GLOBAL EXPERT 1

JURNAL BAHASA DAN SASTRA, VOLUME 2, NOMOR 2, DESEMBER 2013

FACEBOOK AS A MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH

LANGUAGE TEACHING

Jaya Nur Iman*)

University of Indo Global Mandiri

Abstract

The integration of technology has long been utilized in English Language Teaching (ELT),
this could be seen from the teacher(s) who take advantages of technology integration in
coping with their work(s) in teaching and learning environment. Facebook is one of the ICT
tools that could be utilized by both teachers as medium instruction in ELT and students as
medium of interaction with their peer(s) and teacher(s) inside and outside the classroom. As
Terantino & Graf (2011, p. 44) point out that Facebook allows for multi-dimensional
conversation, both among students and between students and the instructor. Due to the
teaching and learning activities in the classroom, for instance, the teachers may ask the
students to discuss, comment, question, respond on the shared photographs, projects,
videos, songs, texts, and so forth. This paper is aimed to illuminate (1) the educational uses
of Facebook, (2) the various learning tools in Facebook, (3) the advantages of Facebook, (4)
challenges of using Facebook, (5) sort of activities in Facebook, (6) and other prominent
points in relation to ICT. Hence, from this theoretical overview, it could be drawn that the
teacher should be able to create creative instructional activities on the basis of types of
educational functions of Facebook such as; interaction, communication, and collaboration,
and the teachers also should be able to use Facebook not only as primary instructional but
also as supplementary instructional in which this could make the teaching and learning
activities more interesting and meaningful for both teachers and students.

Key words: Facebook, Medium of Instruction, English Language Teaching

BACKGROUND communities. This survey also showed

As the advancement of
technology grows, the role of the ICT is
becoming more and more well-known
in teaching and learning environment.
One of them is that social networking
software in which it is more popularly
used nowadays and there are vast
opportunities for teachers and students
in using social software for teaching
and learning. According to the National
Small Business Association (NSBA)
survey in 2007, 96% of the students
with online access reported using social
networking technologies, and on
average they spent 9 hours per week
chatting, blogging, and visiting online
that 60% of the students talked about
schoolwork while online.
Facebook is a social utility that
connects people with friends and others
who work, study and live around them.
People use Facebook to keep up with
friends, upload photos, share links and
videos, and learn more about the people
they meet. Facebook has six primary
components: personal profiles, status
updates, networks (geographic regions,
schools, and companies), groups,
applications and fan pages. Currently,
Facebook has about 150 million active
users and the number will reach 300
million in 2010. Interestingly, 70% of

Facebook as a Medium of Instruction in English Language Teaching (Jaya Nur Iman).

