Improving Students Engagement through Social Media a Case Study of a Private University in Malaysia Using Facebook

Abstract

This research looks into implementation of Facebook in six different courses covering Science, Engineering and Technology subjects. The initial purpose of using Facebook in the class is to communicate with the students more effectively, as communication through the formal channel (through learn management system) had not been successful. It is expected that by sending two to three notices per week to the students as a gentle reminder for reading material, assignments or even tests, students would be more motivated to engage in the course content. The research results showed that students are positive in using Facebook as an engagement tool. The engagement also encourages their participation in class, and enhances their interest towards the subject content. Features that influenced this engagement are also looked into.

The state of social media engagement in Saudi universities

“…They allow instant messaging among two users or more Google Hangout, WhatsApp Sources: Alsurehi and AlYoubi (2014), Alwagait et al (2015), Grahl (2012) Al-Khalifa and Garcia (2013) have divided social media usage in higher education into four categories: classroom (Moran et al, 2011;Seaman and Tinti-Kane, 2013;Shao and Seif, 2014;Sim et al, 2014;Tess, 2013), potential students (Almadhoun et al, 2011;Bélanger et al, 2014;DeAndrea et al, 2012), professional development (Moran et al, 2011;Rodriguez, 2011;Seaman and Tinti-Kane, 2013), and general outreach (Almadhoun et al, 2011;Bélanger et al, 2014;Sessa, 2014). The primary functions of social media in higher education are for recruiting students, locating information about students and monitoring "buzz" about the respective organization (Barnes, 2009;Barnes and Lescault, 2011).…”

“…These studies can be divided into three categories based on their perspectives. Most of these studies addressed the exploitation of social media engagement from learning and teaching perspectives Lim et al, 2014;Sim et al, 2014). However, a few studies addressed the operation of social media platforms in engaging with the target audience from a marketing perspective (Bélanger et al, 2014) as well as a management perspective (Voss and Kumar, 2013).…”