This study examined students’ perception and experiences on use of one Facebook courseware application called as Courses.

1. Use of One Facebook Application - “Courses”: CEIT Students'
Perception and Experiences
Zülfü GENÇ
University of Fırat, ELAZIG, TURKEY
zgenc@firat.edu.tr
ABSTRACT: Facebook is one of the most fast growing and popular social network site among
all university students. This study examined students’ perception and experiences on use of one Facebook
courseware application called as Courses. In this research, a quantitative method was used. Students’
perception and experiences from application with instructional, usability and social communication
features were collected via online Facebook Application Experience Survey. From the analysis of data, it
is clear that preservice teacher liked this application in their courses and “Courses” fulfilled their
instructional needs, even though they ask for some alterations.
Keywords: Social networking sites, Facebook applications, Courses application, Facebook in education
1. INTRODUCTION
Web 2.0 is a web technology which provides online collaboration and participation among web users.
This service enables dispersed users to create sharing points over the Web 2.0 applications. Web 2.0
technologies, and especially social networking sites (SNS) have a extremely pressure on the life of
millions of students (Stamford, 2007), leading many educators to wonder what role, if any, social
networking could have in education (Joly, 2007). The 2008 Horizon Report, released by the New Media
Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative suggests that educators should develop strategies to
utilize social networking for educational purposes (New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE, 2008).
Facebook is a large SNS that boasts more than 400 million members, and it is one of the fastest-
growing and best-known sites on the Internet today. Also it is the social networking site of choice for
most college students and faculty members (Schroeder & Greenbowe, 2009). Members can create easily
profiles about themselves, create and join groups with other members, make friends, and share opinion,
pictures and messages. In addition, Facebook is equipped with many downloadable applications that
make it suitable to educational purposes. These applications have provided additional functionality and
increased interactivity to the users of Facebook. Due to the high usage rates and technological advantages
of Facebook, it can provide an alternative environment with several educational benefits to both teachers
and students (Munoz & Towner, 2009). Recent investigation have pointed out that Facebook can provide
positive effect on the student-to-student and student-to-teacher relationship and lend to a more
comfortable classroom climate (Mazer et al., 2007). Other studies have supported that concept of using
social network sites in education. One study found that 39% of college students surveyed wanted regular
on-line discussions with faculty (Fischman, 2008) and most (66%) of students (n=176) surveyed in
another study were comfortable with faculty on Facebook (Hewitt & Forte, 2006).
1.1. Courseware Application in Facebook
A detailed example of educational use of Facebook is presented in this study. In the 2009-2010 Fall
semester, four undergraduate courses which are Information Technology in Education I, Internet
Programming, Web Design, and Computer Ethics and one graduate course which is Changing Education
and New Technologies were offered to the students on Facebook courseware application (called as
Courses) in Fırat University, Faculty of Education, Department of Computer Education and Instructional
Technology. Courses which is given Figure 1 has a number of functions including mainly the
organization of the courses, forming student groups, sharing the course documents, adding the
announcements, creating discussion boards, and etc.
Figure 1: Courses Application

2. 1.2. The Utilization of the Application
After the Courses application is added to the profile by the lecturer, the creation of the course should
be completed by carrying out the procedure in three steps. Firstly, after deciding if the course will be
accessible for all Facebook users (public) or just the identified users (private), the academic year and the
semester should be defined. In the second step, the information about the name of the course, the lecturer,
the place of the course, the day and hour for the course is described. In the last step, the lecturer confirms
the course creation.
1.3. Lecturer Interface and Functions
Lecturer interface in Figure 2 consists of five tabs which are Home, Courses, Schedule, Friends, and
Settings and four main sections which are Course Info, Classmates, Upcoming Coursework and What’s
Up. Access from Home tab to My User and My Instructor pages, from Schedule to detailed calendar
illustration, from Courses to the interfaces of the related courses and from Settings to all setting functions
of the application are possible. The information about the lecturer of the selected course, the profile photo
and class hours can be found in the Course Info section. The lecturer can manage the basic course
information such as adding and removing a lecturer, cancelling the course, changing the course date and
hour. In the Classmates section, one can see the students taking the course and their photos. When you
click on the photos of the students, you can jump to their Facebook pages. This section has the functions
of forming groups in class, sending and receiving messages visually, seeing all the students, sending an
invitation to a new student. In Upcoming Coursework section, by clicking on the activity-attachment
button, detailed information can be got about an article, an exam, a problem, an argument, a project, a
laboratory work and other activities which will occur in a close time. In What’s Up section, there are three
tabs which are Announcements, Attachments and Discussions. It is possible to make announcements
about the course by using the Announcements tab, to load files pertaining to the course by using the
Attachments tab and to initiate a discussion or ask a question by using the Discussions tab.
Figure 2: Lecturer Interface

