Academic debate on using social networking media: Teachers’ and students’ perceptions from two tertiary institutions

A number of existing quantitative and qualitative studies have proven that motivation and collaboration impact positively on students’ engagement and learning outcomes. Online Social Networking (OSN) is a widely used media that not only offers opportunities for collaboration and motivation but also potential for connectivity and peer feedback for e-learning. Many researchers have explored the importance of OSN sites for e-learning. They have proven that the current e-learning pedagogy supports the use of OSN. However, less research has done on teachers’ and students’ perception of using OSN. This investigation sought to discover teachers and students perception of using online social networking sites to motivate learners and foster collaboration. Two tertiary institutes were selected for this research from the Melbourne CBD in Australia. A group of students and teachers were invited to participate in this study. All participants were asked to complete a questionnaire. The collected data from the questionnaire survey were analysed through simple statistical. The findings of this research demonstrate that students were more enthusiastic than teachers to use OSN for e-learning. Most of the students’ belief, OSN should be included institutionally as an e-learning tool to improve their learning experience. On the other hand, teachers were cautious about the inclusion of OSN into practices. Most of the teachers wanted more control on this media before it gets institutionalize for e-learning. Some of them also worried that it might negatively influence on students’ performance. This paper also argues that more research needs to be done rigorously to find teachers’ and students’ attitude of using OSN sites productively in order to enrich and make effective use of e-learning to achieve the most powerful learning outcomes.