Should Students Befriend Teachers on Facebook?

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Executive Summary
As a popular social networking tool among many youths, Facebook offers plenty opportunities for teachers to use in teaching. However, with concerns over privacy and inappropriate behaviour, clear boundaries between tutors and students must be established on social media sites. In view of this, National University of Singapore (NUS) commissioned Dale Carnegie Training (DCT) to provide more information on students’ perspectives regarding befriending teachers on Facebook in its effort to form a guideline on social media usage in NUS. To investigate, a survey was conducted on 48 NUS students to understand their perspective on using Facebook to connect with their teachers. From the data, key findings reveal that students want a social media component in their courses but are not entirely comfortable with befriending teachers. Students prefer teachers to use a separate social media account for teaching purposes. Thus, DCT concluded that social media should be used in future courses in NUS but teachers should not to befriend students. Instead, teachers should use a separate account on Facebook for courserelated matters. Lastly, DCT recommends that teachers setup a course Facebook page using a separate social media account to supplement learning while adhering to guidelines to prevent inappropriate behaviour from emerging.

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P g
Executive summary …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1. Introduction ……………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………….. i 1

1.1 Background ……………………………………………..………………………………………………………………….. 1 1.2 Scope of research ……………………………………………..………………………………………………………… 1.2.1 Problem ……………………………………………..……………………………………………..………………….. 1.2.2 Purpose ……………………………………………..………………………………………………………………….. 1 1 1

1.2.3 Questions ……………………………………………..……………………………………………..………………… 2 1.3 Methodology ……………………………………………..……………………………………………………………….. 1.4 Limitations ……………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………… 2. Findings ……………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………. 2.1 Students’ preference towards befriending teachers on Facebook ………………………………….. 2.2 Frequency of Facebook users and reasons why students use social networking sites …….. 2.3 Students’ opinions on having Facebook integrated into courses …………………………………….. 3. Conclusions ……………………………………………..…………………………………………………………………..…. 4. Recommendations ……………………………………………..…………………………………………………….…….. 4.1 Use of course Facebook pages ………………………………………………………………………………………… 4.2 Separate account and guidelines to adhere to ……………………………………………………………….. 2 2 3 3 4 7 9 10 10 10

5. Over-all conclusion ……………………………………………..…………………………………………………………… 11 6. References ……………………………………………..………………………………………………………………..…….. 7. Appendices ……………………………………………..………………………………………………………………………. 12 13

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1. Introduction
1.1 Background
Social networks have increasingly become an important source of business networking, social connections and information in our lives. In a study of Facebook statistics (socialbakers, 2012), the 2.8 million Facebook users in Singapore are aged 18 – 34. This highlights the high usage of Facebook by youths and young adults in Singapore. As such, there give rise to concerns over managing student-teacher relationships on Facebook.

According to Vasagar and Willams (2012), such concerns included the case of “more than one in 10 school teachers” in England “accused of misconduct used social networking sites and email to forge inappropriate relationships with their pupils” in 2011 (para. 1)

Hence, National University of Singapore (NUS) recognizes these hazards of student-teacher relationships on Facebook and commissioned Dale Carnegie Training (DCT) to gather more information to facilitate the formation of a guideline to manage student-teacher relationships on Facebook.

1.2 Scope of research

1.2.1

Problem

NUS requires more information on students’ perspective about befriending teachers on Facebook in its effort to formulate a guideline on whether faculties should initiate and/or accept students as friends on Facebook.

1.2.2

Purpose

This research will determine what the students’ perspectives are on befriending teachers on Facebook to help NUS in its effort towards the formation of the guideline.

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1.2.3

Questions

Key questions to be answered:

Are students in favour of befriending teachers on Facebook? What are the reasons why students befriend teachers on Facebook? What concerns might students have with regards to befriending teachers on Facebook?

1.3 Methodology

The data used in this report were gathered from a CELC-ES2002 survey conducted in 2011 on 48 NUS students.