3. 1.4. Student Interface and Functions
The Student Interface in Course Application is same with the lecturer interface in Fig.2. There is a
functional difference in that Course Info and Upcoming Coursework sections are used only for getting
information by students. By using the Classmates section, students can see their friends who are taking
the same course, send and receive messages and talk visually with their friends in the student groups. The
student can access to the content of Announcements, Attachments, Discussions sections and benefit from
the functions like reading, attaching a new announcement, loading the course documents on their own
computers, loading files, reading the discussions and writing comments about them actively by using
these tabs.
2. METHOD
The researcher developed an instrument in the form of a survey for assessing the usability of the
Facebook application called “Courses”. This study includes not only results of this instrument but also the
development of the instrument. The developed survey was checked by subject matter experts and Turkish
language experts. Since it is a none-experimental study, the instrument was offered preservice teachers to
fill it voluntarily manner. Basic demographic information about participants was tabulated in Table 1.
This study focuses on the preservice teachers of Computer Education and Instructional Technology
department of Fırat University (n=203, 90 female and 113 male).
Table 1: Basic Demographics of Participants
Having a PC Gender Grade Level
1 2 3 4 Master Total
PC with Internet Gender Female 24 0 15 7 4 50
Male 14 0 26 11 6 57
Total 38 0 41 18 10 107
PC without internet Gender Female 9 0 14 3 0 26
Male 10 4 16 6 0 36
Total 19 4 30 9 0 62
No PC Gender Female 12 0 2 0 0 14
Male 16 0 2 2 0 20
Total 28 0 4 2 0 34
3. FINDINGS
After basic demographical information, the preservice teachers were asked how they perceive
themselves about their professional level of using computers. Among five predefined levels, half of the
participants chose “moderate level” (n=111) of expertise. The rest of the participants could be
summarized namely as; “good level” (n=52), “novice level” (n=24), “expert level” (n=11), and “beginner
level” (n=5). Moreover, the preservice teachers were given three questions about Facebook with the
options of “Yes” and “No” (Table 2). Only a small number of students didn’t have a Facebook account
earlier than using this application, whereas most of the students want to use such applications in the
future.
Table 2: Yes-No answered questions
Items Yes No Total
Before you use “Courses” application, do you have an account on Facebook? 166 37 203
Before you use “Courses” application, do you have your “instructor” as a friend on 89 11 203
your Facebook account? 4
Do you want to use Facebook applications like “Courses” in your courses? 168 35 203
The latter question offered eight functions of “Courses” application to preservice teachers to choose
which one(s) of the functions they used in their courses (Table 3). As Table 3 shows, the preservice

4. teachers were mostly the passive users of the application whom download files and read the
announcements.
Table 3: Functions of "Courses" application and their frequency of use
Name of the Function n Name of the Function n
Upload a file 53 Add an announcement 29
Download a file 174 Read the announcement 149
Open a discussion 50 Messaging with my classmates 87
Join a discussion 71 Study groups 88
The preservice teachers were given twenty-two questions on their perceptions and experiences about
“Courses” application in Facebook as an instructional media in their courses. Participants asked to state
their agreement level on a five point Likert scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.
Initially , a factor analysis implemented on twenty-two items starting checking for data adequacy for
the analysis. On this data set, the KMO coefficient was found .91 and the approximate Χ 2 (153, n=203) is
equal to 1765,039, p<.000. Since the test results were satisfactory, the data were taken to factor analysis.
The dimensionality of the twenty-two items were analyzed using principal component exploratory factor
analysis. Four criteria were used to conclude the number of factors to rotate: the a priori hypothesis
measuring the unidimensional, the Cattell scree test, the variance explained and the interpretability of the
factor solution. The scree pilot indicated that the initial unidimensionality hypothesis was false and there
were several breaking points on the graph. Initial solution created four factors and several overlapping
eigenvalues. Therefore, items which appeared on more than one factor with a less than 0.100 eigenvalue
difference were dismissed from the analysis and factor analysis re-run for several times. At the end of
factor analysis, four (10, 18, 20 and 22) items were deleted from the survey. The resting eighteen items
were distributed on three exploratory factors using a Varimax rotation procedure which fulfilled the
interpretability and total variance explained (58.47 %) criterion.
The researcher named the factors as; factor 1: Application with instructional features, factor 2:
Application with usability features, and factor 3: Application with social communication features. At the
end of the factor analysis, eighteen items were checked for its reliability creating satisfactory level of
Cronbach coefficient (α=.90). Additionally, in order to compare how much reliability had affected by
deletion of four items, another reliability analyses conducted with all twenty-two items (α=.93). From the
analysis, it was found that by the deletion four items, the general reliability had affected 0,03 percent.
Moreover, three sub factors were checked for their reliability coefficients. It was found that all three sub
factor yielded a satisfactory level of reliability. Factor 1 (with nine items) was 0.89, Factor 2 (with five
items) was .76 and Factor 3 (with four items) was .78.
Table 4 summarizes the items, their numbers in the survey, the factor they belong and their mean
scores with standard deviations. For better understanding, items were written as their original forms in
Turkish and their translation versions of English. It is remark that since the survey was online on
questionpro.com, the preservice teachers had a chance of looking at “Courses” application as filling the
survey. From Table 4, it was observed that the preservice teacher liked this application utilization in their
courses, even though they ask for some alterations.
In subsequent to factor analysis and basic statistics, independent sample t-test was conducted in the
data set to see whether or not gender makes a different on the items. Table 5 demonstrates that six items
significantly differs on gender variable. For all six items, female participants have higher mean scores
than male participants.
The last question was an open-ended question asking about what changes they might offer to make
the “Courses” application more useful. All students answered this question and answers were clustered
around the following points;
 More seductive for students,
 Sending simultaneous emails about changes in the application,
 Increasing file upload size,
 Adding more instructional objects, such as games,
 Different language options, especially Turkish,
 Adding chat feature inside of application,
 Supporting more video file format,
 Better visual design,
 Better application loading speed,

