How Can Facebook Use in Education Be Realized as Crowdsourcing of Learning? an Exploration of Junior, Senior and Graduates Working Together

The popularity of Facebook makes it a particularly interesting platform to explore within an educational setting. In this article, we report on the use of Facebook to support a Media Studies A-level course that involved current and former students using a closed Facebook group. At the time of the study, the group included 106 graduates, and 21 junior and senior students who were the main participants of the study. We employed qualitative content analysis of focus-group and individual interview data to examine how Facebook was realized and used by juniors and seniors brought together to work as a group. Researchers perceived the emerging perceptions of the participants and self-reported interactions to be closely linked to the crowdsourcing model as presented in fields outside education. The study demonstrates how a Facebook group of mixed juniors, seniors and graduates can stimulate collective intelligence; it acts as an aggregator of subject-specific content that is created and disseminated by the online community and builds on a corpus of knowledge that is shared among group members and evolves organically. The work elaborates on a crowdsourcing model of Facebook use in secondary education, and equips practitioners with new knowledge to maximize the educational potential of Facebook with today’s learners

Teachers' use of Facebook motivating Vietnamese students to improve their English language learning

At the Ho Chi Minh University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology (HUFLIT) in Vietnam, students must enrol in eight intensive compulsory English courses (2 credits, equal to 30 hours per course) as required by their program. The National Language Project (2012-2020) uses the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) as a framework of reference; and also requires all English second language teachers in Vietnam to reach an English level proficiency of B2 as indicated by the CEFR for primary and lower secondary school teachers; and CEFR C1 for upper secondary, high school teachers. As part of the National Language Project, blended learning was introduced to modernising language teaching, but unfortunately, the learning outcomes were not as positive as expected. The researchers introduced a social networking site, Facebook for language learning in an effort to improve learning motivation through mobile learning. This study is underpinned by Malcolm Knowles’ (1984) principles of andragogy as the science of adult learning. During the course, the researcher observed and examined participants’ learning participation and attitude using data collected by both qualitative and quantitative methods. This case study demonstrated that learning connections made through mobile learning, and virtual learning environments could have a positive effect on learning outcomes, and also increase students’ motivation as well as a sense of community