Abstract:

Social media are being increasingly employed at the University as a complementary tool to improve the process of acquiring knowledge by students. Facebook, a social networking site that allows people to connect with other users, make friends, and share information, appears among one of the most employed social media for that purpose. Concretely, Facebook groups allows for students to participate, communicate and interact through post and/or chat for a specific purpose.

The objective of this pilot study was to know whether the use of Facebook group improved the University Students' academic performance perception in the “Nutrition in Physical Activity and Sport (NPAS)” subject. For that purpose, a private group of Facebook was created and all the NPAS enrolled students from the Double Degree in Primary Education and Physical Activity and Sports Sciences from the University of Granada (Melilla Campus) were invited to participate. The students were encouraged to use the group to actively discuss different NPAS-related topics. At the end of the course, an anonymous questionnaire consisted of 30 items was administered to evaluate the student participation in the social network Facebook, common employed tools and information management within the social network Facebook and valuation aspect of the social network Facebook (including Facebook group) in education.

A total of 12 to 14 students enrolled in NPAS completed the questionnaire. Among them, the majority were males (75%) with ages ranging from 22 to 25 years old. All of them had a Facebook account mainly used for updating their profiles publishing photos and videos (66.7%). A total of 50% and 16.7% declared hardly ever or never use Facebook groups, respectively. The use of the NPAS Facebook group usually (41.7%) or always (16.7%) helped students to think in concepts out of class. Additionally, 41.7% of students declared to had been stimulated to further research in some of the Facebook group discussed topics. The same percentage of students believed that the use of NPAS Facebook group improved their learning experience and 25% declared that it helped to usually improved their academic performance. All students declared that NPAS group reach or beat their expectations. Finally, near 42% of the students considered that they achieved significant learning through the use of the Facebook group as a complementary tool for teaching and learning.

This is a pilot study carried out to better implement the Facebook group as a complementary tool in the NPAS subject. In spite of the relatively good reception of this resource and the positive perceptions of using Facebook for educational purposes, it was surprising that the majority of students declared not to use Facebook frequently and preferred other Social Networking such as Instagram. In addition, some of the student assured that they would use this tool more if it were assessable. Considering the results from this pilot study, further improvements are warranted to maximize the learning experience through Facebook groups.

Keywords:

Facebook group, Social networking, Learning perception, University students.