1.4 Limitations

The survey data has a limited sample size of 48 students and this does not give a good representation of the school population. Nevertheless, it is still reliable as high Facebook usage is noticed in Singapore youths.

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2. Findings
This section contains several key findings that will be used to explore students’ perspectives on befriending teachers on social networking sites and social media used in NUS courses.

2.1 Students’ preference towards befriending teachers on social media
This part of the findings shows that students are not completely in favour of befriending their teachers on social networking sites. From Figure 1, about half of the respondents indicated that they are not really in favour of befriending teachers while the other half felt positively towards it.

2% 8% 12% Not at all A little Much 40% A lot 38% Not applicable

Figure 1: Frequency of students interested in befriending their tutors/lecturers/professors on a social media platform

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2.2 Frequency of Facebook users and reasons why students use social networking sites
This section highlights the fact that most students have a Facebook account but few students use social media to communicate with their teachers. However, when a Facebook account is setup for ES2002, a larger proportion of respondents communicated with their teachers. From Figure 2, it can be seen that all of the respondents have a Facebook account.

0%

Yes No

100%

Figure 2: Frequency of students that have a Facebook account

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According to Figure 3, only 7% of the responses made were for the purpose of communicating with their tutors/ lecturers.

6% 10% 7% 44% 11%

Social Share photography, videos and music Entertainment Communicate with classmates Communicate with tutors/ lecturers Educational

10% 12% Business

Figure 3: Reasons for using social media websites

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However, as seen from Figure 4, when Facebook is integrated to the ES2002 course, 77% of the 271 responses gathered indicated that students access Jeffrey Business Communication to communicate with their tutors. Figure 4: Frequency of using Jeffrey Business Communication for various purposes

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% % of total responses 30% 20% 10% 0% Connect with Communicate See if there with tutor a group are updates member on ES2002 33% 77.10% 79.20%

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2.3 Students’ opinions on having Facebook integrated into courses
This section’s findings illustrates that students are mostly in favour of having a social media component in future courses but they prefer it to be separated from the tutor’s personal social media account. From Figure 5, it is evident that a significant proportion (77.1%) of students wants a social media component to their future courses in NUS. Figure 5: Frequency of students that think that future courses should have a social media component

Not at all A lot

A little

Much

A lot
33.30%

Much

43.80%

A little

18.80%

Not at all

4.20%

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From Figure 6, a majority of students (68%) want the Facebook account used for courses to be separated from their tutors’ personal account.

Not at all

A little 15%

Much

A lot

Not applicable

4%

13%

37%

31%

Figure 6: Frequency of students that want the Facebook account for Business Communication (ES2002) separated from the tutor’s personal account

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3. Conclusions
Based on the findings, we will now evaluate them to provide insights on students’ perspectives on befriending teachers on Facebook. It can be inferred that students recognize the educational benefits of having social media in courses and want it to be in future courses but they are not completely supportive and comfortable with befriending teachers. Students could be unsupportive due to various reservations as pointed out by Chen and McGeehan, where “in recent years, dozens of teachers have been investigated and some have been fired for inappropriate interactions and relationships with students that began or were conducted on social media web sites” (2012, para. 5). Privacy concerns may arise as highlighted by Dworjan whereby students’ Facebook activity is “public knowledge” and “anyone can see this, including … teachers” (2013, para. 7) The findings also showed that social media if used should be implemented with courses to have more effective student-teacher communication. A finding also revealed that students preferred social media interaction to be separated from the tutors’ personal account. Similarly, this agrees with New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) guidelines, where teachers are only allowed to use a separate social media account for educational purposes and disallowed from communicating with students on personal social media sites (NYCDOE, 2012). Based on the above evaluations, we conclude that students are in favour of social media used in courses as it benefits their learning and encourages interaction with tutors. However, students have reservations and may not want to befriend teachers. Instead, students prefer teachers to use a separate account for their courses. Therefore, in the next section, suitable recommendations will be proposed based on the conclusions derived, which will focus on managing social media usage in NUS.

