214 Chapter 10 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media for Interaction with Other People Jeļena Zaščerinska Centre for Education and Innovation Research, Latvia Andreas Ahrens Hochschule Wismar University of Applied Sciences, Germany ABSTRACT Economic crisis strongly influences teaching To promote effectiveness and competitiveness of teaching in higher education, teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people has to be analysed The research question is as following: are there any similarities and differences between teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people? The purpose of the research is to compare teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people The meaning of the key concepts of “social media” and “web technologies” is studied Exploratory research is used The empirical study was based on teachers’ and students’ case studies Descriptive statistics was implemented for primary data analysis The findings allow drawing the conclusions on the teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people A hypothesis is proposed Directions of further research are formulated INTRODUCTION The contemporary situation in the world can be described by a number of crises such as social, economic, financial, political, etc as depicted in Figure By crisis, a problem situation is meant The terms problem situation (Sokol, 2008), problem and solving a contradiction (Сорокин, 1977) are considered synonymously (Bassus & Zaščerinska, 2012) Thereby, a problem situation implies solving a contradiction (Žogla, 2001; Čehlova, 2002; Ņikiforovs, DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-9455-2.ch010 Copyright © 2016, IGI Global Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure The relationship between the contemporary situation in the world and crises Figure Elements of contradiction 2003) Therein, contradiction is defined as two incompatible requirements that are set to one element/ subject/thing/etc (Sokol, 2008) Contradiction creates contradictory needs: the necessity in change and stability (Grabovska, 2006) as demonstrated in Figure It should be noted that solving a contradiction often demands on application of non-traditional and innovative solutions Problem situations emerge in different dimensions of life of the modern world such as society, finance, politics, and economy Thus, a crisis in society is identified as social crisis, in finance – financial crisis, in politics – political crisis, and in economy – economic crisis As all the dimensions of life of the modern world are inter-related, problem situations, or, in other words, crises, are inter-dependent, too Among others, economic crisis is a cornerstone for the situation development in the world By economic crisis, transformation from economy’s growth to economy’s slow-down and recession is understood Economic crisis is revealed by • • The fall of GDP (gross domestic product), investment spending, capacity utilization, household income, business profits and inflation, as well as The increase in bankruptcies and the unemployment rate Economic crisis affects many dimensions of the contemporary life in the world such as medicine, transportation, education, etc as revealed in Figure Hence, higher education as the tertiary level of education as illustrated in Figure is formed by economic crisis, too Economic crisis has a two-fold influence on higher education as shown in Figure 5: 215 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure Life dimensions affected by economic crisis Figure The relationship between education and higher education Figure The relationship between economic crisis and higher education • • On the one hand, the economic crisis has reinforced the value of higher education as educational attainment has always had a huge impact on employability (The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2013) as well as social cohesion (The European Council by the Reflection Group on the Future of the EU 2030, 2010) On the other hand, the economic crisis has led to the critical importance of expanding access to as many students as possible, increasing the capacity of state institutions to serve students, and refocusing energies on retention and pedagogical research (Galilee-Belfer, 2010) The economic crisis changes higher education at the macro, mezzo and micro levels (Tsiligiris, 2012) as shown in Figure By the macro level of higher education, a society is meant The mezzo level of higher education implies a higher education institution And, as the micro level of higher education, students are identified It should be noted that all three levels of higher education are inter-related It means that shifts in one of the levels of higher education change the other levels of higher education: the economic crisis has led to expanding enrollments while severely constraining spending, especially in developing countries, leading to larger classes, less-trained teachers, deteriorating facilities, and less access to textbooks and 216 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure Levels of higher education other learning materials This, combined with the very difficult out-of-school circumstances children face, leads to high rates of repetition and dropouts and little learning for those who manage to stay in school (Klees, 2012) Moreover, the economic crisis strongly influences the mezzo level of higher education Higher Education Institution that includes teaching, research and institution autonomy as depicted in Figure Teaching is, on average, more affected by