This study examines the possible advantages and disadvantages of using social networking sites as a means of communication between students and their lecturers in several academic institutions in Israel.
Facebook, an example of computer-mediated communication (CMC), raises various questions regarding its use as a communication channel between lecturers and students within academic settings. The traditional boundaries between students and faculty may be affected, as well as the traditional image of the teaching faculty. Self-disclosure and exposure may be significant issues in the academic community, closely related to sensitive concerns such as preserving social boundaries and keeping an appropriate distance between faculty and students. We inquired into whether these boundaries are vanishing, specifically when the use of Facebook as a means of communication between lecturer and student is concerned.
We also researched age, gender and academic status within the academic institutions regarding their affect on present and future academic and social relationships.
The findings indicate that in an academic setting, students are becoming more open to the idea of communicating with their lecturers through Facebook. Moreover, myresearch indicates that computer-mediated communication is a tool with increasing potential and growth for both social and academic communication.
Most importantly, the investigation focused on a facet which, to date, has not been sufficiently explored, namely that of the role of gender within social networking in the academic community. Our research showed that gender does affect students’ attitudes towards their own and their lecturers’ exposure on social networks in academic situations.