebook has become a significant part of students’ life. Consequently, more and more university teachers embrace the idea that it can also be used at an academic level and not just at a social level, and that it can be used for many different things / purposes connected to (formal) education. In this context our paper focuses on how students perceive the use of the social networking site Facebook for academic purposes and how / if they integrate it in their learning, training or other (extra) educational activities. After a short presentation of Facebook's features, we’ll review its educational value from published research studies. In order to investigate how students are engaged in Facebook academic activities, an online questionnaire was applied to our first year students in the academic year 2010. We found that the majority of students spend significant time on Facebook more for social uses (to stay in touch with friends and family, to share / tag photos, to engage in social activism, volunteering etc.) and less for academic purposes, even if they take part in discussions about their assignments, lectures, study notes or share information about research resources etc. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd