Acceptance of Facebook as an Educational Tool by University Students

Nowadays, social media are an inseparable part of young people's everyday life. One of the most widespread social media tools for college students is Facebook. This platform offers many features, such as communication, entertainment, easy and fast information flow, briefing and many more. However, the opportunities that are being offered are rarely used for educational purposes either from the educators or from the students. The aim of this quantitative research is on the one hand to investigate students' attitudes toward the educational use of Facebook and on the other hand, to explore the degree of acceptance of the Facebook as an educational tool. Data are collected from 193 students attending a Bachelor in Education degree at the department of Early Childhood Education (ECE), University of Athens, in Greece. In order to conduct our research, we relied on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), proposed for various types of information systems and communication technologies. Results show that ECE students use Facebook mostly to communicate with their friends or communicate with other students about issues of their studies. In addition, the majority of the sample seems to regard Facebook as a useful educational tool. Students believe that Facebook helps them to efficiently interact with their friends and classmates with whom they share common interests, such as exchanging educational materials. However, nearly half of the students disagree with the use of Facebook for their collaboration with their professors. Factor analysis reveals a four factor structure of the administrated questionnaire: "perceived ease of use", "attitudes toward Facebook educational use", "perceived usefulness", and "intention to use". Perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and attitudes toward Facebook usage for educational activities have a significantly positive influence on intentions to use Facebook for academic purposes. Attitudes toward Facebook educational use are emerging as the major factor in predicting the adoption and use of Facebook platform as an educational tool in the future. According to the findings of this study useful conclusions are drawn concerning faculty members, and tertiary education authorities.