FrontPage     Research Projects

 

Project Title: Invesitigating the Affordances of Facebook for Collaborative Learning (Apr 2009 - Mar 2011)

 

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Name: Wang Qiyun

Appointment: Assistant professor

Academic Group/Research Centre: Learning Sciences and Technologies

Telephone number: 6790 3267

Fax number: 6896 8038

Email address: qiyun.wang@nie.edu.sg

 

 

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Name: Woo Huay Lit

Appointment: Lecturer

Academic Group/Research Centre: Learning Sciences and Technologies

Telephone number: 6790 3262

Fax number: 6896 8038

Email address: huaylit.woo@nie.edu.sg

 

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Name: Quek Choon Lang

Appointment: Assistant  Professor

Academic Group/Research Centre: LST

Telephone number: 6790 3270

Fax number:6896 8038

Email address: Choonlang.quek@nie.edu.sg

 

Abstract

In about 400 words, describe the project in the context of previous work done or in progress at the NIE or at other institutions, and explain the significance and uniqueness of this project. Please also elaborate the project’s contributions to practices and/or new knowledge construction. 

 

In the new information age, work becomes more knowledge-based, interdisciplinary and complicated. It is hardly possible for an individual to complete a sophisticated task without the help of others. The ability to work collaboratively becomes crucial in the workplace (Barron, 2000). To prepare our school students to become proficient team workers in the future, they must start to develop competency in collaboration as well.

Facebook is a free and new web-based social environment. Its primary purpose is to provide a virtual space for users to make new friends and interact with them. Nowadays, many young people have Facebook accounts and use Facebook to communicate with their friends. In NIE, more than half of the PGDE student teachers I taught this semester have their own Facebook accounts and have experience using this web-based tool. Given this conducive background, it would be useful to capitalize on its existing usage and extend its potential to teaching and learning. Also, Facebook has great potential for teaching and learning. At present, there are very few known empirical studies conducted on the use of Facebook in education. This makes it more imperative to conduct research into the affordances of Facebook for teaching and learning especially in the area of collaborative learning. 

 

This proposed research project aims at exploring the affordances of Facebook for teaching and learning. As Facebook is built to provide a social networking environment, our focus will be on using Facebook to promote collaborative learning. This will be done by identifying and examining the affordances of Facebook from three perspectives: pedagogical, social and technological. In terms of pedagogical affordances, we intend to investigate if a learning environment created using Facebook can help students to achieve predetermined learning objectives. Specifically, we will study if it can integrate learning resources and activities that support students’ group learning; and if it can allow teachers to track the learning process and facilitate learning. Regarding social affordances, we want to study how Facebook-mediated collaborative processes can remain as a safe and comfortable environment in which students are willing to communicate and collaborate with group members, peers, and the teacher without undue worries and concerns; if the Facebook-mediated learning environment can provide group members with multiple ways (synchronous and asynchronous) of communication. Also, it concerns the cyberwellness of using Facebook in a learning environment. With respect to technological affordances, we aim to explore if the learning environment is easy to access and use; if the interface is attractive and customizable; and if there is any technical problems or difficulties that students may encounter when they are using the tool.

 

This project will be conducted in NIE with student teachers as the participants. It also seeks to extend its scope of collaboration to include international participants. Tentatively and subject to availability, the plan is to invite a group of graduate students from South China Normal University in Guangzhou to collaborate with NIE local participants in one semester. We will investigate the cultural impact and effects when two distinctive groups of students working collaboratively in a Facebook-mediated environment. Hopefully through the research, the pedagogical, social, and technological affordances of Facebook will be identified and recommendations for effective use of Facebook for collaborative learning will be suggested.

 

Objectives

The main objectives of this research project are to:

1. Investigate the pedagogical, social, and technological affordances of Facebook for collaborative learning;

2. Create an effective Facebook-mediated learning environment to support collaborative learning;

3. Demonstrate the characteristics of the learning environment to the participants and provide an opportunity for them to gain experience on effective integration of Facebook into teaching and learning;

4. Suggest strategies for promoting collaborative learning in Facebook-mediated learning environments

 

Research Questions

1. What are the pedagogical, social, and technological affordances of Facebook for collaborative learning?

2. How to design an effective learning environment using Facebook for collaborative learning based on the identified affordances? 

 

Research Design

Facebook is a web-based social environment that incorporates special features such as the provision to allow content to be seen by different groups of people or only to the Facebook owner himself or herself. Facebook also offers users different extent of interaction without the confine of space and time. For instance, the collaboration may happen among students from the same class, from different classes of the same school, from different schools of the same country or from different schools of different countries.  In essence, Facebook has the potential to offer different modes of interaction and different levels of collaboration.

 

In this study, the aims are two prongs.  We would like to investigate how collaborative learning takes place using Facebook by NIE participants from the same class. We also intend to explore if there are issues associated with the pedagogical, social, and technological affordances when Facebook is used for collaboration by participants from different countries. China will be the other country and the students form South China Normal University (SCNU) in Guangzhou will be the foreign participants to take part in the research. The NIE and China counterpart will each create their own Facebook-mediated learning environments for their own participants in their own context. This will be carried out for the first two semesters. There will be a review at the end of each semester by both sides of researchers to discuss progress and design improvement. In the third semester, the participants from both countries will share a common Facebook-mediated learning environment to collaborate on some common tasks. The researchers from both institutions will meet face-to-face to understand what the participants in the other country are coping with the research.

 

Related Publication

• Wang, Q.Y., & Woo, H.L (In-press). Affordances of Facebook for collaborative learning. Asian Journal of Educational Research and Synergy, 1(1).  
• Idris, Y. & Wang, Q.Y. (2009). Affordances of Facebook for Learning. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-long Learning, 19(2/3), 247-255. (Online)

More publications...