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Education Tech Research Dev (2012) 60:10931106 DOI 10.1007/s11423-012-9260-7
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Selami Aydin
Published online: 13 June 2012 Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2012
Abstract The purpose of this study is to present a review of Facebook as an educational environment, as research on its use within education is relatively new. The study is categorized into six sections: Facebook users; reasons people use Facebook; harmful effects of Facebook; Facebook as an educational environment; Facebooks effects on culture, language, and education; and the relationship between Facebook and subject variables. Additionally, the study compares Facebook usage in Turkey to its use on a global scale. To conclude, there has been a serious lack of research on Facebooks use as an educational resource, as current literature reects how Facebook might more readily be utilized as an educational environment. Finally, the study ends with practical recommendations for researchers and educators.
Keywords Facebook Education Educational environment
Introduction
Within educational research, Facebooka popular social networking platformis quickly emerging as a new educational environment (although how Facebook could be more efciently used as an educational environment remains unanswered). This paper aims to review various educational studies on Facebook to recommend further research on its role within academia and education. The reviewed studies have been categorized into six sections: (1) Facebook users, (2) reasons people use Facebook, (3) harmful effects of Facebook, (4) Facebook as an educational environment, (5) Facebook effects on culture and language, and(6) the relationship between Facebook and subject variables. Before presenting a review of these studies, the terms Social Networking site and Facebook need to be claried. A social networking site is an online site that presents a platform used by individuals; it focuses on building and reecting social relations in accordance with interests and/or activities. Some popular examples of social networking sites include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Badoo
S. Aydin (&)
ELT Department, Necatibey Education Faculty, Balikesir University, 10100 Balikesir, Turkey e-mail: [email protected]
A review of research on Facebook as an educational environment
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1094 S. Aydin
and Google?. Facebook is a social networking site that has over 845 million active users (Protalinski 2012); it allows individuals over the age of 13 to create and upgrade personal proles, add friends, exchange messages and chat online. Facebook also presents opportunities...