Literature Review #3

Roblyer. "Findings on Facebook in Higher Education: A Comparison of College 
     Faculty and Student Uses and Perceptions of Social Networking Sites." 
     Internet and Higher Education (2010): 134-40. Print. 

This article describes through readily available and free social networking sites, most specifically Facebook, students and instructors can collaborate to create a better learning environment. Throughout the article there are many studies depicting how students are all for the use of social networking within education, but many educators are weary to how these changes could effect the outcome of the education of their students. Both students and faculty could benefit from the change into a social network integrated curriculum, but it has never been done before therefore, the risks and benefits are truly unknown.

            The main author of this article, M.D. Roblyer, is an educator herself and has many educational resources and novels discussing the topic of technology and the classroom. Since she is also an educator herself, she most likely has experienced first hand the integration of social media into the classroom, and therefore is able to depict for others how this idea has panned out along her experience.

            Roblyer uses the term “social arena” in order to describe the idea of social networks, and she stresses the importance of becoming one with the new day and age, and it is important to incorporate aspects of students lives into the classroom in order to engage them further into their education, or step into their “arena”.

            The term “interaction” is also used frequently throughout the article, as Roblyer stresses the importance of how the technology can aid instructors to not only interact with their peers both inside and outside the classroom, but this also opens the door for students to further brainstorm on a peer to peer basis.

            “The social and interactive nature of SNSs presents the intriguing possibility that by enhancing social interactions with and among students through the use of an SNS such as Facebook, instructors can increase the overall quality of engagement in a given instructional setting and, thus, create a more effective learning environment” (Roblyer 137).

            “…As the rapid evolution in societal perceptions and uses of the Internet has shown in the last decade, attitudes toward technologies tend to change overtime” (Roblyer 138).

            “Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook are one of the latest examples of communications technologies that have been widely-adopted by students and, consequently, have the potential to become a valuable resource to support their educational communications and collaborations with faculty (Roblyer 134).

            This article is very valuable due to is experimental nature, and Roblyer’s expertise in her field. This article gives a variety of different statistics regarding the integration of technology and social media into the classroom. This article also presents both the ideas encouraging the use of SNSs in education, but also the risks and counter-ideas resulting from this risky subject.