Question 1: Parameters of the research
Social media refer to the collection of online channels of communication that is devoted to community-based input, collaboration, content sharing and interaction. The applications and websites devoted to the social curation that includes social bookmarking, social networking, micro-blogging, forums and wikis. Other examples of social media also include podcasts, pictures or photographs, rating and video (Wigmore 2014).
Social media have a positive impact on the student learning if it is used in a constructive way; however, it has a drastic impact if it is used for entertainment purpose only. However, more commonly, the negative effects of the social media are more studied that has resulted in consideration of identifying its minimal positive effects. According to Shah, Kwak and Holbert (2001), the academic performance of the students must be handled efficiently considering all the factors of the social media that has negative or positive impact on their academic performance. In addition, the students can be positively affected by the use of social media if they use it particularly for the educational purpose. The importance of using social media has aroused in the past few years due to which almost all universities have their face-book accounts that help students to view different activities and updates of their academic institution. Moreover, the teachers can also update the information regarding assignment activities, lectures on social media that will help the students to remain in contact even after their educational institution timings. Kurtz (2014) states that the online-supported learning tool, i.e., social media helps to increase student’s learning outcomes. Moreover, the social media helps to unite the learning activities with the learning through online platforms. However, it is more important to find out which specific online social media platforms contribute to the student learning. The research outcome will help to analyze in a broad way that could be practically implemented to reduce the negative effects of the social media.
Question 2: The research question
The research will help to find out the positive impact of social media on student learning; however, it will answer the following research questions:
- It is widely acknowledged that social media is helpful in fostering individual’s learning outcomes; therefore the research will help to answer the question, “What is the impact of social media on student learning?”
- More schools have now encouraged use of social media for student learning purposes which were aimed to reduce its negative impact; therefore the research will help to answer the question, “does use of social media has helped educational institution to foster learning progress?”
Question 3: Clearly explain your epistemological position and your theoretical framework for the research topic you have selected.
Epistemological position refers to the way that shows how the researcher view the world, thinks about the creation of knowledge and believe on how truth is defined (Cline n.d.). My epistemological position on this research has enabled me to analyze the different views that I have on the topic studied. The following is the theoretical framework of the research that clearly defines that the research analyzes two variables, i.e., social media and student learning.
In this research “social media” is the independent variable whereas the “student learning” is the dependent variables.
Question 4: Identify and explain any ethical issues associated with your research question
The research question does not involve any particular ethical issue because both the research questions aims to provide constructive outcomes that will benefit the current and future research. Moreover, the responses of both the two research questions will be answered without violating ethics of the research.
Question 5: Methodology/research design
The research on “The impact of Social Media (face-book and twitter, etc.) on student learning” will include both research methods, i.e., qualitative research and quantitative research. The qualitative research refers to the non-numeric data that focuses on verbal information instead of measurement. In the qualitative research method, the collected information is later evaluated in an interpretative way, impressionistic, subjective or diagnostic (Explorable.com 2003). In contrast, the quantitative research refers to the data which is objective and statistically valid. Moreover, the quantitative data is all about numbers or hard data (Anderson, 2006).
The research will include both primary data and secondary data. The primary data refers to the data collected by the researcher himself or her-self specifically for the purpose of research. In contrast, the secondary data ensures that the data collected from different sources are of high standards (Communitymedicine4asses 2013). Moreover, the sources of collecting secondary data include different published sources articles, journals, websites and books, etc. The data collected from both the two sources will help me to find out and verify my epistemological position that I believe is correct. The data collected from the secondary sources such as journal articles, books and websites will be the secondary data will be compared with the results obtained from the primary sources of this research. In addition, the use of both research methods and sources of data collection will help to identify more relevant information that supports or argues against the theoretical framework defined in the previous section.
Question 6: Methods for collecting the research data
The primary data will be collected through interview approach and questionnaire method. Both the two methods will include a limited number of sample participants who will be approached on the basis of convenience; therefore, the research participants are selected on the basis of convenience probability sampling method. The reason behind selecting limited sample respondents is due to time constraint.
A questionnaire approach refers to the data collection method that elicits the feelings, experiences, beliefs, attitudes or experiences of the sample participants. The questionnaire will be designed carefully to obtain the responses that will answers the research questions. Moreover, the questions of the questionnaire will be preplanned and concise that will yield specific information of the topic studied (Key 1997). The questionnaire will consist of different questions that are open ended and close ended along with the Likert Scale. The questionnaire that will be used to conduct the research will be structured. The questionnaire will be emailed to 50 different professors of the educational institution who will return it back after completing it.
