Download - July 2012 Course identity
Creating Course Identity through Social Networking Platforms
Panni Poh Yoke Loh, PhD
Student Researcher
July 2012
Rationale for the project
Is there course identity on the undergraduate English degree?
Would students find course social network sites useful in building a sense of course identity? If so should they be jointly managed by staff and students
Literature
Wenger (2000) Gammon and White (2011) Prensky (2001) Kear (2011) Lipton (2011)
Methods
2 focus groups-9 students 2 individual student interviews 10 staff individual interviews
Findings
Students feeling part of the course Views on the Blackboard site Creation of course identity through social
networking and issues of management ‘Social Networking helps in terms of it’s something that’s used by
everyone on a personal basis, so if it was for your course..it would be helpful for making friends..helping each other out with things that they didn’t understand.’ Student 1, 20/4/12
Conclusion Importance of social networking in students’ lives Emphasis on the importance of physical space to staff Emphasis on the importance of course representatives
to students Blackboard an information repository, but lacking user
friendly social interaction Student only Face Book agreed by staff and students Agreement by staff and students on alternative user
friendly platform with social networking element managed by staff and student representatives
Future work required as this was preliminary findings over 100 hours of research