IMPACT OF ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORK TOWARDS COMMUNICATION

EFFECTIVENESS IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION:

A CASE STUDY OF UNISEL

Muhammad Fairuz Abd Rauf1, Marina Hassan2,

Siti Fatimah Omar3, Hema Subramaniam4

Universiti Industri Selangor, Malaysia

1
mfairuz@unisel.edu.my, 2 marina@unisel.edu.my,
3
ctpatimah@unisel.edu.my, 4hema@unisel.edu.my

Abstract
Online social network refers to channel that encourages members to share their interest with
other registered users. Rumours, information breakdown and misuse of communication
channel are some of the example of communication hazards in educational institution which
caused by online social network. This can lead to information misinterpretation, delaying in
work progress and negative effect on work performance. In order to identify these problems,
questionnaires have been distributed among academicians in Universiti Industri Selangor
(UNISEL). Few solutions have been proposed such as monitoring of e-mail server, blocking
social network website by implementing DNS server, increase security using third party
software and improve network architecture. This paper consists of six parts: Part one
describes briefly about social network and its examples; this is followed by description of
problem caused by online social network in the second part; Part three highlights the
methodology used in conducting this research; Results and analysis will be discussed in part
four and part five consists of conclusions and recommendations.
Keywords: Online social network, educational institution, communication, impact.

1. Introduction

Online social network (OSN), become popular medium for communication, interaction and
knowledge sharing on the internet. Nowadays, human tend to depend on OSN as main
communication infrastructure rather than conventional communication methods. Latest
survey reveals that more than 60% of global population, who use online, actively involve in
social network activities (Bauch & McGiboney, 2009). These figures show the importance of
OSN among the internet user‘s nowadays. OSN such as Face book, MySpace, Friendster are
mainly developed in order to effectively communicate idea, share the common interest
among each other and also to spread the information among the members. These social
network sites have million of users who actively utilize this infrastructure. For instance Face
book alone adds 377,000 users every twenty four hours (Arrington, 2009). According to Face
book (2009), about 200 million people worldwide use that social networking site and 50% of
them log in daily(Zuckerberg, 2010). Most of industry uses OSN as a medium of
communication to interact with people in order to fulfil number of purpose such as work and
personal matter; this includes educational institution as well. Certain academician in higher
learning institution takes further steps by utilizing the OSN for the teaching and learning
purpose. This paper, investigate the purpose and the main usage of OSN in educational
institution among academicians.

1.1 OSN Features

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Almost all of the OSN site provide users with authentication credential to ensure only the
authenticate user can view the page to interact with others. Most of OSN site, contain
personal detail of user and able to view other‘s personal details as long as the social network
is established, e.g. share interest and/or activities (Schneider, Feldmann, Krishnamusrthy, &
Willinger, 2009). Most OSN site is web-based and provides means for users to interact over
the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. The main types of OSN site are those
which contain category places (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect
with friends (usually with self-description pages) and a suggestion system linked to trust.
However, the commonality across the general approach of social networking sites is users can
upload a picture of them, create their 'profile' and can often be "friends" with other users [5].
In most OSN site, both users must confirm that they are friends before they are linked. These
sites allow users to update their profile such as new photographs, hobbies, educational and
employments history and etc. Other than that, users can add new friend, approve other
friend‘s request to be added into the network and to share/communicate information through
forum like features.

2. Problem Statement

OSN have been used widely these days by most people as a main communication medium
(B.A, 2007). Depends on usage, OSN can contribute to rise or downfall of a person and even
institution itself. This paper will focus on impact of online social network in educational
institution. Nowadays, students and academicians uses OSN in order to share ideas, advertise
any events and even doing online business. OSN works as a single spot to gather people
around the globe. Therefore any comments and feedbacks can be viewed by others within
seconds.

2.1 Misuse of OSN

Facebook, MySpace, Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger are some of the example of OSN that is
widely use especially in educational institution. Some of the things that can be done via OSN
are knowledge sharing, promotion or advertisement, find school colleagues, research and
even chatting (J & D, 2004). Based on observation in an educational institution, researcher
found out that most students and academicians use OSN to spread rumors, chatting with no
specific purpose in mind and advertise business which is non-related to academics (US
Department of Education, 2010). These are some of the issues which can have significant
impact to an educational institution (Usability Professionals' Association, 2010). By
spreading rumors, it can make or break academician‘s reputation. For instance, if a student
dislikes a lecturer for being too strict in terms of marking, the student can take extreme
measures by advertising or post negative comment about the lecturer. Automatically, the
lecturer reputation will be tarnished and this will have an impact on an educational institution
as well. Whenever students wish to enroll in an educational institution, this kind of unwanted
factor will play significant part in marketing an educational institution but in a wrong way.

2.2 Work Performance

Online community which is developed using OSN has long been touted as a great way for a
company to save money in its marketing, support, sales, and even product development. This

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statement can become reality if OSN is used for constructive purposes. But some employees
don‘t realize that the misuse of these social networking site especially during office hour and
using company‘s resources is unethical behaviour. Users who are addicted so much with
OSN tend to loss focus on work and become negligent and ignore their daily duty or work.
Employee must realize that they are wasting company‘s resources (Cachia, 2008). According
to OSN participation report by Max and Mace, Figure 1 shows frequency of person using
OSN for personal reasons (H & M, 2008).

