DIGITAL LIBRARY
COULD SOCIAL NETWORKS ENHANCE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS?
1 ENSIAS, Mohammed V University in Rabat (MOROCCO)
2 RUDN University (RUSSIAN FEDERATION)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2019 Proceedings
Publication year: 2019
Pages: 9367-9371
ISBN: 978-84-09-14755-7
ISSN: 2340-1095
doi: 10.21125/iceri.2019.2270
Conference name: 12th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 11-13 November, 2019
Location: Seville, Spain
Abstract:
Even though social networks were not initially designed for academic purposes, they are gradually being used as educational tools. Many studies have, actually, shown that students are immersed in these social media platforms as they resort to them not only for communication and entertainment reasons, but for learning purposes as well. Given the promising role of these virtual spaces in enhancing education, and in view of the fact that interaction between teachers and students both in-class and out-of-class is one the major prerequisites for the success of every teaching and learning experience, our objective in this paper is to examine the potentials and promise of using social networking websites in enhancing teacher-student communication. In this context, based on the study that we conducted, it was revealed that almost 90% of the surveyed students use social networks, namely Facebook, as educational platforms. Nevertheless, it was noticed that interaction with teachers on this online platform is strictly minimal. In fact, while 80% of the students claimed to use Facebook primarily to interact with classmates and peers, only 27% of the subjects reported to adopt this social network as a communication channel with instructors.
Keywords:
Communication, teacher-student, social networks, Facebook.