Internet Opportunities and Challenges in the New Educational Reality Facebook Online Community

(Computer Engineering & Informatics Department, University of Patras, Greece)

Abstract: New technologies bring new demands and challenges in the education field, strengthening the classical learning environment with alternative ways of learning, rapid diffusion of huge information volume and new communication and collaboration channels. Significant changes have started in the way Institutions provide teaching, making more intense the need to strengthen the conventional education with new, more efficient and more attractive educational processes and techniques. Social networking sites provide many promising, both formal and informal ways of learning, which are complementary to the classical educational process. The daily use of social networks from students is a fact that concerns the educational community and is now under research whether social networks should be used in the learning process. This paper presents the role of social media in education, referring to the broadening of usefulness and utilization that Facebook can provide in the educational field. Institutions of higher education around the world began to focus on Facebook’s benefits for educational purposes, but there is limited research on the impact of this. Though according to students, collaboration through academic communities represents the most important value of Facebook implementation in academic activities, little is known about the way students use technology tools.

Key words: new technologies in higher education, facebook community, net generation, digital era