Analysis of Informal Use of Social Media in Formal Project-Based Learning

Abstract

The authors host an international collaborative event annually, and their students prepare for it through compulsory project-based learning (PBL) activity in their program. Students communicate and share information in several ways during PBL—for example, through formal project activities and informal interaction. Recently, many students have come to use Facebook, as well as the university’s in-house system for social networking, in PBL. This study aims to reveal what kind of activity takes place on these social networking services (SNSs) during PBL by observing the students’ formal and informal use of them, and to discuss the possible effects of the mainly informal posts that take place on both sites. The analysis shows that the main platform for informal communication has shifted from the campus SNS to outside SNSs. Further, the nature of these informal posts was different for each SNS. The potential of these SNSs for PBL and what can be done to advance it are discussed based on the survey results.