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Facebook as an Interaction Platform in Higher Education: The Case of an Egyptian Private University

Authors:
Nourhan Hamdi
Rasha Abdel Aziz

Keywords: Social Networking Sites; Facebook; Online Interaction; Higher Education; Facebook Groups

Abstract:
Current research is continuously examining the benefits of using Social Networking Sites, particularly Facebook, in higher education to enhance the learning process. More specifically, a few researchers have tackled the nature of interaction that takes place on social networks between students and educators, outside the learning and teaching setting. This paper aims to classify and investigate the types of interaction that take place on a closed Facebook group between undergraduate students, faculty members and administration staff in the College of Management at a private university in Egypt. A web application was developed to extract the posts and discussions taking place on the group using the Facebook Graph API. The application then helps in classifying and analyzing the extracted data. Results show that the Facebook group acts as an information-sharing hub for news and announcements, as well as a question and answer platform for academic and non-academic topics involving students, faculty, and college administration staff. The study shows interesting results, such as the appearance of implicit types of interaction due to important features like tagging and liking.

Pages: 4 to 10

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: August 21, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2326-9294

ISBN: 978-1-61208-504-3

Location: Rome, Italy

Dates: from August 21, 2016 to August 28, 2015