Abstract
Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook have been widely embraced by students and increasingly educators are seeing these technologies as a valuable resource for enhancing the student experience, improving engagement as well as helping students build social networks and obtaining peer support. As many developed nations move towards universal higher education, many Australian Universities have implemented enabling programs to provide an alternative pathway into University. The shift towards widening participation stems from the Australian Governments approach to promote equal access to students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, there are numerous challenges with enabling education, most notably the level of support required by these students as well as high attrition rates. Consistently peer mentoring programs are found to be an effective for student’s personal development as well as their academic success. Accordingly peer mentoring has been found to improve the first year experience, increasing student retention as well as improving the interpersonal skills of the mentors. Guided by Social Learning Theory, this study explores if the benefits of peer mentoring are attainable with enabling students on a SNS. 237 students of a University enabling program were invited to join a Facebook group. The Facebook group is facilitated primarily by peer mentors under the supervision of a leader researcher. Employing a mixed methodology including interviews as well as using netnography, the Facebook group’s “online” content (i.e., the “Wall”) was examined to see how effective and beneficial peer mentoring is on social media for students in enabling programs.
Presenters
Bianca PriceLecturer, UniSA College, University of South Australia, South Australia, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Mentoring Facebook Netnography
