Ghania Zgheib's Ph.D. Portfolio

In Fall 2012, I conducted a pilot study to investigate the use of social media in higher education and to explore faculty and students’ perceptions about the role that social media plays in their learning. This was an exploratory study that guided me in narrowing down my research focus. It was a mixed methods study in which I collected data qualitatively through interviewing faculty who are using social media in courses they are teaching and quantitatively through student interviews. The study is described in more detail in portfolio 2. Initially, the study investigated the following questions:

• In what ways are faculty members using social media in higher education?
• What are the most common learning activities that faculty assign for students to complete through social media?
• What perceptions do faculty have about their students’ learning using social media tools?
• What perceptions do students have about their learning through social media tools?
•  How do faculty and students’ perceptions about the use of social media in an educational context compare?

Data collected from faculty interviews and student surveys resulted in the following themes:

The study initially investigated two research questions; the first is related to the types of learning activities that faculty are assigning through social media and the second question is related to how faculty members and students perceive the role of social media in learning. Previous studies have looked at the use of a social media activity in one course and compared experimental to control groups. This study added a layer to these individual studies by showing how social media is used across the curriculum and faculty’s perceptions about their students’ learning as opposed to their students’ perceptions about social media. It was interesting to look at the different learning activities across disciplines and see the level of cognition that social media tools afford in each of these activities. It was also interesting to understand the motives behind faculty’s selection of the different social media tools and the activities, and how they perceived implementation in their courses. Although other studies have suggested a positive influence on students’ learning as a result of social media, this study shed the light on the “HOW” social media can influence students’ learning based on the faculty’s perceptions.

The study suggested that the use of social media in higher education plays an important role in preparing students for the workplace and the type of the skills that are required in today’s jobs. Both faculty and students see the value of this aspect. Moreover, this study suggested that social media tools are essential in bridging the gap between the classroom and the students’ everyday activities or even creating a connection with their peers and people in the field. Students perceived this connection very useful in their learning growth since it keeps them mindful of the topics discussed in the class and it gives them different perspectives of the content of the course. This network of information and the connection with peers and people in the field give the students an opportunity to learn better in an accessible way through the technology affordances. Social media affordances provide students with all the necessary features to collaborate, evaluate, reflect, connect, and create learning communities to achieve quality learning.

Moreover, the results suggested that students learn more in courses that engage them in social media activities, however, it was hard to detect through the quantitative data the parody presented in table 3. While students rated some tools as efficient educational tools, they rated the activities that they completed these tools as somewhat helpful and vice versa. Only blogs’ rating concurred with their respective learning activities, but it’s evident that activities which engaged students in reflection helped students learn better. On the other hand, the open ended questions gave a clearer idea about the value that students perceive in social media.

Therefore, this study suggests that using social media tools publically, that is shared among peers or outside the classroom rather than privately, contributes to the students’ learning. Furthermore, interactive and reflective activities through social media are highly valued by students because they feel that they produce quality work for an audience rather than for a professor. In addition, despite the perceived challenges of students’ adoption of technology tools as reported by faculty members, students highly value learning about tools that they will use in the workplace, and hence faculty should carefully select social media that resonate with the students’ future career goals. Finally, faculty should make use of all the affordances that a specific social media tool presents while designing a learning activity to promote learning. After all social media promotes collaboration, communication, creation, and sharing, and in order for these tools to be pedagogically sound, the learning activities designed through social media should take advantage of these affordances.

The student voice in the study was essential because it brought up some other perspectives that faculty did not share. However, the number of students’ respondents to the survey was small. The study was very important in guiding my dissertation initial planning. First, I noticed that both students and faculty voices are important when evaluating social media effectiveness, and I also noticed that grading is not enough to evaluate students’ learning as a result of using social media tools as other studies suggested. I realized that qualitative data is more important in understanding faculty and students’ perspectives about social media in education. But since perceptions are not easy to evaluate, I decided to focus my dissertation study on the best practices of social media in higher education. From the learning activities that I collected from faculty interviews and analyzed, I noticed that some faculty use social media differently from what the technology affords. I also noticed that there’s a variety of learning activities across the disciplines and that are implemented through the same platform. I was reminded of Gibson’s description of affordances and how they can be perceived as opportunities that each person sees differently.  Hence, I got more interested in examining the learning activities that are implemented through social media closely to identify how faculty use these tools in higher education. My initial design map for the dissertation is illustrated below.