A Case Study on Integrating Facebook into Instruction and Students’ Interactive Behaviors Therein

• Main Authors: Chun-Jung Chen, 陳俊榮
• Other Authors: Sheng-Yi Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/03263365860658992886

碩士 === 康寧大學 === 資訊傳播研究所 === 103 === In the competitive age characterized by global computerization, modern educators are confronted with a new challenge, i.e., to help children learn and cultivate versatile capabilities through e-learning platforms. In recent years, thanks to the rapid growth of social networking sites, Facebook has become the medium to which high school students are exposed most frequently in their daily lives. Likewise, it is very common for current teachers to conduct some teaching activities via Facebook groups. There are a few different ways Facebook is used for teaching purposes. Some teachers depend on program systems for teaching assistance, others carry out parent-teacher communication by means of the fan page, and still others perform class management with the help of Facebook groups. Despite the aforementioned types of integration, average teachers are unlikely to design a system as a teaching aid. Therefore, the most common practice is to directly adopt a particular Facebook group as the channel of information sharing and discussion. When teachers integrate Facebook into instruction, how to integrate or manage it properly is a subject worth exploring. Firstly, in view of the above, this study focused on the simplest method followed by teachers, namely, establishing and managing a learning group through Facebook’s social networking features. The plan should be carefully made so as to integrate all teaching resources and to create a brand-new learning environment where students are willing to participate in learning activities, thus enhancing their learning motivation and performance. Secondly, junior high school students invariably find it a severe headache to learn natural sciences. So far, there has been little literature dwelling upon how a science curriculum should be presented in the Facebook group as well as what students’ interactive behaviors are like. Consequently, the author of this study requested some experts and relevant practitioners to offer advice about the requirements of this experiment. Moreover, the experts assisted in compiling a light-related unit of the science curriculum. The contents of the unit were divided into six types of posts: program schedule, summarized highlights, online quizzes, experimental videos, supplementary materials, and information sharing. Each type of post was provided with four interactive features of Facebook, i.e., browsing, liking, commenting, and posting. Then, all the posts were uploaded to a Facebook learning group so that students’ interactions with different types of posts and their learning performance under the influence might be explored. Finally, there has been a meager amount of literature addressing how Cognitive styles and Personality traits of junior high school students affected their interaction in Facebook learning groups. This study also aimed to identify students’ qualities which have a greater effect on their participation in interactive behaviors. Therefore, after integrating science curriculum design, this study took students’ cognitive styles and Personality traits as two variables. Meanwhile, students’ interactive behaviors in Facebook groups, learning performance, and the teacher’s different types of posts were investigated. In the future, the findings herein may serve as a valuable reference as a teacher is planning a Facebook learning group. This study followed a quasi-experimental design, supplemented by a questionnaire survey. The entire experiment lasted for thirty days, and the participants were recruited from the eighth-graders of a junior high school in Tainan,Taiwan, with valid samples being 28 students. The research tools included a Cognitive style scale, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) intended to measure the big five Personality traits, pretest questions as well as posttest questions designed to evaluate “learning achievement concerning the light–related unit in a natural science curriculum”, different types of posts centering on the light–related sessions, and the Facebook learning platform. After the experiment, the experimental data were analyzed through Excel, the statistical software called SPSS For Windows, the single-factor ANOVA, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (PPMCC), and descriptive statistics. The findings thus obtained are as follows: 1. Concerning the four interactive behaviors (posting, commenting, liking, and browsing) on the social networking site (Facebook), junior high school students with different Cognitive styles show a significant difference in liking.Specifically, the holists show a greater difference than the serialists, and so dothe intermediates. 2. Concerning the responses to the teacher’s different types of posts, junior high school students with different Cognitive styles show a significant difference in experimental videos. Specifically, the holists show a greater difference than the serialists, and so do the intermediates. In addition, there is a significant difference in supplementary materials, with the intermediates showing a greater difference than the serialists. 3. Concerning the four interactive behaviors on Facebook, junior high school students with different Personality traits show a significant difference in commenting. Specifically, openness (O) has a greater effect than extraversion (E) or agreeableness (A). 4. Concerning the responses to the teacher’s different types of posts, junior high school students with different Personality traits show a significant difference in information sharing. To be exact, openness (O) has a greater effect than extraversion (E), agreeableness (A), or conscientiousness (C). 5. There is no significant correlation between junior high school students’ learning performance and the four interactive behaviors on Facebook. 6. Concerning junior high school students’ four interactive behaviors on Facebook, posting shows a significantly positive correlation with the teacher’s five types of posts: program schedule, experimental videos, online quizzes, information sharing, and supplementary materials. Similarly, commenting shows a significantly positive correlation with the teacher’s six types of posts: program schedule, summarized highlights, experimental videos, online quizzes,information sharing, and supplementary materials. Also, liking shows a significantly positive correlation with the teacher’s five types of posts: program schedule, summarized highlights, experimental videos, online quizzes, and supplementary materials.