Student Engagement in the Facebook Learning Environment: A Person-Centred Study

Facebook has been used not only as a popular social network service among college students but also as a platform for promoting learning and teaching effectiveness in different subject areas. While previous studies have demonstrated the utility of Facebook for enhancing student engagement, little is known about whether there are different profiles of students with different engagement patterns in the Facebook learning environment. Adopting a person-centred approach, we aim to fill this gap in the current study by identifying unobserved sub-populations of students with respect to their engagement patterns in the Facebook as a supplemental learning platform. Latent profile analysis revealed three engagement profiles, a minimally engaged, a moderately engaged, and a highly engaged profile. Results also suggested that academic disciplines and teacher involvement in the Facebook learning activities were significant predictors of student membership in the three engagement profiles. Our findings offer implications for the design and delivery of Facebook learning activities that cater to different groups of learners with different learning needs.

Automated summary

This study identified three engagement profiles of college students in the Facebook learning environment and found that academic disciplines and teacher involvement were significant predictors of student membership in these profiles. The findings offer implications for designing and delivering Facebook learning activities that cater to different groups of learners with varying learning needs.