Facebook for Student Success: a preliminary study

Abstract

Integrating the use of Facebook to support student learning and improve student success, is a challenge academics are currently facing. While this may not be crucial in an in-person setting, for students who are studying online courses, discussion fora used to be their only interaction with the teaching staff. Today however, the rise of social networking has seen these students choose other fora for academic discussion, such as Facebook. This paper presents a preliminary study of the use of Facebook group’s in an online course as a discussion forum and the impactthis had on students’ success.