Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2018

Keywords

Facebook, Authentic Learning, Student Engagement, Engineering Education, Real-world problems and applications

Abstract

The popularity of online social media has had a significant impact in education and has brought an amazing potential in promoting authentic learning. Authentic learning engages learners by the opportunities of actually participating and working on real-world problems that links the classroom theories. However, it can be a difficult shift without an adequate involvement of students. FaceBook due to its popularity and usefulness, teachers can not only introduce motivational authentic learning tasks but also allow students to come together to discuss, collaborate and resolve real-life problems. In this study, teachers gain the advantages of using Facebook as a tool to provide students experimental learning opportunities and students are encouraged to spend efforts to explore, discuss, exchange ideas in groups and meaningfully connect what they are taught in school to real-life problems and applications. These students are from the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Tsing Yi) and all of them are studying Higher Diploma in Civil Engineering. Purposive samplings are employed to find out the students’ preferences in using Facebook to introduce authentic learning opportunities among many other means. In the student survey, levels of engagement and possible learning activities such as sharing resources and interacting with other students are presented. This paper investigates the effectiveness of Facebook use in bringing up authentic learning opportunities and how the overall quality of students’ educational experience with this technology usage. The result has shown that the use of Facebook as a tool of promotion has a positive impact on student levels of engagement and has enhanced students’ learning experience such as sharing ideas with classmates.

Source Publication

Proceedings of the Federation for Self-financing Tertiary Education Conference 2018

Download

Share

COinS