Abstract:

In Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki Information and Communication Technology (ICT) subject is part of the curriculum in most of its departments. In the Food Technology course ICT is a 90 hours course, it is a three hours weekly subject, it lasts two semesters and it is taking place during the first year of this undergraduate course. As students are coming from different high schools their ICT background knowledge varies dramatically. Consequently, the need to support those students that do not have already gained the required ICT skills during their secondary level education became a necessity.
During the last four years a number of efforts towards to this direction have been set by the ICT lecturers. The supporting approaches that have been set were: extra hands outs and educational materials, tutorial classes and finally e-mails communication between lecturers and students. In all these cases only a small number of students took part. As these approaches were not very successful a questionnaire have been designed and distributed to students during the end of the second semester in order to find out how to support them more effectively. According to the results of the collected questionnaires the ICT lecturers decided to set a Social Network for the ICT students of Food Technology. Accordingly during the beginning of this year a Social Supporting Learning Network has been set for the ICT students.
The aim of this study is to present the application and evaluation of the Social Supporting Learning Network for the ICT students of the Food Technology Department.

Keywords:

social networks, instructional design, virtual communities.