Students' Perspective of the Role of Facebook in their Studies

The purpose of this thesis was to study the students’ perspective on their use of Facebook to further their studies. There were three research questions: (1) To what extent do students use Facebook to further their studies? (2) In what ways do students use Facebook to further their studies? (3) What do students believe are the ways that Facebook can be used by colleges and universities to help students with their studies? There were three major themes relating to usage of Facebook: non-academic usage, curricular, and co-curricular. Most of the students indicated they used Facebook to stay in touch with people they already knew. With regard to academic usage, the answers given related mostly to professors’ offers of support, collaborations with projects and assignments, and cheating on exams. There were mixed responses about whether students wanted professors to make use of Facebook in classes and how, with many indicating that they wanted to keep Facebook separate from their curricular activities. Students that were in the education fields were more than willing to use Facebook to help them in their studies than students in other majors.