Facebook usage by students in higher education

[EN] In this paper I measure first year student Facebook usage as part of a broader PhD study into the influence of social media usage on the success of students in higher education. A total of 906 students were asked to complete 3 surveys on Facebook usage with their peers, for two consecutive years (2011-2012 and 2012-2013). The different purposes for Facebook usage, in addition to whether or not students used (self-created) Facebook-groups, were measured and the relationship between the use of pages compared to the purpose of Facebook usage. This resulted in significant correlations between the purpose of Facebook usage and the use of different pages, as well as correlations between the purpose and use of different pages. This study hereby explores the variation in student Facebook usage and provides valuable insight into the potential value of Facebook for students in an educational setting, without the interference of teachers. It is also the next logical step in revising existing integration and engagement theories that predict student successin higher education in contemporary society.Wesseling, N. (2015). Facebook usage by students in higher education. En 1ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HIGHER EDUCATION ADVANCES (HEAD' 15). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 593-599. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd15.2015.395OCS59359

How students use Facebook

This study investigates the way in which first year students use Facebook. An overview of recent studies on Facebook usage and a survey is presented. The latter is an online questionnaire on the Facebook activities of 618 students (78.6 % of all first year students) of the Media department of Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Previous studies identified four major Facebook activities: 1) information sharing receiving/providing information and generating ideas), 2) sharing for educational purposes (for learning, problem solving and sharing work), 3) social purposes (retrieving personal information about others or themselves, chatting, making appointments and generally keeping in touch) and 4) leisure (gaming and relaxing). The questionnaire’s answers were grouped accordingly and then compared, to provide a better understanding of how students use Facebook. In addition, a range of variables were measured in the survey,in order to map student characteristics such as gender, age, place of birth, living arrangements and the socio-economic status of their parents. Those variables were compared with the Facebook activities using PAWS Statistics 18.0 (formally SPSS)to determine any correlatio

A new structural model for student success: the role of social media use, engagement, effort and background variables of students in higher education

As part of my PhD research, I investigate the influence of the use of social media by first year students in higher education. In this research I have lessened the amount of variables, from Tinto’s theory, by including only the best-proven predictive variables, based on previous studies. Hereby, avoiding the capitalization of chance and a more easy to use model for teachers and management has been built. The latent variable ‘satisfaction’ is constructed by using just a fraction of the original manifest variables and tested using principal component analysis to proof the model can be simplified. Furthermore, I enriched the model with the use of social media, in particular Facebook, to better suit students’ contemporary society in the developed world. With principal analysis on Facebook usage, I measured the purpose of Facebook use (information, education, social and leisure) and the use of different pages amongst students. This provided different integration/engagement components, which are also included in the simplified model. For the principal component-analysis, Cronbach’s alpha and Guttman’s lambda-2 showed internal consistency and reliability. SPSS AMOS was used for testing the fit of the model and showed reasonable values for the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). This study will compare different background variables with the model to uncover the possible influences upon student success, engagement/satisfaction and social media use. Ultimately this paper will provide a better insight into what kind of influence social media can have upon student success