The role of Social Networking Sites in e-learning

This paper explores the role of Social Networking Sites (SNS) in e-learning by investigating the attitudes, behaviors, knowledge and views of computing students towards the use of SNS in e-learning. Data was collected from an online survey and interviews, and analyzed to discover the practices, tendencies and the current status of the use of SNS in e-learning as well as how these can be improved. Major factors that facilitate the usage of SNS in e-learning were identified as collaboration, communication, resource sharing, social influence, usefulness and ease of use. Facebook was identified as the most popular SNS. The role of SNS in e-learning is supportive and important. Although the participants were computing students with a high level of IT literacy, and were interested in using SNS for e-learning, only a few were frequently using SNS for e-learning. Reasons for this minimal utilization of SNS for e-learning were identified as security and privacy concerns, reliability and currency of content and network issues such as speed of access, real time synchronization and efficiency. We believe that SNS can play a major supporting role in e-learning and that the potential for using SNS in e-learning is not fully reached. The situation may be improved by providing increased guidance and training to students. Learning activities using SNS should be planned and organized. Brief guidelines on using SNS in e-learning are also included in this paper. These guidelines may be further refined and adapted for use in other institutions.