The number one rule of effective pedagogy (in my humble opinion) is learning your students: knowing what they are focused on; what interests them; and how those interests can be linked to curriculum planning. In 1984, Astin had an idea for gathering information on student focus:
“Perhaps the first task in working with such students is to understand the principal objects on which their energies are focused. It might be helpful, for example, to ask the student to keep a detailed diary, showing the time spent in various activities such as studying, sleeping, socializing, daydreaming, working, and commuting” (pp. 526-527).
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of software program that young people recorded in intimate detail their studying, sleeping, socializing, daydreaming, working, and commuting?
Oh wait…there is! And I used it to understand what school leavers were focused on throughout their first year of university.
The decision to use Facebook as the only
means of data gathering was reflexive.
In 2011, I was navigating the trials and
tribulations of parenthood for the first time. Life became very complicated. I
decided that my PhD needed to fit in with my life, because family comes first.
Facebook allowed me to collect data from home at any point I had free from the
demands of a newborn.
Secondly, as a PhD student and a fringe
dweller to the academic world and without direct access to a class of first
year students, gaining face-to-face access to a group of students was
problematic. It is important to create a safe space in which to conduct an
interview, especially on a voluntary basis outside the classroom structure.
First year students are often anxious and overwhelmed at the beginning of their
transition to university; therefore, a student volunteering for a research
project during the official orientation week activities was highly unlikely.
Using Facebook as a means of collecting data circumnavigated this concern
because Facebook is comfortable and familiar to the general late-teen.
Thirdly, the principal purpose of
Facebook is to record personal activities using the status update function. The
status update is like a short, written online diary and is organised on
Facebook as part of a personal timeline. Facebook is essentially a public,
interactive, and instant personal diary. Using Facebook as a data collection
tool gave me access to 31 public-personal diaries.
Fourthly, the decision to use Facebook was
grounded in the literature – some people have had a go at it (see for example Selwyn
2009) and others have indicated the value of Facebook to university students (see for example Stephenson-Abetz and Holman 2012 and Gray, Vitak, Easton, and Ellison 2013). There
is a large body of research into the social implications of SNSs and the
experiences of the university students but none of the above literature
considers the student experiences that they describe on Facebook. My research project
aimed to fill that gap.
So how did I collect the data?
I began by initiating a networked
connection with 17-19 year old first year university students through a
Facebook profile created specifically for the study. The participants made
available their status updates that related to their time at university, which I
archived.
The participants were school leavers who
were entering their first year of university in 2011and who have an active
Facebook account. The 31 participants all attended one of three multi-campus
universities in Southeast Queensland, Australia, and were enrolled in a
diversity of courses including education, creative industries, marketing, and
engineering. This study initially recruited thirty-one (31) first year
students. Twelve of the students were identified as being first year students
by using the school identification feature on Facebook. They were also
identified as being 17-19 years old from their nominated age on Facebook. The
twelve participants were subsequently approached and recruited via Facebook’s
Friend request tool –Students were sent a request to add the researcher as a
Friend to allow access to their general posts. Eighteen participants were
recruited through emails to first year university students via their first year
liaison supervisors, or through secondary school alumni contacts. These emails
also asked participants to help recruit further participants.
A Facebook profile named FYHE Profile
(the name has been changed to protect the privacy of the participants) was
created to be my online presence for the duration of the study. The FYHE
Profile enabled recruitment and interaction with the participants through
either the status update or the direct messaging tool. These tools allowed for either
public (status update) or private (direct messaging) communication. On the
profile, informed consent materials were recorded, directing each participant
to read the information. Consent was granted when participants agreed to
participate by “friending” the FYHE Profile. By agreeing to connect with
the FYHE Profile, each participant became part of the researcher’s Facebook
network. The profile had a newsfeed that showed the public status updates and
other Facebook activities in which the FYHE Profile network was engaged.
It was via this newsfeed that I collected status updates.
Status-data was collected through manual
data crawling. I was able to collect conversations about university experiences
24 hours, seven days per week. Both status updates and any further commentary
the participants made within the status-thread was collected. While, commentary
was not collected from the participants’ Facebook network, enough information was
extracted to enhance the participants’ meaning. Data collection also only
occurred during specific phases during the university year. The times are based
on those nominated by the first year student participants in Penn-Edwards’ and Donnison’s (2011) study: in the first weeks of orientation, after the first
assignment is returned, end of the first semester and end of the first year.
Facebook status updates provided insight
into the informal learning world of the participants in this study who were
recording experiences of their first year at university. These experiences
included post and ad-hoc descriptions of learning experiences, the exchange of
information, moral support, and descriptions of their level of academic
engagement.
Facebook as a data collection tool was valuable
for conducting a longitudinal study. I was able to keep in touch with the same
participants during all four critical times. Only one participant withdrew from
the study and that was because she cancelled her Facebook account, not because
she was opposed to continuing the study.
The use of Facebook to track the
experiences of first year students has great potential for future research,
especially for longitudinal studies that follow a large number of students for
an entire degree. The use of software, such as Leximancer, is worth
investigating as it could handle a much larger amount of data (Penn-Edwards, 2010).
A limitation is in the changeable nature
of social media. Facebook is valuable for collecting qualitative data because
the networked users must be mutually connected. Mini-blog and video-blog social
media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube are gaining popularity and also
contain descriptions of experiences of first year. These applications, unlike Facebook
profiles, are publically available. A mixed methods approach might consider
these applications for access to a larger data set; however, the ethics of what
it means to collect online publically available experiential data is far from
clear (Henderson, Johnson, and Auld, 2013; James, N. & Busher, 2007).
This study referred to in this paper (reference
removed for the integrity of the blind review process), has shown the important
role SNSs play in the learning experiences of first year university students.
By limiting data collection to those status updates only associated with the
university experience, it became evident that a type of learning community
exists online.
The use of Facebook as a data gathering
tool is an emerging field in educational research. To date, the majority of
research has been limited to how students use Facebook, its use for social
integration, and its relevance in a twenty-first century curriculum. My
research indicates that Facebook status data is a worthwhile source of
experiential descriptions. Selwyn (2012) suggests that there is a gap in the
study of SNSs which do not try to manipulate and control the use of social
media in education, but rather uses the medium authentically. This research, as
well as that of Selwyn (2009), Baker (2013) and Jenkins et al. (2012), is part
of the expansion of this field – a field that is bound to continue expanding
over the coming decades.