Interview method refers to the face-to-face conversations that are held to collect more in-depth information that is not possible through questionnaire. In addition, conducting an interview is an easy approach, and it provides data that is impression or opinions of the sample respondent (S-Cool 2014). The interview approach used for this research will be structured as same questions in a similar sequence will be asked from each interview sample participant. The research interviews will be collected from 5 sample respondents individually who will be teachers of an educational institution. Thus, the use of both the two research data collection tool will help to answer the research question.
Question 7: Methods for analyzing the research data
The data obtained from an interview will be analyzed descriptively. The data will be coded while conducting the interview from each participant, which will be expanded at the time of evaluation. The responses obtained from each interview participant for each question will be noted down in a sheet of paper to compare and contrast the responses of all the interview questions. In contrast, the questionnaire analysis will be done differently. The responses of each questionnaire question specifically of close-ended and Likert scale questions will be noted down on paper using tally bar method. Then the numbers of responses for each option of a question will be transferred to the MS excel sheet. The simple number data will be converted into percentage data. The bar charts or pie charts will be drawn to present the numeric data visually. However, for the open-ended questions, the responses of all the questionnaires will be gathered on a sheet which will help to compare and contrast the responses which will help to draw conclusion. Besides this, comparison will also be made between the data obtained from questionnaire and interview to ensure that non-bias information is provided by the respondents. Finally, the data will be analyzed by comparing and contrasting with the secondary sources data to find the relevance of the data and its outcome. The outcomes of the present data analysis will contribute constructively to the body of research. Thus, a separate method of analyzing research data will be used for both interview approach and questionnaire approach that will help to answer the research questions.
Question 8: Identification of the relevant literature
- The article by Mao (2014) on ‘Social media for learning: A mixed methods study on high school students’ technology affordances and perspectives’ will provide information on the conceptual understanding of using social media for academic learning purposes which is helpful for the research conducted.
- The article by Tower, Latimer and Hewitt (2014) on ‘Social networking as a learning tool: Nursing students' perception of efficacy’ has discussed the use of social networking technology or social media in education sector that has increased the interest of teachers to use it as a learning and teaching learning tool. The article will provide the background that will support the current research to come up with new findings.
- The article by Rasiah (2014) on ‘Transformative Higher Education Teaching and Learning: Using Social Media in a Team-based Learning Environment’ provide an overview of the effectiveness of social media that is used to increase learning and teaching in team-based learning that involves large classes. The outcome of the research article will provide the basis of comparison with present research findings.
References
Anderson, JD 2006. Qualitative and Quantitative research. [Online] Available from https://www.icoe.org/webfm_send/1936 [1 November 2014]
Cline, A n.d. What is Epistemology? Philosophy of Truth, Knowledge, Belief. [Online] Available from http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophybranches/p/Epistemology.htm [1 November 2014]
Communitymedicine4asses 2013. Types of Data: Primary and Secondary data. [Online] Available from http://communitymedicine4asses.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/types-of-data-primary-and-secondary-data/ [1 November 2014]
Explorable.com 2003. Quantitative and Qualitative Research. [Online] Available from https://explorable.com/quantitative-and-qualitative-research [1 November 2014]
Key, JP 1997. Questionnaire and Interview As Data-Gathering Tools. [Online] Available from http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5980a/5980/newpage16.htm [1 November 2014]
Kurtz, G 2014. Students' Perceptions of Using Facebook Group and a Course Website as Interactive and Active Learning Spaces. [Online] Available from http://www.openu.ac.il/innovation/chais2014/download/D1-1.pdf [1 November 2014]
Mao, J 2014, ‘Social media for learning: A mixed methods study on high school students’ technology affordances and perspectives’, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 33, pp 213–223
Rasiah, RRV 2014, ‘Transformative Higher Education Teaching and Learning: Using Social Media in a Team-based Learning Environment’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 123, pp 369–379
S-Cool 2014. Questionnaires and Interviews. [Online] Available from http://www.s-cool.co.uk/a-level/psychology/research-methods/revise-it/questionnaires-and-interviews [1 November 2014]
Shah, DV, Kwak, N, Holbert, RL 2001, ‘Connecting and disconnecting’ with civic life: Patterns of Internet use and the production of social capital’, Polit Communication, Volume 18, pg 141-162.
Tower, M, Latimer, S and Hewitt, J 2014, ‘Social networking as a learning tool: Nursing students' perception of efficacy’, Nurse Education Today, Volume 34, Issue 6, pp 1012–1017
Wigmore, I 2014. Social Media. [Online] Available from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media [1 November 2014]
