STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION AND EXPECTATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL USES OF WIKIS AND FACEBOOK FOR LEARNING ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES - A PILOT STUDY
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION AND EXPECTATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL USES OF WIKIS AND FACEBOOK FOR LEARNING ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES - A PILOT STUDY

Summary/Abstract: The presence of social software and social media in higher education is subject to research and change of educational practice. The increasing use of Web 2.0 technology is well documented in the international literature, especially in relation to more interactive learning, shift to student-centered pedagogies and change of teachers’ roles, and student engagement with the learning process. Recently, there seems to be a significant number of studies in which emphasis is moved from teaching to learning with technology, namely on students’ expectations from technology use in their courses. In Romania, in spite of their acceptance in higher education teaching/learning process being still in the stage of early adoption, research in this area shows increasing preoccupation with studying their implementation and impact on teacher and student practice. For the past five years, the authors have built and implemented a wiki-based blended learning programme for teaching English for Academic Purposes for undergraduate students at "Babeş-Bolyai" University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. They have studied its impact in relation to the factors that influence the use of social software/social media for learning, with language and IT proficiency levels as predictors of active use. Next, learning behaviour patterns were targeted to document transition from traditional to a web-based learning paradigm. Findings showed that student and teacher roles changed during the process, with the former developing independent and collaborative skills and the latter offering support and guidance as a facilitator. However, the quantitative analysis performed on several cohorts indicated an uneven online presence and a relative reluctance to use the respective course-embedded technology. These results, together with class observations and interaction with students, as well as a growing attention paid to the influence of Facebook on students’ behaviour, prompted the authors to investigate into similarities and differences between the current learning environment and Facebook in terms of potential for improving motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes. The purpose of the present study is to build, pilot and validate (by using the validity-reliability method) a questionnaire aimed at exploring motivation, frequency and ease-of-use, and type of activities performed on two particular social media, namely a wiki and Facebook. Students’ perception of the usefulness of extending the learning environment to Facebook will be also investigated. Brief interviews will complete the quantitative data and study data obtained with social network analysis. The findings are expected to highlight benefits and challenges of using social media for learning and point out ways to improve pedagogical design to allow for an enhanced student engagement and for the design of a future experiment for the in-depth study of student success.

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