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Evaluating the use of Facebook to increase student engagement and understanding in lecture-based classes

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 19:30 authored by Benjamin Dyson, Kristin Vickers, John Turtle, Sara Cowan, Adrianna Tassone
Both lecture delivery and Facebook use are ubiquitous aspects of higher education from staff and student points-of-view, respectively. An attempt was made to integrate the two by setting up a Facebook group and delivering contemporary news stories in preparation for in-lecture discussion in a large-scale (1200 students across 5 sections) Introduction to Psychology class. Each section experienced two-thirds of the class with Facebook intervention and one-third without, thereby each section served as its own control group. Overall, Facebook intervention did not yield higher self-report of course engagement or understanding for those portions of the course. Only those individuals who never viewed the Facebook postings reported lower engagement and understanding of the in-lecture discussion, in addition to a lower appreciation of the link between the Facebook content and the lecture material. Our data suggest that successful integration of social media into the classroom is a challenging one and the relative success or failure of these interventions may stand or fall on the basis of a complex interaction between a number of factors including the timing of content delivery, the integration of social media content with course assessment and the students’ own perspective on using social media for academic purposes.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Higher Education

ISSN

0018-1560

Publisher

Springer Verlag

Issue

2

Volume

69

Page range

303-313

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-01-13

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2015-01-13

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