economic crisis than research activities (European University Association, 2011) and academic autonomy Teaching facilitates teachers’ and students’ creation of new products, new patents, new entrepreneurial activities and new jobs as students succeed harder to find a job in the light of enormous socio-economic and unprecedented demographic challenges Therefore, innovative teaching should demonstrate how to turn challenges into advantages, thereby producing innovative products and services of the highest quality and improving their competitiveness To promote effectiveness and competitiveness of teaching in higher education, teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people has to be analysed Moreover, teachers’ and students’ innovativeness and competitiveness more and more depend on their use of social media A lot of research efforts were made to investigate teachers’ and students’ use of Information and Communication Technologies These studies have highlighted how Information and Communication Technologies reconfigure classroom practice, create new variety of learning practices, change teachers’ and students’ role or improve students’ engagement and outcomes, among others (Crook, Park, Lawson, Lundqvist, Drinkwater, Walsh, Gomez, Orsmond, Maw & Papaefthmiou, 2010) Little attention has been given to the comparison of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people Such a lacuna has to be filled in as teachers and students have a two-fold role: Figure Dimensions of the mezzo levels of higher education 217 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media • • In society, teachers and students are the agents of change and, In education and training, teachers and students are the key actors for the development of use of social media for interaction with other people The research question is as following: are there any similarities and differences between teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people? The aim of the research is to compare teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people underpinning elaboration of a hypothesis on teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people The meaning of the key concept of social media and web technologies is studied Moreover, the analysis shows a potential model for development, indicating how the steps of the process are related following a logical chain: web technologies and social media used by teachers and students for interaction with other people → empirical study within a multicultural environment → conclusions The exploratory type of the comparative study is used in the empirical study The novel contribution of this paper is the hypothesis formulated on teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people to promote effectiveness and competitiveness of teaching in higher education Our target population to generalize teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people are students’ teachers and students in higher education institutions The remaining part of this contribution is organized as follows: the next section introduces the theoretical framework on teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people The associated results of an empirical study will be presented in the following section Finally, some concluding remarks are provided followed by a short outlook on interesting topics for further work BACKGROUND The methodological background of the present research is based on the System-Constructivist Theory The System-Constructivist Theory is introduced as the New or Social Constructivism Pedagogical Theory The System-Constructivist Theory is formed by • • • • Parsons’s System Theory (Parsons, 1976) on any activity as a system, Luhmann’s Theory (Luhmann, 1988) on communication as a system, The Theory of Symbolic Interactionalism (Mead, 1973), The Theory of Subjectivism (Groeben, 1986) The System-Constructivist Theory implies the dialectical principle of the unity of opposites that contributes to the understanding of the relationship between external (social, social interaction, teaching, etc) and internal (individual, cognitive activity, learning, etc) perspectives as the synthesis of external and internal perspectives (Bassus & Zaščerinska, 2012) as shown in Figure 218 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure Elements of the System-Constructivist Theory Figure Elements of the Constructivism Theory Figure 10 Elements of the Social-Constructivist Theory In comparison, the Constructivism Theory focuses on the internal perspective as depicted in Figure 9, the Social Constructivist Theory – on the external perspective as well as on the balance between the balance between the external and internal perspectives (Bassus & Zaščerinska, 2012) as illustrated in Figure 10 The term perspective in the present research means to embody certain fundamental assumptions (Barry, 2002) The external perspective accentuates the sociological and pedagogical contribution to the human development Therefore, the external perspective implies social interaction of development (Surikova 2007b) Therein, social interaction is defined as the unity of outside developmental circumstances and individual psychological characteristics in one’s experience (Surikova, 2007a) The internal perspective focuses on the psychological aspect of the human development Thereby, the internal perspective refers to cognitive activity (Surikova 2007b) Cognitive activity refers to the unity of processes of sense, perception, attention, memory, thinking, speech and imagination (Ситаров, 2004), by