The Effect of Social Media on Student's Engagement and Collaboration: a case study of University of Venda using Facebook

摘要

In today's e-society, the role of the social media is increasingly gaining momentum. It is known to play a vital role in collaboration, community building, participation, and sharing of information. As digital applications, several social media exist and vary in their purposes. In particular, the educational section is one giant beneficiary of this development involving impact creation on students and instructors. However, despite the widespread use of social media by students and instructors, very little empirical evidence exist regarding its impact on student's collaboration and engagement. In this study, a case study was performed in University of Venda where students offering the module Foundation Information Technology (FIT) were used as participant. Facebook social network was the platform for various academic activities and questionnaires were designed and used in collecting data from the students. The goal of our study is to investigate the impact of the social media on students, specifically, the level of collaboration between them while using facebook during in and out of classroom. The results obtained showed that facebook uses has a significantly increased impact on student's collaboration and engagement than face to face contact. Our analysis indicated that students, tutors, and instructor were highly engaged in the learning process in ways that transcended traditional classroom activities. This study provides experimental evidence that social media can be used as an educational tool to help students to collaborate and engage.