The paper studies the possibilities of social networks application within the university system of e-learning. The advantages and disadvantages of social networks application have been analyzed. Necessity and expediency of social networks application in the course of students' learning process have been grounded. The paper studies the efficiency of this process. Measures for improving the efficiency of social networks application in the university elearning system have been developed.
Under modern conditions, high use of social networks has penetrated into every area
of modern human life. And a sphere of education is no exception [
According to the research carried out by the international organization «Wearesocial»,
there are almost 26 million active Internet users in Ukraine (that is 58% of the entire
population), 23 million of which log in to SN at least once a month (2018) [
These are the most popular social networks in Ukraine: ─ Facebook (13 million users); ─ Instagram (7,2 million users); ─ Twitter (1,6 million users); ─ Linkedin (up to 1 million users).
It is also expedient to mention two Russian SNs: VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki (OK). The popularity of these networks has been decreasing significantly since 2014 especially after their blocking in 2017.
Given the fact that social network is a complex social structure [
The following researchers deal with the issue of electronic learning: Bersin J. Rapid,
D. Bernhard, B.W. Boehm, І. Gurevych, Mark-Christoph Muller, D. Patarakyn, E.
Polat and others [
The purpose of the article is to study the possibilities of SN application in the university system of e-learning. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to work out the following tasks: ─ an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of SN application; ─ grounding the necessity and expediency of SN application in the students’ learning process; ─ defining SN popularity for storing links, exchanging links to educational materials among students and university teachers; ─ the study of the efficiency of SN application in the university e-learning system; ─ the development of measures for improving the efficiency of SN application in the e-learning system. 3 3.1
As it was mentioned previously, the basic SN feature, advantage and purpose are that they are universal means of communication. The opportunity of networking and establishing contacts among users (in synchronous and asynchronous modes, in comfortable conditions and in accordance with user needs), the possibility of applying a wide range of technical and methodic tools as well as other substantial advantages particularly make SN an efficient instrument for enhancing the learning process efficiency.
As far as social learning is concerned, it is expedient to shift emphasis from the academic discipline content to the interaction between students and teachers, because the content is intended for them.
An analysis of SN opportunities allows identifying advantages of their application in the university electronic learning environment: ─ availability of tools for storing useful bookmarks and tools for storing useful links to websites by applying the system of tags; ─ possibility of storing, grouping and exchanging digital photos, audio and video recordings, text files, presentations; ─ possibility to organize a discussion of resources (individual, group or public); ─ possibility to choose one’s own time frame for studying the learning material as well as learning pace; ─ blogging or website promotion; ─ free use of Internet services; ─ interaction during the learning process; ─ possibility to form user groups and communities in order to solve certain problems or tasks; ─ fast information retrieval. 3.2
Following the analysis of SN advantages, let us single out five component parts of the integral efficiency indicator of social network tool application in the learning process in particular: ─ managerial – characterizes the level of user interconnection organization in the social network during the e-learning process, access to relevant information, selfdevelopment and network openness; ─ social and psychological – highlights the level of emotional perception of information, user motivation, tolerance towards opposing opinions, self-expression possibility, etc.; ─ learning – characterizes the level of learning efficiency of the system, mastering learning material, use of multi-media and visual aids, achieving pedagogic objectives, developing creative and professional skills, etc.; ─ technologic – highlights application level of hardware in the course of e-learning, methods and techniques for learning and familiarization with the learning material, mastering and discussion of learning material, consultations on their application in professional activity; ─ economic – characterizes ratio of achieved economic results, impact, and benefits to costs associated with achieving this effect and attracted resources. 3.3
Accordingly, we consider it expedient to select the following principal criteria that allow us to evaluate the managerial efficiency of SN application in the university elearning system: ─ network dynamism; ─ information visualization level; ─ interactivity (as the level of communication between users); ─ accessibility; ─ openness; ─ choice of convenient interaction mode (synchronous or asynchronous ); ─ network self-development; ─ the autonomy of network nodes; ─ system of tags; ─ ease of networking technology use; ─ horizontal links; ─ decentralization.
Criteria for investigation of the social and psychological component part of SN application efficiency in the university e-learning system include: ─ level of information perception; ─ solidarity and critical thinking; ─ emotiveness of communication and information representation; ─ various nature of communication; ─ motivational constituent; ─ intellectuality, creative potential; ─ the autonomy of users as Internet activity; ─ self-identification and instant view of information grouping; ─ tolerance towards opposing opinions; ─ self-expression possibility; ─ anonymity;
Criteria of learning component part of SN application efficiency in the university elearning system may include:
It is expedient to select the following criteria of the technologic component part of SN application efficiency in the university e-learning system: ─ level of technical implementation of interaction; ─ virtual nature; ─ adaptability; ─ level of hardware application; ─ range of methods and techniques for learning and familiarization with the learning material; ─ level of organization of the process of learning material discussion in order to clarify areas of concern and get consultations.
