Students’ appraisal of online interactions with lecturers using Facebook

Abstract

Facebook as a social network tool can be used to enhance students’ learning. In addition to making available educational resources online that gives students’ access to learning material of different formats anywhere and anytime, Couillard (2010), DeTeso (2011), Lam (2012), Pianta, Hamre and Allen (2012) and Gablinske (2014), maintain that it can also be used to enhance student-teacher relationship and hence improve on their grades. To investigate this assertion in the Cameroonian setting, we conducted a survey of 264 students of the University of Buea from the 4^th to the 16^th of June 2017 for their appraisal of their interactions with lecturers on Facebook. The results show that 73.4 per cent of the students have had no interaction with any of their lecturers on Facebook because they have never seen their lecturers profile or that they were rarely present online for those who have seen and were friends with them. The results also suggested a high probability for graduate students who interact with lecturers to have their grades improved on due to the interaction than undergraduates. A greater proportion (43.6%) of the students reported that it was appropriate for lecturers to be on Facebook while only 29.7% stated that it was inappropriate. The results also indicate that students react better with their lecturers offline (13.6%) compare to online (4.0%).

Keywords: Facebook, online interactions, lecturers, students