How Facebook Connects Students’ Group Work Collaboration: A Relationship between Personal Facebook Usage and Group Engagement

This study examined the relationship between the personal value of social networking technology, the frequency of Facebook use, the frequency of Facebook activities, and group engagement. The samples were 205 pre-service teachers who participated in the six-week online group project. Questionnaires were collected after the pre-service teachers submitted the project. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis to identify relations among variables. The results showed that 98% of pre-service teachers expanded their network by adding group members to their Facebook friends during the project assignment. The study found no relationship between personal purposive values of social networking technology and group engagement. Although 58.4% of the students used Facebook many times a day, the frequency of usage was largely related to personal interests rather than being relevant to group communication and engagement with the project assignment. However, there were significant but slight correlations between the Facebook activity “view others’ status to update social events” and group engagement; between “private messages” and group engagement; between “set up and share events” and group engagement; between “commenting” and group engagement; and between “clicking like” and group engagement. Therefore, educators should integrate their instructional strategy with the virtual learning environment to promote students’ group engagement via social networking sites.