ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SOCIAL INTEGRATIONBryan C. Koval, M.Ed.The George Washington UniversityHEA – Cohort 11
About Bryan Coordinator for Community Standards and
Housefellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
Actively engaged in a number of online social networks Facebook, Twitter (#SAChat community)
Contributor to the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog (theSAbloggers.com) and HigherEdCareerCoach.com
Overview of the Research Purpose
Online social networks are a major part of the ‘typical’ college student’s daily routine, but we do not clearly understand how these sites impact students.
I hope to find out more about how students use these sites, and how engagement with online social networks contributes to social integration on campus (if it does).
Context Facebook reports that 500 million active users
utilize their service, half of whom access the site on any given day (Facebook statistics, 2010)
Between February of 2008 and February of 2009 the number of users on Facebook who update their status daily increased from 4 million to 15 million (Hempel and Kowitt, 2009)
70% of all Facebook users living outside of the United States (Facebook statistics, 2010)
College Students and Facebook
After one semester of college, 95.5% of students surveyed said that they had a Facebook account (Lampe, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2006). 69% of respondents accessed the
site for less than 30 minutes each day, while 12% of the respondents said that they were on Facebook for over an hour a day.
Online Social Networks Matter
“If one is not a member of the online campus community, she is missing out on an important part of campus life . . . there is a consciousness about Facebook that pervades social life” (Martinez Aleman & Wartman, 2009, p. 57)
While higher education professionals are interested in social networking sites, and are often personally engaged in their use, they often dismiss Facebook and other sites as a waste of time or a distraction (Gasman, 2010)
I’ve been on Facebook, and it’s a giant time sink.Students need to get off their computers and learn how to communicate face-to-face. Read a book.
But so what?
Let’s think about online social networks in terms of retention. Social integration is one of the key factors for
retention in Tinto’s model of college departure (Braxton, 2000)
The more an individual is integrated into their college or university, the stronger their commitment will be to that specific institution and to the goal of graduating from college (Mannan, 2000)
How does social integration work? Social integration occurs mainly through informal
interactions with peers, extracurricular activities, and interacting with faculty members and administrators at the institution (Tinto, 1975). When students successfully navigate these
experiences, they enjoy the benefits of social communication, friendship support, faculty support, and collective affiliation with the institution.
When all other factors are controlled for social integration should increase the probability that a student will remain in college.
If I’m a student who is engaged in online social networks, does that work in the same way as more traditionally accepted types of student engagement (clubs, residence hall communities, etc)?
So the question is . . .
Research Questions Is there a relationship between the use of
online social networking sites and the development of social integration among undergraduate college students?
Are there particular activities within online social networking sites that are strong predictors of social integration?
The project thus far . . . Enthusiasm has been generated. The literature review is underway.
To this point I have not found another similar study. Currently faced with 100+ articles on technology,
online social networks, and retention to read and digest.
I’m thinking about different angles I hadn’t previously considered (real vs. virtual worlds, etc.)
My dissertation has a chair and an additional committee member.
Bryan C. Koval, M.Ed.
www.facebook.com/bryankovalTwitter: @bryan_kovalDissertation Blog: http://dissertationcentral.wordpress.com/
Give me some feedback!
References Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. Retrieved from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html Braxton, J. M. (2000). Reworking the student departure puzzle. In J. M. Braxton (Ed.), Reworking the student departure
puzzle (pp. 1-10) [Introduction]. Nashville, TV: Vanderbilt University Press. Facebook statistics. (2010). Retrieved August 4, 2010, from Facebook website: http
://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics Gasman, M. (2010, June 20). A confession: I like Facebook [Web log post]. Retrieved from The Chronicle of Higher Education Innovations: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Confession-I-Like-Facebook/24932/ Hempel, J., & Kowitt, B. (2009). How Facebook is taking over our lives. Fortune, 159(4), 48-56. Retrieved from
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=36610434&site=ehost-live Lampe, C., Ellison, N., and Steinfield, C. 2006. A face(book) in the crowd: Social Searching vs. social browsing. In
Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 04 - 08, 2006). ACM, New York, NY, 167-170. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1180875.1180901
Mannan, M. A. (2007). Student attrition and academic and social integration: Application of Tinto’s model at the University of Papua New Guinea. Higher Education, 53(2), 147- 165. doi:10.1007/s10734-005-2496-y
Martinez Aleman, A. M., & Wartman, K. L. (2009). Chapter 3: Students speak: Campus culture, identity, and Facebook. In Online social networking on campus: Understanding what matters in student culture (pp. 43-88). New York, NY: Routledge.
Tinto, V. (1975, Winter). Dropout From Higher Education: A Theoretical Synthesis of Recent Research. Review of Educational Research, 45(1), 89-125.