University of Indo Global Mandiri.
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JURNAL BAHASA DAN SASTRA, VOLUME 2, NOMOR 2, DESEMBER 2013
Facebook users are from outside of the
US. Indonesia has the highest number
of Facebook users in Asia, numbering
18.9 million, while Malaysia follows in
the fifth rank with 5.1 million users
(Facebook, 2009). In addition,
Facebook is a website that allows users
to interact and collaborate within a pre-
defined virtual community. Often
termed a social networking site,
Facebook is an online communication
tool allowing users to construct a public
or private profile in order to connect
and interact with people who are part of
their extended social network (Boyd &
Ellison, 2007) In relation to the use of
facebook in teaching and learning
environment, Wu and Hsu (2011)
conducted a study on Facebook usage
by English majors at university in
Taiwan. Participants described their
Facebook group to be “a pressure-free
environment for English learning
because it is a virtual community
composed of closed group, which opens
for limited members and makes them
feel less stressful” (Wu and Hsu, 2011,
p. 6).
However, the study listed five
external factors which influenced
students’ motivation and engagement
with the Facebook group. Those factors
were audience, feedback from peers,
topic, other school work, and novelty
effect (Wu and Hsu, 2011). Another
study on integrating Facebook with peer
assessment revealed that Facebook had
a positive impact in an ESL writing
course. Shih (2011, p. 840) noted that
Facebook’s “popularity, accessibility,
and unique features attracted the
students and eased their resistance to
learning, making this a successful
course.”
Facebook as a Medium of Instruction in English Language Teaching (Jaya Nur Iman).
University of Indo Global Mandiri.
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EDUCATIONAL USES OF
FACEBOOK FOR LANGUAGE
LEARNING
In recent years, social networks
have been widely accepted as efficient
platforms for academic
communications, especially on
university campuses. According to
Blattner & Fiori (2009, p. 20),
Facebook is the largest social network
that boasts more than 100 million
members, and it is one of the fastest-
growing and best-known sites on the
Internet.
Although early in the Facebook
appeared, the main reason for students
using Facebook was keeping contact
with friends (Ellison, Steinfield, &
Lampe, 2007, p. 1147), Wodzicki,
Schwammlein & Moskaluik (2012, p.
12) later discovered that students would
be in favor of exchanging informal
experiences if a collaborative and
sharing environment is embedded in the
Facebook. Roblyer, et al (2010, p.136)
found that in compare with traditional
face-to-face interaction, students prefer
to communicate with teachers via
Facebook. This may reduce an
immediate embarrassment.
Mazman & Usluel (2010, p.
446) recognize Facebook has three
types of educational functions:
communication, collaboration and
resource/material sharing.
Communication consist of activities
such as enabling communication among
students and their instructors,
facilitating class discussions, delivery of
homework and assignments by teachers,
informing about resources and links
related to courses; consist of activities
such as people's joining to academic
groups related to their schools,
departments or classes and carrying on
group works by sharing homework,
projects, and ideas; collaboration
consists of activities such as exchanging
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JURNAL BAHASA DAN SASTRA, VOLUME 2, NOMOR 2, DESEMBER 2013
multimedia resources, videos, audio
materials, animated videos, resources
and documents. As students become
increasingly connected through social
networking sites such as Facebook, it is
important for us to explore how these
can be utilized specifically in the
language classroom. Facebook provides
a target-language-friendly interface
created for and used by native speakers
in a format familiar to students. As
users connect, they are able to share
Internet links and multimedia such as
photos or videos with ease. This could
allow the instructor to facilitate
discussion among students of target
language and culturally relevant
material.
Utilized as a communicative
tool in the language classroom,
Facebook can also serve to promote
collaboration through target language
discussions, status updates, comments,
and questions. Students can discuss a
photograph or video or can facilitate an
activity in which they describe in the
foreign language a certain place, person,
activity, etc., and other students try to
guess what it is. Instructors can also
create hypothetical events in the target
language country and design a
discussion around the students’
anticipation before, experiences during,
and thoughts after attending the event.
These types of collaborations can
promote a sense of connection and
community between the students
allowing for a richer and more engaging
learning experience. In this manner,
Facebook allows for multi-dimensional
conversation, both among students and
between students and the instructor
(Terantino & Graf, 2011, p. 44).
Facebook as a Medium of Instruction in English Language Teaching (Jaya Nur Iman).
University of Indo Global Mandiri.
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LEARNING TOOLS IN
FACEBOOK
Facebook is the most powerful
social networking site which is used for
interaction and communication (Golder
et al., 2007). Facebook is defined as "a
social utility that helps people share
information and communicate more
efficiently with their friends, family and
co-workers”. Originally started as a
medium for college student interaction,
Facebook enables peer feedback, having
goodness of fit with social context and
interaction tools (Mason, 2006, p.132).
Since Facebook has high
potential in providing social
communication and interaction, the
opportunity of academicians to take this
platform for teaching is beneficial. The
