Title: Using a Facebook closed-group as part of an online course

Authors: Daniyar Sapargaliyev

Addresses: International Academy of Business, Almaty 010008, Kazakhstan

Abstract: This paper introduces the results of survey among international students using Facebook closed-group as part of an online course. We posted learning materials of one session from online course: "Developing teachers' critical thinking through educational designing" on Facebook and integrated it with platform Moodle. Two groups of students studied during two semesters the online course materials of six sessions. We specifically created Facebook closed-group to offer students to use not only PCs, but also mobile devices to access online course. After completion of the course, we asked students (n = 20) to evaluate using Facebook closed-group for learning. The findings showed that some students indicate imperfect organisation of course materials on Facebook. Nevertheless, majority of students noted the positive role of Facebook in the development of relationships between each other.

Keywords: innovation; Facebook closed group; Moodle; mobile devices; online learning; Web 2.0; educational design; international students; electronic learning; e-learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2014.064732

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2014 Vol.16 No.3, pp.306 - 318

Published online: 23 Sep 2014 *

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