which people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems The System-Constructivist Theory and, consequently, the System-Constructivist Approach to learning introduced by Reich (Reich, 2005) emphasize that human being’s point of view depends on the subjective aspect: 219 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media • Everyone has his/her own system of external and internal perspectives (Ahrens & Zaščerinska, 2010) that is a complex open system (Rudzinska, 2008), and Experience plays the central role in the knowledge construction process (Maslo, 2007) Therein, the subjective aspect of human being’s point of view is applicable to the present research on comparison of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people • • THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The present part of the contribution demonstrates the definitions of social media and web technologies Web technologies provide the technological foundation for use of social media Each period of the evolution of web technologies transforms the way social media is used for interaction with other people in general and higher education is delivered in particular The study of the development of Web technologies and Web technologies in education has not had a long story (Bassus, Ahrens & Zaščerinska, 2011; Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) as described in Table Initially, use of Web 1.0, the basic internet Web, was associated with publishing corporate information, developing marketing and sales plans and transactions with customers (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) Then, Web 2.0, the social Web, a platform for collaboration, offered users a new version of WWW, not so much in terms of updating the Web’s technical specifications, but rather in terms of the changes software developers and end users made to the way it was used (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) Web 2.0 is qualitatively different from previous Web technologies as it has Web applications that facilitate information sharing, interoperability, user-centred design and collaboration in the WWW Examples of Web 2.0 are Web communities, Web services, Web applications, social network services, video hosting services, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies, among others (O’Reilly, 2005) The late 1990s saw a change in the role of internet users as they began to create content and social value (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) The symbols of this era include YouTube, Facebook, Linkedln, deli.cio.us, Wikipedia, among others Internet then became a cooperative platform in which collective power and networking effects opened up the possibility of generating extraordinary Table Web technologies in education in different historical periods Phase Historical Period Approach Elements of Enterprise Educational Settings 1990 - 2000 Web 1.0 as socialization Social software Tasks with use of Web 1.0 2000 - 2010 Web 2.0 as community Social software and online networks Teaching techniques with use of Web 2.0 2010 - 2020 Web 3.0 as organization Online networks Practice of the Web 3.0 curriculum 2020 – 2030 Web 4.0 as society Wireless communication University Degree 2030 - Web 5.0 as intelligent personal agent Ambient intelligence, WebOS or Web operating system, artificial intelligence, sensory and emotive web Part of all universities’ programmes 220 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media value These social changes in turn caused changes in business models that attempted to make the most of each individual contribution and prepared to coexist in a definitively virtual environment (BenitoOsorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) Although it remains a challenge, or is still unfinished, the Web 2.0 era is giving way to Web 3.0 or what is known as the semantic Web Web 3.0 combines human and artificial intelligence to provide more relevant, opportune and accessible information Web 3.0 has a more powerful language derived from neuronal networks and genetic algorithms, with a particular emphasis on analysis, processing capacity and how to generate new ideas based on user-generated information (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) Web 3.0 transforms Web into a database, a way of making content more accessible through multiple non-browser applications, artificial intelligence technologies, the semantic Web, the geospatial Web and the 3DWeb The fourth step in the evolutionary process is occupied by Web 4.0 based on wireless communication (mobile devices or computers) connecting people and objects whenever and wherever in the physical or virtual world in real time (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) For example, the GPS that guides cars and now helps drivers to improve the planned route or save fuel will shortly save them from having to handle it This 4.0 or mobile version is ready to take off, with an apparently remote Web 5.0, the ‘‘sensitive’’ Web, hard on its heels (Kambil, 2008) Various futuristic terms are currently being used in relation to technology use Web 5.0, the sensory and emotive Web, is designed to develop computers that interact with human beings This relationship will become a daily habit for many people Although at the moment the Web is ‘‘emotionally’’ neutral, that is, it does not perceive what users feel and although emotions are still difficult to map, there are already technologies that can measure their effects (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) One example is