Facebook in higher education promotes social but not academic engagement

By Lisa Wise, Jason L. Skues, Benedict Williams. ASCILITE Publications, 2011

97 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although there is evidence that academically successful students are engaged with their studies, it has proved difficult to define student engagement clearly. Student engagement is commonly construed as having two dimensions, social and academic. The rapid adoption of social media and digital technologies has ensured increasing interest in using them for improving student engagement. This paper examines Facebook usage among a first year psychology student cohort and reports that although the majority of students (94%) had Facebook accounts and spent an average of one hour per day on Facebook, usage was found to be predominantly social. Personality factors influenced usage patterns, with more conscientious students tending to use Facebook less than less conscientious students. This paper argues that, rather than promoting social engagement in a way that might increase academic engagement, it appears that Facebook is more likely to operate as a distracting influence.

Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ae8b2b2ae1a17b10508ffaa1dae1d16f04355a0e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

1. C. Irwin
2. L. Ball
3. B. Desbrow
4. M. Leveritt

Citations in the corpus

• Students' perceptions of using Facebook as an interactive learning resource at university (2012, background): “…Usluel, 2010; Tian, Yu, Vogel & Kwok, 2011), the majority of evidence suggests that students’ main motive for using Facebook is for social connectivity (Bosch, 2009; Madge et al., 2009; Mazman & Usluel, 2010; Ophus & Abbitt, 2009; Roblyer et al., 2010; Subrahmanyam et al., 2008; Wise et al., 2011).”