Figure 1: Frequency of user updating their personal details

3. Methodology

Main objective of the research is about identifying impact of online social network towards
communication effectiveness in educational institution specifically in UNISEL. Currently
UNISEL have over 10,000 students and over 500 academicians. UNISEL network
administrator does not block any OSN therefore encourage knowledge sharing among
academicians and students. Page such as Face book, MySpace and other email provider can
be viewed without any limitations in UNISEL. This research focused only on academician
and is carried out in order to ensure that most academician uses online social network wisely
and able to leave positive impact in order to ensure continuous growth of UNISEL. In this
case, methodology being used to collect data relies on observation techniques and
questionnaire.

3.1 Data Collection

Data will be collected via series of method from different individual among UNISEL
academician. Data is derived from observation and questionnaires. Participants were
informed that they were taking part in a simple research activity designed to assess the main
purpose they used OSN. Participants were first asked whether they are computer literate, to
ensure they will be able to understand basic concept of online social network. Next, each
participant has to answer questionnaire related to the research.

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4. Result and Analysis

OSN is being used with many purposes in mind. The purpose of using it differs from one
person to another. In this survey few purpose that relates to OSN usage were listed and the
questionnaire is distributed among academician in UNISEL. Based on analysis, most
academicians use OSN for the purpose of advertisement. 15.81% of respondent use OSN for
the advertisement purpose compare to 9.83 percent of respondent uses it for knowledge
retrieval purpose. Most of the academician uses OSN as medium to advertise / promote
UNISEL to users who are in their social network. Indirectly this will help UNISEL in terms
of student intake. Total respondents are 150 academicians from various faculties in UNISEL.
Most academicians did not use OSN for the purpose of research or related to academic. Only
11.75 percent of respondent uses OSN for research purposes. This study also focuses on how
frequent academician communicates with certain group of user categories. Through this
survey, most academician uses online social network to communicate with friends and
families. Figure 2 shows the actual statistics:

Communication Frequency using OSN

23.45% 22.47%
25.00% 19.05% 18.24%
Percentage (%)

20.00% 16.78%
15.00%
10.00%
5.00%
0.00%
Friends Families Peers Students Industries
Personnel
Category

Figure 2: Communication Frequency using OSN

This proves that academician uses online social network for other purposes and not related to
academic. About 42 percent of academician in UNISEL communicates with friends and
families rather than students and industries personnel. This is contradicting to UNISEL‘s
vision to focus on building relationships with other organizations and developing E-Learning
so that students can communicate with academicians effectively.

Figure 3: Preferred method for communication

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Figure 3 shows the result of academicians prefers to interact with people either face to face or
through OSN. 90.24 percent of the academicians prefer to use OSN to interact with people
compare to only 9.76 percent of respondent prefer face to face communication. From this
result, most of the academicians prefer to use online social network as a medium for
communication with people rather than face to face. There are pro and cons to this outcome,
for example, the information is not accurate or properly explains to the respective people.
But, online social network is the fastest medium of communication. So, as an academician,
respondents should use this medium appropriately and ethically to achieve purpose that
related to educational institution. Results from the survey shows that academician is keen to
use online social network for their daily job routine. Most of the respondent agreed that this
social network is effective to use (73.7 percent) and efficient (56.75 percent) in helping them
doing their job done. However, based on the survey, it shows that this result really contradicts
with the purpose of using online social network. Most of the academician using online social
network for the purpose of advertisement (15.81 percent) and business (15.17 percent) rather
than research (11.75 percent) and knowledge (9.83 percent), which this suppose to be the
priority purpose for academician. Through the survey also, it shows that most of the
academician is keen to communicate more with their friends (23.45 percent) rather than their
own students (18.24 percent). From this result based on survey, writer can conclude that
academician agreed that online social network is effective and efficient to be use in this
industry but they actually misused the facilities provided to them.

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on findings, it is believed that the idea of promoting open communication among
students and lecturers is highly appreciated. However, certain boundaries should be placed in
order to ensure that each academician follows certain regulations set by educational
institution. Few solutions have been proposed such as monitoring of e-mail server, blocking
social network website by implementing DNS server, increase security using third party
software and improve network architecture. Monitoring e-mail server is one of the major step
taken by other multi national organizations in order to control spreading of rumours and
selling confidential information. This can be applied to educational institution as well.
Another method of controlling communication especially involving academician is to block
social network website by implementing DNS server. This is to ensure that academician will
only use the right OSN to communicate rather than wasting time chatting and sharing
personal information which is non-academic related. Increase security using third party
software can avoid any attempt to bypass firewall that is provided by the administrator.
Improve network architecture is the biggest step in promoting positive communication among
academicians. This can ensure that emails can be send without any interventions. Finally, in
order to encourage positive impact of OSN in educational institution, academicians must
realize their responsibility and utilize OSN the best way possible to encourage growth
educational institution.

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