www.wefeelfine.org which tracks emotional phrases on the Web, categorises them and registers the frequency and location of clusters of sentiments (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) Another example is the company EmotivSystems which has created neurotechnology Using headphones, users can interact with content that responds to their emotions or changes the facial expression of their avatars in real time If interactions can then be personalised to create experiences that excite users, then Web 5.0 will undoubtedly be more affable than its predecessors In short, the fact that the Web’s evolutionary process has modified business orientation suggests that it will unequivocally affect the quality and content of higher education The current economic context is characterised by change and the appearance of new models of production and innovation based on knowhow, its applications and information processing The links between higher education, the world of work and other sectors in society must therefore be strengthened and renewed, and it is therefore essential for institutions to satisfy these new social demands In particular, there must be a balance between the new development of ICT and teacher competences (Benito-Osorio, Peris-Ortiz, Armengot & Colino, 2013) Web technologies are jointly formed by four dimensions, namely the infrastructure dimension, the functionality dimension, the data dimension, and the social (or socialization) dimension (Vossen, 2009) as illustrated in Figure 11 Socialization, described as taking software or even user-generated content and sharing or jointly using it with others, covers the aspect of user-generated content as it occurs in blogs or wikis, in tagging as well as in social bookmarking (Vossen, 2009) Skype, Classroom Management Systems, the eBay seller evaluation, the Amazon recommendation service, or Wikipedia (Vossen, 2009), where the increased data exchange within the system is no longer a limiting parameter with the current developments in the infrastructure, are classical examples and have found widespread acceptance in the community 221 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure 11 Dimensions of web technologies The move towards mass collaboration (Tapscott, 2006) and/or mass socialization (Vossen, 2009) revealed by the change from person to people and from systems to service (Jones, 2009) has ensured the dominance in use of social media Typical social dimension of Web technologies include “social software” and online social networks (Vossen, 2009) as shown in Figure 12 “Social software” is identified as software that gets better (or at least more useful) the more people use it (Vossen, 2009) While most of the time the software itself, i.e., the program system, does not change based on the number of its users or the frequency with which it is used, it is the application that the software is enabling Examples include Skype, the eBay seller evaluation, the Amazon recommendation service, or Wikipedia Especially the latter is a perfect example for what so-called mass collaboration (Tapscott, 2006) or crowdsourcing can achieve There is also another impact that socialization can have, namely that of improving some given software on a constant or perpetual basis Traditionally, software has never been free of bugs, security holes, or errors, and it has been common for a software company to fix them and distribute new releases or versions of the software from time to time The new approach is to this at a much higher pace Software on the Web may nowadays be in a permanent beta state of release and never finished Thus, for outsiders maintenance occurs on a permanent basis Such a state of perpetual beta may apply to a service that can only be accessed through an API (application program(ming) interface), in which case a user is not bothered by constant release changes, at least as long as the behaviour of the API is only extended, but not fundamentally modified Then, Vossen (Vossen, 2009) considers that online social networks, another form of mass socialization today, bring a dimension to the Web that goes beyond simple links between pages; they add links between people and between communities In such a network, direct links will typically point to our closest friends and colleagues, indirect links lead to the friends of a friend, and etc A social network on the Web is typically the result of employing some software that is intended to focus on building an online community for a specific purpose Social networks connect people with common interests and may be as simple as a blog, or as complex as Facebook or MySpace for mostly Figure 12 Elements of social dimensions of web technologies 222 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure 13 Elements of social media used by teachers and students for interaction with other people Figure 14 Elements of the educational process private applications, as LinkedIn or Xing for professional applications, or as Twitter for both The primary impact that the current Web developments are having in this area are that connecting people and communities constantly becomes easier, and it is not difficult anymore to maintain a professional or personal network of buddies worldwide Yet another impact is that a social network may open up novel sources of revenue, in particular through advertising Finally, Vossen (Vossen, 2009) underlines that two aspects should have become clear by the discussion so far: • • On the one hand, the most obvious change that has recently occurred on the Web is that it has changed from a pure