Critical Review of a Research Paper

Assignment 1 – Critical Review of a Research Paper

INTRODUCTION

This essay is aimed to critically discuss the research paper titled ‘Screw Blackboard… do it on Facebook!’: an investigation of students’ educational use of Facebook. This critique will focus mainly on the benefits and shortfalls of the research design and suggest an alternate research design to back up the limitations identified.

BENEFITS TO THE RESEARCH DESIGN AND APPROACH

Firstly, the appropriateness in the selection of sample size to represent the overall student population of the United Kingdom’s (UK). According to Higher Education Statistic Agency (HESA), the total number of undergraduate students in the Academic Year 2006/07 is 1,803,425. Having selecting 909 students from Coalsville University, School of Social Sciences is equivalent to having confidence level of 95% and margin of error of 3.25%. However, it was later stated in the research paper that, actual number of students studied was 612, who actively managed their Facebook account. With this smaller sample size, it still achieved a 3.96% margin of error and confidence level remained status quo.

In addition to the appropriate sample size, the time frame of the data collection period is wisely chosen to encompass the life cycle of a typical undergraduate. This included times where students attend lectures and seminars, prepare and submitting assignments, preparing for and taking part in examinations plus receiving results.

The researchers adopted a bystander, residing in the community role in order to remotely collect the naturally occurring data without interfering with the students’ exchanges. In this manner, the data (Facebook exchanges) collected will not be bias or skew towards projecting a good image for being an undergraduate. It reflects what students will ‘talk’ about among their peers on a normal basis. Other than being bias-free, the data collected will also provide better insights to study the co-relationship between Facebook usage and education.

After the data collection, researchers interpreted and grouped the data into themes to make it more comprehensible. The five themes that were identified by the researchers have direct relations to the research questions that were laid out from the beginning.

LIMITATIONS TO THE RESEARCH DESIGN AND APPROACH

Although the researchers used a reasonably sufficient sample size, it is not enough to generalise the whole student populations. By solely studying within Coalsville University, School of Social Science is insufficient to represent the student population in UK. Prospective students select their course of studies based on their personality (Astin, 1993). So, according to Astin’s theory, the online traffic of information exchanges should differ between faculties due to the differences in students’ personalities.

In current Higher Education (HE) environment, undergraduates are largely still adopting passive learning and expect lecturers to be facilitators for their learning (Siddall, 2011). With regards to the research results, it is not difficult to understand why education related exchanges during the data collection period on Facebook were so little (4% of the total exhanges made). The exclusion of faculty staff members and academics from the school into the network could be one reason. In contrast to Blackboard (a virtual learning portal which most education institutes are using), faculty staff members and academics are actively involved in discussions, answering students queries and updating the latest news about the modules. Most students will rely on Blackboard to find out official and reliable information or raise quieries to university’s staffs.

One final point worth highlighting is regarding the selection criteria for the exchanges made. In the research paper, it was stated that only reciprocal exchanges among students are being considered. This could potentially be a downside of the research design. There might be cases where students posted education related questions but none of their peers know the answers resulting in not replying to the queries. In this case, those inputs are useful towards the study of how Facebook is used for educational purpose but not considered in the research.

ALTERNATE RESEARCH DESIGN AND APPROACH

In order to tackle the sample size amongst only School of Social Sciences, I suggest that one degree program from each academic school to be selected for the research within the university. In this way, the demographic of the entire student population will be represented in a more complete manner with diversified student’s personalities. However, the question in mind now is which stage of students to select? In order to maintain consistency in the study, I recommend selecting only one stage across the board and not a mixture. Stage one students hardly know their peers in the course and stage three students will be busy communicating within either their consultancy project group or tutor-mentor on dissertation, thus not ideal. Stage two students on the other hand have certain level of knowing the people they always meet in lectures and also have a good mix of individual and group work.

Involving staffs and academics from the school into the study is important, as they will be able to lead discussions. Undergraduates are expecting more contact time, spoon-feeding and handholding from the lecturers because they misunderstood education in university and paid more school fees (Greyling, 2009). In order to find out how efficient Facebook can offer to HE, researchers should not expect student-led discussions occuring that often as they still require ‘facilitator’s’ assistance. This is a fact that is happening to the current generation of students as university studies are being perceived as a brought product with the high tuition fees and students, seeing themselves as the consumers, are demanding more from the academics (Jobbins and Lipsett, 2004).

Regardless whether the wall postings are reciprocated or reciprocated positively, I think it should be considered as a count for education related posting. This is because it still shows that a particualar student is actually using Facebook for educational purposes, only not being replied or correctly replied at.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, it is important to design a research that produces results that can answer the research questions set. In this particular research paper, it covered most of the key aspects of a good research design. However, it could be more complete and well covered if the researchers are to involve academic staffs and select a more diversified sample size with regards to course of studies.

(1022 words)

REFERENCES

Astin, A. (1993) What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited, 2nd edition, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Greyling, A. (2009) University are not there to spoon-feed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/university-contact-hours-mandelson, accessed on 8 November 2011.

Jobbins, D. and Lipsett, A. (2004) Under-40s bemoan spoon-fed students. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=191208, accessed on 8 November 2011.

Siddall, G. (2011) Spoon-feeding – the end of academic enquiry?. http://library.northampton.ac.uk/bibliotech/read/?p=602, accessed on 8 November 2011.

References: Astin, A. (1993) What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited, 2nd edition, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Greyling, A. (2009) University are not there to spoon-feed. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/university-contact-hours-mandelson, accessed on 8 November 2011. Jobbins, D. and Lipsett, A. (2004) Under-40s bemoan spoon-fed students. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=191208, accessed on 8 November 2011. Siddall, G. (2011) Spoon-feeding – the end of academic enquiry?. http://library.northampton.ac.uk/bibliotech/read/?p=602, accessed on 8 November 2011.