TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ellis, Jason Brent
A1  - Abreu-Ellis, Carla Reis
T1  - Student Perspectives of Social Networking use in Higher Education
JF  - KEYCIT 2014 - Key Competencies in Informatics and ICT
N2  - Social networks are currently at the forefront of tools that
lend to Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). This study aimed to
observe how students perceived PLEs, what they believed were the
integral components of social presence when using Facebook as part
of a PLE, and to describe student’s preferences for types of interactions
when using Facebook as part of their PLE. This study used mixed
methods to analyze the perceptions of graduate and undergraduate
students on the use of social networks, more specifically Facebook as a
learning tool. Fifty surveys were returned representing a 65 % response
rate. Survey questions included both closed and open-ended questions.
Findings suggested that even though students rated themselves relatively
well in having requisite technology skills, and 94 % of students used
Facebook primarily for social use, they were hesitant to migrate these
skills to academic use because of concerns of privacy, believing that
other platforms could fulfil the same purpose, and by not seeing the
validity to use Facebook in establishing social presence. What lies
at odds with these beliefs is that when asked to identify strategies in
Facebook that enabled social presence to occur in academic work, the
majority of students identified strategies in five categories that lead to
social presence establishment on Facebook during their coursework.
KW  - Social
KW  - networks
KW  - higher
KW  - education
KW  - personal
KW  - learning
KW  - environments
KW  - Facebook
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-82632
SN  - 1868-0844
SN  - 2191-1940
IS  - 7
SP  - 117
EP  - 131
PB  - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY  - Potsdam
ER  -