read Web as designed by Berners-Lee (Berners-Lee, 2000) to a read/write Web, where users not only draw information from, but also add information to it, On the other hand, the dimensions we have discussed exhibit various overlaps Indeed, technology enables functionality, which as a “byproduct” leads to data collections, and users have a new tendency to socialize over the Web, by exploiting that functionality and the technology Thus, social media for interaction of teachers and students with other people includes such “social software” as online social networks and online networks for professional applications as Twitter, Xing, LinkedIn, ResearchGate as demonstrated in Figure 13 and many others By professional applications of social media, both teachers’ and students’ use of social media within the teaching phase of the educational process is meant in the present research Teaching in formal higher education is defined as a purposefully organized process of educator’s sharing experience (knowledge, 223 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure 15 Elements of teachers’ and students’ interaction within teaching skills and attitudes) with students (Zaščerinska & Ahrens, 2013) It should be noted that teaching is part of the educational process The educational process includes teaching, peer-learning and learning (Zaščerinska & Ahrens, 2010) as depicted in Figure 14 Each phase of the educational process is separated from the previous one, and the following phase is based on the previous one (Zaščerinska & Ahrens, 2010) Teaching implies both teachers’ and students’ interaction as well as their interaction with other people as shown in Figure 15 Therein, online social networks and online networks for professional applications such as Twitter, Xing, LinkedIn, ResearchGate ensure both teachers’ and students’ interaction as well as their interaction with other people within the teaching phase of the educational process Moreover, use of social media within the teaching phase of the educational process transforms teaching into blended teaching In the present research, blended teaching is identified as the combination of traditional teaching and teaching utilized via social media as demonstrated in Figure 16 Blended teaching is aimed at a safe environment for all the students (Zaščerinska & Ahrens, 2013) In order to provide a safe environment, the essence of constructive social interaction and its organizational regulations are considered by both the educator and students (Zaščerinska & Ahrens, 2013) Blended teaching is organized in a frontal way involving the students to participate (Zaščerinska & Ahrens, 2013): • • Educator makes previous experience rational The activity includes choice of forms and use of resources including teachers’ and students’ use of social media that motivates the students The blended teaching process is under the educator’s guidance Peers not participate in guidance of blended teaching Blended teaching is carried out qualitatively only with the help of the educator Dependence on the educator is observed The students study alongside but not together Figure 16 Elements of blended teaching 224 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media • Students create the system of the aim and objectives, search for a variety of information source including teachers’ and students’ use of social media and obtain techniques of information compiling including teachers’ and students’ use of social media Students fulfill blended teaching qualitatively only with the educator’s help Dependence on the educator is observed, not dependent on peers A short description of a research community network such as ResearchGate gives a short overview of functions of an online social network and online networks: ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators (Lin, 2012) The site has been described as a mashup of “Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn” that includes “profile pages, comments, groups, job listings, and ‘like’ and ‘follow’ buttons” (Lin, 2012) Members are encouraged to share raw data and failed experiment results as well as successes, in order to avoid repeating their peers’ scientific research mistakes (Dolan, 2012) Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is among the company’s investors (Levy, 2013) ResearchGate announced in 2013 that the site had two million members It should be noted that by research community networks in the present contribution, use of web-based tools to discover and use research and scholarly information about people and resources (Clinical and Translational Science Award, 2012) is meant Research community networking tools serve as knowledge management systems for the research enterprise Research community networking tools connect institution-level/enterprise systems, national research networks, publicly available research data (e.g., grants and publications), and restricted/proprietary data by harvesting information from disparate sources into compiled expertise profiles for faculty, investigators, scholars, clinicians, community partners, and facilities Research community networks are designed for such target groups as (Barnett & Jardines, 2012): • • • Investigators ◦◦ To discover potential collaborators, ◦◦ More rapidly and competitively to form teams, ◦◦ To identify targeted grant opportunities and ◦◦ To create digital vitae, Administrators ◦◦ To work with better data for institutional business intelligence, ◦◦ To better assess performance for annual reviews, ◦◦ To recruit new faculty and attract students, Researchers ◦◦ To study networks of science teams to improve research effectiveness Research community networks (Barnett & Jardines, 2012) include four technology components such as • • • • A controlled vocabulary (eg., the VIVO Ontology) for data interoperability, An architecture for data integration and sharing (Linked Open Data), Applications for collaboration, funding, business intelligence, or administration, and Rich faculty profile data of publications, grants, classes, affiliations, interests, etc Further on, repositories of profile data need to talk to institutional systems like faculty directories (Barnett & Jardines, 2012) 225 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Research community networks’ tools facilitate the development of new collaborations and team science to address new or existing research challenges through the rapid discovery and recommendation of researchers, expertise, and resources (Carey, 2011; Fazel-Zarandi, Devlin, Huang & Contractor, 2011) Research community networks’ tools differ from search engines such as Google in that they access information in databases and other data not limited to web pages They also differ from social networking systems such as LinkedIn or Facebook in that they represent a compendium of data ingested from authoritative and verifiable sources rather than predominantly individually asserted information, making research community networks’ tools more reliable (Gewin, 2010) Yet, research community networks’ tools have sufficient flexibility to allow for profile editing Research community networks’ tools also provide resources to bolster human connector systems: they can make non-intuitive matches, they not depend on serendipity, and they not have a propensity to return only to previously identified collaborations/collaborators (Contractor & Monge, 2002) Research community networks’ tools also generally have associated analytical capabilities that enable evaluation of collaboration and cross-disciplinary research/scholarly activity, especially over time Importantly, data harvested into robust research community networks’ tools is accessible for broad repurposing, especially if available as linked open data (RDF triples) Thus, research community networks’ tools enhance research support activities by providing • • • • Data for customized, Up-to-date web pages, CV/biosketch generation, and Data tables for grant proposals Research community networks demonstrate such opportunities as (Barnett & Jardines, 2012) • • • Support to innovative team building approaches, Provision of richer data for comparative institutional studies and Potential for national networks of collaborative research Research community networks reveal the existence of such threats as (Barnett & Jardines, 2012) • • • Some desired data are private (eg., award amounts) or restricted (eg., FERPA), Negotiation between research and administrative efforts is required, and Efforts threaten established networks of research influence For the success of research community networks, such issues are to be considered as (Barnett & Jardines, 2012) • • • • • 226 Leveraging existing institutional efforts for research networking and annual faculty review, Understanding institutional culture and policy for faculty information sharing, Making the technology investments to develop the required new capabilities, and Identifying sources of available high quality profile data (institutional, corporate, federal, Linked Open Data cloud), Use of existing research or administrative initiatives and workflows that manage profile data, A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media • • Overcome of institutional cultures that may not prevent data use for research networking, and Bringing together (typically) multiple initiatives that manage faculty profile data in a sustainable institutional strategy Table shows the levels of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people EMPIRICAL STUDY The present part of the contribution demonstrates the design of the empirical research, survey results and findings of the research The design of the present empirical research comprised the purpose and question, sample and methodology of the present empirical study demonstrated in Figure 17 The empirical study was aimed at comparing teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people The research question was as follows: Do teachers and students use social media for interaction with other people? As sample size has a two-fold role in research, namely sample size is inter-connected with statistical analysis of the data and generalization (Ahrens, & Zaščerinska, 2014), the sample size was formed by the factors revealed in Table (Ahrens, & Zaščerinska, 2014) Hence, the present empirical study involved • 59 teachers who took part in the Leonardo and Grundtvig Partnerships UK Contact Seminar “Back to Learning: Back to Work” at University of Birmingham, Birmingham, the United Kingdom, 4-7 July 2012, and Table Levels of use of social media Levels Criterion Teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people Level Level Level Level Level Very Low Low Average Optimal High 0-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100% Figure 17 Elements of the design of the empirical research 227 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Table Factors that influence sample size in educational research Factors that Influence Sample Size in Educational Research External Perspective Surroundings’ and resources’ factors: • Access to the sample • Resources: • Time, • Personnel and its competences