05/01/2023

PERCEPTION OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS TOWARDS SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES FOR CONSTRUCTING

VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITY

Dhanya G.Research ScholarSchool of pedagogical SciencesM. G. UniversityKottayam.

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Virtual learning communities

• Digital or virtual learning communities are social aggregations for knowledge sharing that emerges from the internet to form webs of academic relationships in cyberspace (Rheingold, 1993).

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Attributes of virtual community (Whittaker ,Issacs & O’Day , 1997 ).

Shared goal Active participation Shared activities among participants

Policies determining the

access to resources Reciprocity of information

Support and services among

members

Shared context of social conventions Language Protocols

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Social network sites

• Social network sites are web-based services which permit individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).

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Need of the study

• Virtual community act as the powerful medium for interaction in the new internet world (Rothaermel, & Sugiyama, 2001).

• Social networking sites have large applications for supporting collaborative learning and active interaction.

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Key factors for the success of a learning community (Palloff & Pratt, 1999).

Honesty

Responsiveness

Relevance

Respect

Openness

Empowerment

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Learning Community Building in Social Networking Sites

• Profiles, friends list and public commenting

will forms primary structure of social networking sites (Boyd, 2007).

• The success of site invariably depends on easiness perceived by the users for their interaction.

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Classification of social networking sites

Type of SNS Function Example

Academic and research based social networks

Showcase academic accomplishments Lists scientific conferencesShares research papers

Academia.eduResearchGate.netScholastica

Friend based Social Networks

Not focus on a particular topic. Permits the users to join groups and attach to people whose interests are alike

Facebook, MySpace,Friendster, etc

Music and Movie based Social Networks

Connects people with similar interest in movies and music

LastFM, Flixter, iLike etc.

Mobile based Social Networks

Designed for mobile users. Loopt etc.

Business Social Networks:

Networks for business contactShares information related to the job and business affairs.

LinkedIn, XING, Konnects etc.

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Objectives of the Study

1. To assess the level of perception of undergraduate students towards social networking sites for constructing virtual learning community.

2. To assess the level of perception of undergraduate students towards various facilities of social networking sites such as (1) digital identity management, (2) digital content creation and (3) digital collaboration.

3. To assess the difference in the perception of male and female students towards social networking sites for constructing virtual learning community.

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Perception towards Social Networking Sites

Digital identity

management

Digital

content

creation

Digital collabor

ation

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Digital identity management

• Management of digital identity involves strong password and controlled access to individual profiles.

• Identity in digital world is associated to diverse aspects of cyber ethics.

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Digital content creation

• For this, information, writings and images should be transformed to digital format.

• Uploaded photos, videos, and articles various forms of electronic contents that can be created through social networking sites.

• Digital creativity is the more significant here

than mere technical skills.

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Digital Collaboration

• It is the application open source data and cloud technology to share knowledge, manage information and contribute user generated content to communities of people regardless of time or place (Tapscott &Williams, 2006).

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Sample of the Study

• A convenient sample of 120 undergraduate internet users.

• The age of the participants ranged between 18 and 22.

• All the participants have at least one year of experience in using social media.

• Face book is the most admired social networking site among the participants.

• The sample includes 64% female and 36% male students.

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Tool Used

• Three point scale. • Seven statements were provided for each of

the three components .• Certain statements in the tool were adopted

from a scale prepared by Park and Kim (2013) for measuring intensity of social network of graduate students.

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Analysis of perception of graduate students towards Social networking sites

• The mean score obtained by the sample was calculated : 24.33

• Standard deviation :6.74.

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Distribution of students based on the perception towards social networking sites

No. Level of

perception

Frequency Percentage

1. High 28 23.3 %

2. Moderate 59 49.2%

3. Low 33 27.5%

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Graphical representation of distribution of students based on the perception towards social networking sites data

High Moderate Low0

10

20

30

40

50

60

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Analysis of perception of graduate students towards facilities available in social networking sites

• The mean and standard deviation of scores for digital identity management were 7.01 and 3.03 respectively.

• Scores of digital content creation have got values 8. 9as mean and 2.6 as standard deviation

• 8.7 and 2.9 were the mean and standard deviation of the scores of digital collaboration.

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Distribution of students based on the perception towards various services of social networking sites

Component Percentage of students having level of perception

High moderate Low

Digital identity management

20.0% 32.5% 47.5%

Digital content creation

45.0% 35.8% 19.2%

Digital collaboration

39.2% 35.0% 25.8%

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Graphical representation of distribution of students based on the perception towards various services of social networking

sites

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Analysis of perception of graduate students towards social networking sites with regard to gender

• H0: There is no significant difference between

the mean scores of perception of boys and girls towards social networking site.

• In order to test this, data was collected from 43 boys and 77 girls. Analysis was done using inferential statistics t- test. The detail of the analysis is given in table 4.

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Mean standard deviation and calculated t- value of scores of male and female student

Gender N Mean S.D t-value df

Female 77 2 4.16 6.460.7011 119

Male 43 24.69 7.25

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Major Findings

• 1. Most of the students have moderate level of perception towards social networking sites.

• 2. With regard to perception towards facilities in social networking sites higher numbers of students have high level perception towards digital content creation, but most of them have lower perception towards digital identity management.

• 3. There is no difference in the perception of male and female students towards social networking sites.

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Educational Implications

• The study reveals enthusiasm of students to participate in the activities of learning community.

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Virtual extension of learning activities

• Highly structured, time bounded formal classrooms are inadequate to ensure the complete participation of students.

• During academic discourses in social networking sites all students will get equal opportunity to express their views regarding specific content.

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Technical skills and ethical principles

• Digital learning community will be effective only if the collaborating partners are efficient in handling tools for managing digital identity.

• Additional skill development sessions should be arranged for teachers and students to practice various attributes of cyber ethics.

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Source to improve self efficacy and motivation of students.

• Parents and other stakeholders have access to the contents shared in social media.

• Postings regarding student achievements and college club activities will bring about social recognition of students.

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Conclusion

• Online technology has influenced all levels of social and academic life.

• But all sophisticated technologies are not readily available in conventional classrooms.

• Social networking sites open tremendous opportunities for knowledge creation, conservation and sharing.

• Although it is not an ideal substitute for face-to-face learning, acts as reliable platform for lifelong learning.

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Reference• Bhandari, S. R. (2011). Managing users ins Social networking sites. (Bachelor Degree Thesis, Lahti University of

Applied Sciences). Retrieved fromhttp://www.theseus .fi/bitstream /handle /10024 /3310.

• Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x.

• Boyd, D. (2007). Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?. Knowledge Tree. Retrieved from http://kt.flexiblelearning. net .au/tkt2007/?id=28.

• Palloff, R. M. & Pratt, K. (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace. Sanfrancisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers.

• Park C. & Kim, Y. J. (2013). Intensity of Social Network Use by Involvement: A Study of Young Chinese Users. International Journal of Business and Management, 8( 6), 22-33. doi:10.5539/ijbm.v8n6p22.

• Rheingold, H. (1993). Virtual community reading. MA: Addison Wesley.

• Rothaermel, F. T., & Sugiyama, S. (2001).Virtual internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com. Journal of management, 27, (3), 297-312. doi.: 10.1016/S0149-2063(01)00093-9.

• Tapscott D. & Williams, A. D. (2006). Wikinomics how mass collaboration changes everything. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

• Whittaker, S., Issacs, E., and O’Day, V. (1997) Widening the Net: Workshop report on the theory and practice of physical and network communities. Sigchi Bulletin, 29(3), 27–30.

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