5.  More customizable structure,
 More control on addition and/or deletion of application objects,
 Better embedding into Facebook.
Table 4: Mean scores and standard deviations on items
Item Factor
M. S.D.
Items Number Number
It was beneficial to see the course instructor information in 3,7
1 1 0,96
“Courses Info” section. 2
It was beneficial to see the course information in “Courses 4,1
2 1 1,06
Info” section. 0
It was beneficial to see the exam information in “Upcoming 4,1
3 1 1,02
Coursework” section. 3
It was good to messaging with my classroom friends in 3,5
4 3 1,03
“Classmates” section. 2
I liked group work in “study groups” in “Classmates” section. 3,4
5 3 1,02
0
It was beneficial to read instructor announcements in 3,9
6 1 1,06
“Announcements” tab of “Whats Up” section. 3
I used most of the course documents in “Add In” tab of “Whats 3,9
7 1 1,16
Up” section. 4
The course documents in “Attachments” tab of “Whats Up” 4,0
8 1 0,97
section were suitable with course objectives. 0
The discussion topics in “Discussions” tab of “Whats Up” 3,3
9 3 1,04
section were beneficial. 5
The design of “Courses” application was good from aesthetic 3,0
11 2 1,12
perspective. 7
I didn’t have any technical problem while I was using 3,1
12 2 1,21
“Courses” application. 8
In general, it was easy to use “Courses” application. 3,3
13 2 1,17
0
In general, I was satisfied with “Courses” application. 3,6
14 2 1,02
1
I wish to see any changes in “Courses” application on my 3,9
15 1 1,12
Facebook wall. 7
I wish to be informed via email about any changes in 3,9
16 1 1,17
“Courses” application. 9
I prefer another Facebook application with better features. 3,7
17 1 1,12
6
With “Courses”, I communicated effectively with my 3,2
19 3 1,08
classmates. 4
“Courses” fulfilled my instructional needs. 3,2
21 2 1,06
6
Table 5: The independent sample t-test on items
Item Gender n M t p
7. I used most of the course documents in “Add In” tab of “Whats Female 4,1
90
Up” section. 5 2.41
0.017
Male 11 3,7 6
3 6
13. In general, it was easy to use “Courses” application. Female 3,5
90
8 3.13
0.002
Male 11 3,0 3
3 7

6. 15. I wish to see any changes in “Courses” application on my Female 4,1
90
Facebook wall. 8 2.50
0.013
Male 11 3,7 0
3 9
16. I wish to be informed via email about any changes in Female 4,2
90
“Courses” application. 0 2.24
0.026
Male 11 3,8 7
3 3
19. With “Courses”, I communicated effectively with my Female 3,4
90
classmates. 1 1.99
0.047
Male 11 3,1 8
3 0
21. “Courses” fulfilled my instructional needs. Female 3,4
90
6 2.49
0.013
Male 11 3,0 7
3 9
4. DISCUSSION
It is obvious that both the instructor and the student might benefit from Facebook’s networking and
social communication capabilities such as providing an alternative to the traditional lecture format,
creating an online classroom community, and increasing teacher-student and student-student interaction.
The widespread use of Facebook encourages many companies to develop web applications for Facebook.
Blackboard, which is one of the leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) of the education sector, is
in search of solutions to use its applications in Facebook and this gives a clue about the efficiency of
Facebook. Courses Application which is summarized above is perceived as a small scale LMS although it
has many limitations.
Advantages:
 It is easy to use
 It helps to gather all students in one platform and make organizations
 It facilitates the communication between lecturer – student and student – student
 It enhances the collaboration between student groups
 It provides the share of the lecture notes
 It permits discussions in class
 It helps the students to be informed about all the topical announcements
Limitations:
 The obligation to connect in order to see instant messages and announcements.
 1 MB size limit for attachments
 The lecturer cannot step in the announcements written by the students and discussions.
 The lack of permission to remove a student from Classmates list once he/she has been added
accidentally
 Although there is a video chatting feature, it is not usable.
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