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4. Recommendations
Based on the conclusions in the previous section, two key recommendations will be proposed. They are to promote the creation of course Facebook pages and guidelines to adhere to.

4.1 Use of course Facebook pages The first recommendation is based on the fact that students want a social media component in their courses and having a course Facebook page encourages interaction with teachers. Thus, DCT strongly recommends using course Facebook pages1 to supplement learning and address courserelated matters. In addition, it is also where students can communicate with their tutors.

4.2 Separate account and guidelines to adhere to The second recommendation is centred on the conclusions that students have reservations on befriending teachers and prefer teachers to use a separate account for teaching purposes. In view of this, DCT highly encourages teachers to use a separate account to setup the course page. Students will simply join2 the course page and this will tackle the privacy concerns as students need not befriend teachers. To prevent inappropriate behaviour, teachers will have to adhere to guidelines3 that DCT recommends. DCT believes that course pages will be easy to implement as most NUS students have a Facebook account and can be setup easily at no cost. Thus, it will be highly feasible to incorporate it with courses. However, the guidelines must be well-established in NUS before making any developments.

An illustration of how such a Facebook page can be used to supplement students’ learning is shown in appendix A 2 A set of instructions on how to join and use the course Facebook page without befriending teachers is shown in appendix B 3 Set of guidelines DCT recommends for teachers to follow is shown in appendix C

1

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5. Overall Conclusion
NUS has raised concerns over student-teacher relationship on Facebook, particularly on whether NUS teachers should befriend students. DCT has analysed key findings and identified that students have reservations over befriending teachers on Facebook and prefer a separate account from their teachers’ personal account to be used for course matters. DCT strongly recommends that NUS teachers should not befriend students but use a separate Facebook account to setup a course page for students. The recommended guidelines should be implemented to eradicate the problem of inappropriate behaviour. Thus, DCT keenly advocates that NUS adheres to our recommendations as this will enable NUS and its students to fully utilize the educational benefits of social media and NUS to provide quality education.

[1299 words]

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6. References
Chen, D. W., & McGeehan, P. (2012, May 01). Social media rules limit New York student-teacher contact. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/nyregion/social-media-rules-for-nyc-school-staff-limitscontact-with-students.html?pagewanted=all

Dworjan, T. (2013, February 28). Problems for students using Facebook. Retrieved from http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/problems-students-using-facebook

NYC Department of Education (2012, Spring) NYC Department of Education social media guidelines. Retrieved from http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/BCF47CED-604B-4FDD-B752DC2D81504478/0/DOESocialMediaGuidelines20120430.pdf

Socialbakers. (n.d.). Singapore Facebook statistics. Retrieved from http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/singapore

Vasagar, J., & Williams, M. (2012, JANUARY 23).Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook. Theguardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/23/teacher-misconduct-cases-facebook

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7. Appendices
Appendix A: ES2002 Facebook page

Informational matters

Educational matters

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Appendix B: Instructions on how to join the course Facebook page and use it to communicate with the tutor Step 1: Like the page Step 2: Check “Get Notifications”

To Message the tutor

To Post a comment

To upload a Photo/ Video

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Appendix C: Set of guidelines DCT recommends for NUS to establish in school

Guidelines:

This account will serve to address educational, informational or extra-curricular activity matters. There must be an appointed supervisor such as the department head to monitor and approve the creation of social media pages. This account should not reveal tutor’s private life and contain only non-personal information – tutor’s work e-mail and office address. Tutors must ensure that their privacy setting is set to prevent access to their personal social media sites and not communicate with students through their personal accounts.

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Appendix D: CELC-ES2002 Survey conducted on 48 NUS students in 2011

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References: NYC Department of Education (2012, Spring) NYC Department of Education social media guidelines. Retrieved from http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/BCF47CED-604B-4FDD-B752DC2D81504478/0/DOESocialMediaGuidelines20120430.pdf Socialbakers Vasagar, J., & Williams, M. (2012, JANUARY 23).Teachers warned over befriending pupils on Facebook. Theguardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/23/teacher-misconduct-cases-facebook Page | 12