Perception and Utilization of Facebook by University Students: Case Study

Interest in students learning engagement and utilization of social software applications forms the philosophical core of the long-term research which has been conducted at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove within the frames of national and specific educational projects. Academicians are striving to reveal how students perceive and utilize new possibilities of Web 2.0 applications like social nets or learning management systems. The goal of this paper is to map real situation relating to utilization of social applications, in this case utilization and perception of Facebook with focus on students' active engagement. As for the research tool, the survey with a questionnaire was applied with five groups of sixty-seven full-time students of Applied informatics, Information and Financial management bachelor study programmes. Utilization of Internet and social applications are connected with technological readiness. Social applications are seen in accordance with literature review in their features that enable a wide range of interaction, collaboration and sharing materials and ideas among users. But findings from our research are not so promising; surveys do not prove such students 'involvement and call for further discussion. Findings show that 94 % of students sample use Facebook for both personal and study purposes. But less than half of them can see potential in Facebook.