What to do when you need academic help: A framework for conceptualizing Facebook use for higher education support research article assignment

Academic Help Seeking is the title of article I read. It’s a framework for conceptualizing Facebook use for higher education support. This article was published in TechTrends by the Association of Education and Communications & Technology on December 12, 2016. Paul V Amador, Julie M Amador are the authors. This article examines how students, especially those who use Facebook for social media to help them with academics or solve problems, can utilize it as a resource. The Social Learning Theory is applied in the article in that it looks at how individuals learn to socialize and use social networks to their advantage. It goes on to say that most students will express their emotions or concerns about academics, but not as an academic blog. A study revealed that most people, based on their interaction with people online, believe they only socialize via social media.

They do not refer to specific articles that have been written on the topic. However, they occasionally quote authors who wrote similar articles to their own. For example, Nelson-Le Gall published Help Seeking, an understudied skill for solving problems in children in 1981. C Made, J Meek and T Hooley published Facebook, Social Integration and Informal Learning at University: “It’s more for talking with friends about work and socializing than actually doing work” in 2009. In order to appear credible, the authors use quotes. However, they do not fully connect these quotes with the research. The quotes are merely filler sentences unless the reader has read the entire article. The target audience is a non-sociology major or working scientist, but I find the quotes to be completely irrelevant. The study aims to investigate how social media sites can be used for academic purposes and how users think of them as social. The study aims to answer the question: how Facebook, in particular, is used to achieve academic goals, and what people think about it because Facebook has a reputation as a social network and that most of those who comment and read posts are family and friends. This study’s goal was to find out how preservice teachers and students in higher-education used Facebook as a tool to help them with their academics. Participants who sought academic help on Facebook, both formally as well as informally, viewed the network in a social light, created a community by interacting online, and requested assistance to complete academic tasks. This study provides a framework to help higher education personnel understand how students seek out academic support. The researchers claim that the selection of participants was done with purpose. The study required that the candidates have used Facebook at least two-years before they began the study. According to the study, the method was: “This study was designed to better understand how preservice teachers and students in higher education use Facebook to get academic support.” Results showed that participants using Facebook for formal and informal academic support felt the network was social. They also generated a feeling of community by interacting online and requested help to complete their academic tasks. The framework provides a framework for understanding how students seek help. The data were collected online after a year, when the students had become Facebook friends with an academic advisor at their university. The study used a quantitative data collection and keeping statistics of when academics were used on the site, as well as a qualitative analysis of data with interviews conducted after retrieving the collected data. The study stated that the goal of the study is to “understand how preservice teachers and students from higher education use Facebook for academic support.” The study found that those who sought academic support on Facebook, both formally and formally, felt the network had a social nature. They also generated a feeling of community via online interactions. Participants were also more likely to ask for help with academic tasks. This framework helps higher education professionals who support student academic success to better understand the help seeking process.

The study concluded that, although students didn’t perceive themselves as using Facebook for academic purposes, they did use it more often to ask for emotional support or help, or even formal questions. They also used it more frequently when they wanted a response or clarification on a particular post, or if they just needed to mention school in an informal comment. The students are aware that some use social media in a positive way to complete tasks. The study found that those who sought academic support on Facebook, both formally as well as informally, thought the network was social. They also felt connected to others through online interactions and requested help to complete academic tasks. Higher education personnel who support academic success for students will find a framework to help them understand the process of seeking help. A box/cube graph was used to show that students are more likely to use passive, informal, or social language when posting, while they are less likely to use active, formal, academic language. The article mentions that this study is one-sided because the researcher grades posts as formal/informal and academic/social. They also grade them active/passive regardless of the opinion of another person. The article, I think, is also limited because of the few candidates and the unbalanced number in terms of gender. The data may have been altered by the fact that there were only two men and four women. In order to change the study to meet the author’s concerns and mine, I will firstly add more participants to the study. This would increase the sample size. Then I will base the grading on my perception of the posts as well as the researchers. Thirdly, to make sure that data wasn’t skewed by gender, I would balance the sexes from both sides. The research would be based on my experience with friends. Age has a significant impact on how much emotional support is given. We need less validation online as we age. As a middle child in a family of five, my oldest sibling, who is 26, uses social media very little. She says it’s not real and comments on pictures shouldn’t determine your self-worth. My younger sister is 15 and uses social media in a way that can damage her emotional well-being. My oldest sister relied just as much on strangers’ love and compliments when she was a child, but she didn’t need it anymore. She was fooling herself. This article is correct in that it identifies that Facebook can be used for education, but it fails to explain why.