Given the fact that economic component part of SN application efficiency in the university e-learning system is a summarizing indicator characterizing the ratio of economic benefit from a certain type of activity to costs or resources, attracted in order to achieve this effect, there are the following evaluation criteria for it: ─ the efficiency of mastering the learning material, gaining professional skills and knowledge; ─ amount of costs associated with the process of e-learning; ─ reliability of SN application in e-learning; ─ quality of learning material and educational services as far as e-learning with the aid of SNs is concerned; ─ competitive ability of e-learning with the application of SN tools; ─ optimality of such learning; ─ level of flexibility of requirements and main indicators; ─ economic benefit and expediency; ─ cost-effectiveness of learning. 3.4
Having applied an integrated approach, it is possible to obtain a generalized
evaluation of SN application efficiency in the university e-learning system in a whole by
means of generalization of indicators that encompass all the most important
component parts of this efficiency. Thus, the general indicator if efficiency (Еgen), according
to the integral approach, is determined using the following formula:
Еgen= f (Е1, Е2, … Еi, … Еn )
(1)
where Е1, Е2, Е3, Е4, Е5 are the component parts of efficiency indicator of SN
application in the university e-learning system, namely: managerial, social and
psychological, learning, technologic and economic component parts [
The primary objectives of e-learning application by the national higher education institutions are the following: simplification of access procedure to all the necessary learning materials for students, organization of individual work with electronic resources, receiving consultations, discussing areas of concern, another possibility to get grades, development of distant cooperation, etc.
In the course of the investigation of SN application by students and university teachers, we carried out an analysis of going from SN and other websites to the website of active ELMS on the basis of Moodle open source software.
Moodle software is available on the university web-server at http://vns.lpnu.ua. In order to perform the analysis, we selected the time period before the session with maximum daily traffic. In 2018 the period of 91 days was selected (dates from Sep 23, 2018 to Dec 22, 2018).
Data collection and analysis tools regarding user activity – built-in statistics analysis tools Moodle and GoogleAnalytics service.
Investigated ELMS has more than 30000 registered users (university students and
teachers). There are up to 28000 students out of the total number of users.
University ELMS is not accessible to unauthorized users [
There was no advertising activity in SNs in order to promote vns.lpnu.ua website pages, attract new users and so on. Absence of vns.lpnu.ua website promotion as well as no ELMS access to unauthorized users allows us to determine the interest of ELMS users in spreading web links to learning discipline pages within Moodle environment, tests, and other learning resources.
There are no special advertising campaigns in SNs aimed at the promotion of a website or certain website content, pages with learning resources or user profiles in Moodle. According to the findings of vns.lpnu.ua website traffic investigation over a period of Sep 23, 2018 – Dec 22, 2018, the following numbers have been obtained: a general number of sessions – 673944; viewed pages – 8049065. Analysis of the geographic location of ELMS and SN users is presented in Table 3. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 1 3 1 1 1 1 Omitting unsuccessful ELMS login attempts, we receive the characteristic of users presented in Figure 2. It also should be noted that VKontakte users may use the IP address change technique, VPN and various types of proxy. The indicated number of VKontakte users in table 2 and figure 2 corresponds not to the users from Ukraine but to the users from the other countries.
Analysis of ELMS pages to which SN users go allows defining certain page types and their popularity as a target of SN users.
Page type site main page, login user homepage course/category user profile, password enrolment options forum, message etc other pages Total number of sessions Page type site main page, login Page count 75 61 41 27 24 10 3722 35667 4511 2830 1473 1448 947 706 412 368 250 204 48816 Analysis of switching from SNs to the ELMS Moodle page demonstrates that 27% of switches are associated with interior website pages, 73% are switches to the homepage or login page etc. As far as internal pages are concerned, tests and pages with discipline resources are the most popular (18% in total). 4
The paper presents the analysis of ELMS educational website utilization by SN users. Popular SNs among ELMS users of Lviv Polytechnic National University have been defined. The analysis of the popularity of ELMS resources among SN users has been performed. It is significant that students are receptive to all the innovations associated with the use of a well-known SN sphere for learning purposes. They spend a large part of their lives in SNs. For many of them, SNs combine rest, communication and possibility to show themselves and events from their life. Therefore, this sphere is associated with positive emotions and experience. That is why a combination of SN with learning (a sphere that involves making efforts and time consumption) ensures the educational effect and improves learning process efficiency.
SN application within e-learning system will allow the students to: ─ choose a convenient way of communication with a teacher; ─ choose place and time for learning; ─ choose a method of high-quality knowledge acquisition; ─ have a chance to maintain constant contact with a teacher; ─ benefit from personalized learning schedule; ─ save time; ─ reduce education costs.
Combination of SN and university e-learning system has the biggest number of advantages when distance education of students is concerned. It has been a long time since distance education gained approval abroad owing to its peculiar features. However, a lack of direct communication between the student and the teacher is a considerable disadvantage of such a form of education. Nevertheless, this drawback may be easily eliminated with the help of technologies that make such communication both real and constant. The student may ask a question any time and receive an answer. The undertaken studies define SN popularity for storing links, exchanging links to educational materials among students and university teachers. Facebook turned out to be the main social network while using ELMS website resources. Other networks and popular resources are scarcely used for the distribution of links to university electronic learning resources.
The research has shown that networking social services do not have a significant impact on user access learning resources in the university ELMS. The majority of visitors use other search engines and network resources to access ELMS and specific pages with learning material. The issue of advertising ELMS materials in SNs, aimed at improving the quality of learning, is expedient for further study.