ability of the users to collaborate,
create, and share content with other
users and make attachment of
documents and videos will enrich the
learning environment. The features
include my profile, the wall, my photos
and my Groups. Profile information can
be divided into six basic categories
namely: Basic, Contact Info, Personal,
Professional, Courses, and Picture.
These categories allow a user to post
personal information to the identified
cyber friend in the service. The major
concerns of these tools include privacy
disclosure, and also the belief that it
does not accommodate academic
purposes (Charnigo & Ellis, 2007, p.
23).
ADVANTAGES OF USING
FACEBOOK
Terantino & Graf (2011, p. 47)
reveal that, there are several perceived
benefits to integrate Facebook in
language courses. First, using Facebook
seems to have a significant impact on
language learning. It allows students to
engage with peers in a familiar format
and for an academic purpose. More
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JURNAL BAHASA DAN SASTRA, VOLUME 2, NOMOR 2, DESEMBER 2013
importantly for foreign language
courses, it provides opportunities for
informal conversations in the target
language. In addition, the Facebook
platform allows for access to authentic
materials and the sharing of culturally
relevant photos, videos, and music.
These features appear to promote social
and active language learning. Second,
the nature of the student-to-student and
student-to-instructor interactions is
more multi-dimensional than in
traditional writing assignments. For
example, in many cases the traditional
writing assignment is accompanied by
one-time feedback and assessment from
the instructor. In the Facebook
environment, feedback can be delivered
more dynamically. It can be more easily
given and can be done so immediately.
In addition, this type of more informal
feedback often comes from both the
instructor and other students, which
further promotes the sense of
collaboration that accompanies the
social media environment. Third, on a
more personal note, collectively in our
teaching experience (at various levels of
education) we have never encountered
such genuine excitement on behalf of
the students when participating in an
activity using the target language. We
could not have predicted the sheer
amount of linguistic production from
the students, especially that which
emerged outside of the formal writing
assignments.
CHALLENGES OF INTEGRATING
ICT AND FACEBOOK GROUPS
Despite the advantages and
recommendation of integrating ICT and
FB group into teaching, there are some
distinguishable challenges that must be
taken into account before applying it
into actual teaching. FB, a type of
Computer Mediated Communication,
enables communication to occur by the
Facebook as a Medium of Instruction in English Language Teaching (Jaya Nur Iman).
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means of computer technology (Stern,
2007, p. 14 & Monberg, 2005, p.182).
One of the disadvantages for this type
of ICT is the absence of face to face
communication and immediate
feedback. Walther & Bunz (2005)
elaborated that by the exchanging of
ideas and opinions via Internet and
computer, it is difficult for FB users to
convey some complex and abstract
ideas. This might lead to
misunderstandings or misleading of
ideas which is not beneficial for
students’ learning.
Furthermore, media such as
newspapers and television news had
also reported on the risk and dangers of
FB based on the negative issues that
arose. Issues highlighted are the
existence of predators, disclosing of
personal details and also the sharing of
obscene or illegal activities. And yet,
millions of users are still active in FB
for the attractive features that are
available on the site.
Selwyn (2007) has brought up
that the introduction of ICT for
learners’ educational purpose has
generated an issue regarding users’
safety on the networks. By promoting
learning via ICT tools, the learners are
also exposed to the risk of inappropriate
action and behaviors that people can do
freely on the World Wide Web without
much restriction. By showing their
information and details online, their
details will be revealed openly and can
be viewed by people all around the
world. Correspondingly, Murray (2010,
p. 8) proposed the fact that more than a
third of children nowadays have
personal accounts on a social
networking site. This is again,
mentioned by White (2009, p. 28) in his
research on the use of FB to improve
students’ motivation and academic
writing. These significant numbers of
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social networking site users also
indicate concerns to issues of lacking
privacy of information that may
contribute to cases such as identity
theft, bullying, online stalking,
embarrassment and even blackmailing
as pointed out by Gross & Acquisti
(2005).
In terms of integrating FB group
into teaching, a problem with regards to
time management and self-discipline
needs to be addressed. Selwyn (2007)
has mentioned that other than security
problems, FB is also widely used by
students in order to ‘hang out’. In
addition, students waste a lot of their
time learning about their friends with
the aim of improving their relationships
on FB. Furthermore, Kabilan et al.
(2010, p. 182) have also written similar
ideas on the challenges of the online
environment for the learning of English.
Some of the negative impacts
mentioned are wasting or overspending
of time, promoting negative attitudes
among students, and last but not least,
affecting students’ development
destructively. In incidental learning, the
focus of students should be on the
learning process instead of the social
process on the FB site. Therefore, it is
very important to draw students’
awareness and attention on the aspects
of learning on FB so that learners will
be clear of their learning goal and will
be working towards it.
STEPS OF USING FACEBOOK
GROUPS