and experiences, • Technical support, • Measurement procedures, etc • Internal Perspective Researcher factors: • Aims of research, • Aims of generalisation, • Research methodologies, • Educational research paradigm, • Motivation, • Interest, • Skills, and • Experience 29 engineering students in the Eighth Baltic Summer School Technical Informatics and Information Technology at the University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia, July 28 – August 12, 2012 The teachers’ sample included 59 respondents All the teachers have got Bachelor, Master or PhD Degree in different fields of educational sciences such as teaching English as a Foreign Language, Business, technical and other subjects All the teachers work at educational establishments of different types: school, vocational, higher and adult education institutions The teachers were from different European countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK All 29 engineering students have got Bachelor or Master Degree in different fields of computer sciences and working experience in different fields These 29 engineering students represent different cultural backgrounds and diverse educational approaches from different countries, namely, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Poland, India, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Nepal, Sweden, Canada, China and Pakistan Therefore, both samples are multicultural as the respondents with different cultural backgrounds and diverse educational approaches were chosen That emphasizes the analysis of individual teacher and student use of social media for interaction with other people (Luka, Ludborza & Maslo, 2009) within the present empirical study However, whereas cultural similarity aids mutual understanding between people (Robbins, 2007), the teachers’ and students’ different cultural and educational backgrounds contribute to successful learning Moreover, different cultural and educational backgrounds become an instrument of bringing the teachers and students together more closely under certain conditions such as appropriate materials, teaching/learning methods and forms, motivation and friendly positioning of the educator (Abasheva, 2010) Thus, the groups’ socio-cultural context (age, field of study and work, mother tongue, etc.) is heterogeneous The interpretive paradigm was used in the empirical study The interpretive paradigm aims to understand other cultures, from the inside through the use of ethnographic methods such as informal interviewing and participant observation, etc (Taylor & Medina, 2013) Interpretative research paradigm corresponds to the nature of humanistic pedagogy (Luka, 2008) The interpretative paradigm allows creating an environment for the development of any individual and helps them to develop their potential (Luka, 2008) The core of this paradigm is human experience, people’s mutual everyday interaction that tends to understand the subjectivity of human experience (Luka, 2008) The paradigm is aimed at understanding people’s activity, how a certain activity is exposed in a certain environment, time, conditions, i.e., how it is exposed in a 228 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Figure 18 Phases of the exploratory study certain socio-cultural context (Luka, 2008) Thus, the interpretative paradigm is oriented towards one’s conscious activity, and it is future-oriented (Luka, 2008) Interpretative paradigm is characterized by the researchers’ practical interest in the research question (Cohen, Manion, & Morrsion, 2003) The exploratory type of the comparative study (Phillips, 2006 was applied within the present empirical study The exploratory type of the comparative study aims to generate new hypotheses and questions (Phillips, 2006) The exploratory methodology proceeds (Phillips, 2006) as shown in Figure 18: • • • • • ‘Conceptualisation’ in Phase 1, Detailed description of educational phenomena in the countries to be investigated, with full attention paid to the local context in terms of its historical, geographical, cultural, political, religious, and linguistic (etc.) features in Phase 2, The data collection in Phase 3, Explanation through the development of hypotheses in Phase 4, Re-consideration of the initial questions and application of the findings to other situations in Phase The qualitatively oriented empirical study allows the construction of only few cases (Mayring, 2004) Moreover, the cases themselves are not of interest, only the conclusions and transfers we can draw from these respondents (Mayring, 2007) Selecting the cases for the case study comprises use of informationoriented sampling, as opposed to random sampling (Mayring, 2007) This is because an average case is often not the richest in information In addition, it is often more important to clarify the deeper causes behind a given problem and its consequences than to describe the symptoms of the problem and how frequently they occur (Flyvbjerg, 2006) Random samples emphasizing representativeness will seldom be able to produce this kind of insight; it is more appropriate to select some few cases chosen for their validity In order to analyse the teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people, the survey was based on the following questionnaire: Question 1: Please, indicate the name of the country of your origin The evaluation scale is nominal Question 2: Do you use social media for interaction with other people? The evaluation scale of two levels for the question is given where “0” means “no” and “1” - “yes” 229 