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