In having sort of activities in
Facebook, the teacher should know the
steps of facebook groups as follows:
1. They serve as a platform to
provide information relevant to
the course (e.g. lecturer's
notifications on the course,
changes to lecture times and
location, links to useful and
Facebook as a Medium of Instruction in English Language Teaching (Jaya Nur Iman).
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interesting media and learning
material related to the course).
Students are welcome to
comment on any post or to post
their own question regarding
course material or similar.
2. In order to show students that
Facebook does not have a solely
social function, but also an
educational dimension, they are
asked to find as many Facebook
pages about English
homework(s) as they can. They
have to choose their favorite
page and present it in front of
their colleagues.
3. Both students and the lecturer
post news from their favorite
Facebook pages. Students are
encouraged to comment on
them.
4. Introduction of Facebook groups
in foreign language learning at
the academic level may inspire
other members of academic staff
to create such groups for their
modules and provide students
with even more valuable
information, materials and links,
including pages in English or
other languages, for the students
have already encountered them.
Nevertheless, both teacher and
students should have a Facebook
account, then click on ‘create a group’,
give name of the group (e.g. Morning
Class A), add members, add special
setting (e.g. make the group
‘secret/closed’), and then create an
event or activities.
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CONSIDERATIONS FOR
FACEBOOK IN LANGUAGE
LEARNING
There are several things to
consider for future endeavors in using
Facebook in the language classroom.
First, it is important to protect the rights
to privacy of the students and
instructors. For this purpose, it is
recommended to only allow the students
and the instructor access to the
Facebook pages. Furthermore, with
regards to privacy, both students and
instructors are encouraged to not reveal
information that could be too personal
or deemed inappropriate in the
educational setting. As a rule of thumb,
we suggest that instructors filter this
information in the same manner as you
would in a face-to-face class.
Second, it is important to
establish clear expectations for the
Facebook assignments including step-
by-step procedures for creating a new
account and completing the required
components of the assignment, and
outlining what is appropriate student
behavior in the Facebook environment.
For example, one should define
appropriate student behaviors in the
online environment including guidelines
for posting text, pictures, and videos to
be shared with the instructor and other
classmates. This type of approach is
meant as a reminder to the students that
participating in an online environment
for educational purposes comes with
expectations similar to traditional class
meetings.
Third, one should consider how
to treat error correction with Facebook.
For the purposes of our Facebook-based
activities, we made a conscious decision
not to correct errors as they occurred.
We feared that constant error correction
might negatively influence the amount
of target language produced by the
students. We felt it was more important
Facebook as a Medium of Instruction in English Language Teaching (Jaya Nur Iman).
University of Indo Global Mandiri.
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to encourage natural and free-flowing
interpersonal communication. However,
perhaps private messages could be sent
for extreme cases or repeated mistakes.
Also, it may be appropriate to offer
target language vocabulary where
students have reverted to their first
language in their posts.
On the other hand, for the
formal writing assignments completed
in Facebook, we did provide written
feedback and assigned grades using a
rubric designed for foreign language
writing. This feedback was intended to
target the strengths and shortcomings of
the students’ writing while encouraging
further learning and development. In
closing, it is our hope that by sharing
our experiences with utilizing Facebook
we may further the discussion of
integrating social media in foreign
language education. We feel that the
successes we experienced may be easily
replicated with other languages and
educational settings (Terantino, J., &
Graf, K., 2011, p. 47).
CONCLUSION
Integrating ICT particularly on
social networking sites (especially
Facebook) offer students the
opportunity to connect with other
students and their educators. They help
them improve their technology
proficiency, social skills and to
communicate in new ways with new
people. However, the teacher should use
Facebook not only as primary
instructional but also as supplementary
instructional in which this could make
the teaching and learning activities
more interesting and meaningful for
both teachers and students. Apart from
that, the teachers, as a facilitator, should
be able to create sort of creative and
interesting instructional activities
through Facebook in order that the
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JURNAL BAHASA DAN SASTRA, VOLUME 2, NOMOR 2, DESEMBER 2013

learner(s) would be self-motivated and
encouraged to complete the activities
online teaching and learning
environment.
In summary, Facebook is
prominently regarded and has the
unique functions that facilitate teachers
to develop activities incorporating
communicating, collaborating, and
sharing strategies. However, when
introduce to appropriate strategies in
teaching, Facebook can be a good
vehicle to enhance communication in
and outside the teaching and learning
environment. It ultimately can also give
the learner(s) opportunity to incorporate
with assignments, feedback from two
ways communication and collaborative
work.
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