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media First, 59 questionnaires were distributed to the teachers Questionnaire responses were received from eight teachers who participated in the Leonardo and Grundtvig Partnerships UK Contact Seminar “Back to Learning: Back to Work” at University of Birmingham, Birmingham, the United Kingdom, 4-7 July 2012 The results of Question of the questionnaire used in the survey show that eight teachers who responded to the questionnaire represent the following countries: United Kingdom, Slovenia, Macedonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal The results of Question as demonstrated in Figure 19 on use of social media for interaction with other people (family, friends, colleagues, etc.) reveal that seven out of 59 teachers who responded to the questionnaire use social media to interact with other people (family, friends, colleagues, etc.) Moreover, one teacher stressed that social media had been used to interact only with colleagues Second, 29 questionnaires were distributed to the engineering students Questionnaire responses were received from 29 engineering students who participated in the Eighth Baltic Summer School Technical Informatics and Information Technology at the University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia, July 28 – August 12, 2012 The results of Question of the questionnaire used in the survey show that 29 engineering students who responded to the questionnaire represent the following countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Poland, India, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Nepal, Sweden, Canada, China and Pakistan The results of Question (use of social media for interaction with other people) of the questionnaire used in the survey show that 29 respondents out of 29 engineering students who responded to the questionnaire use social media for interaction with other people as depicted in Figure 19 In Figure 19: • • The vertical numbers mean two levels of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people, The horizontal numbers present the teachers’ code number in blue and students’ code number in red Figure 19 Results of Question (teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people) 230 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media The relatively small number of teachers’ questionnaires returned may possibly be explained by teachers’ summer vacation as the questionnaire was sent by e-mail in July 2012: in general people and, consequently, teachers not often check their e-mails in summer Another explanation could be the technical aspect of the emailed questionnaire: the questionnaire did not reach the email inbox as the computer programmes had redirected it to the email trash or spam space Further on, the relatively small number of teachers who responded to the questionnaire may possibly reflect teachers’ perception of their responsibility for their own cognition or, in other words, learning as filling in a questionnaire is considered as a technique of teachers’ lifelong learning as well as teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people The teachers’ and students’ answers about their use of social media for interaction with other people from the questionnaire were systematized according to the construct of Use of social media for interaction with other people and its two domains as presented in Table 3: • • The construct of teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people, The construct of students’ use of social media for interaction with other people The data were processed applying Excel software The determined construct domains were systematized into the codes corresponding to a domain Only positive answers were taken into consideration for the analysis: answers which were pointed as “1” in Question The number and percentage of the positive answers from the questionnaire completed by the teachers and students were analyzed as shown in Table All of the teachers’ and students’ answers were categorized to the construct Use of social media Frequencies were determined to reveal the teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people The survey showed that teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people has been positively evaluated by 87.5% of the teachers among those who responded to the questionnaire, and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people has been positively evaluated by 100% of the engineering students The interpretation of these results allows concluding that social media for interaction with other people is not widely used yet The comparison between the teachers’ and students’ answers reveals that students use social media for interaction with other people more often than teachers Moreover, the survey’s results allow drawing a conclusion that students interact with other people more often than teachers The summarizing content analysis (Mayring, 2004) of the data reveals that the teachers’ and students’ feedback regarding their use of social media for interaction with other people is positive However, in comparison with students’ use of social media for interaction with other people, there is a need for the increase of the teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people as well as teacher’s interaction with other people Table Frequency of the teachers’ and students’ positive answers Construct Use of social media Construct Domain Number of Answers Percentage teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people 87.5% students’ use of social media for interaction with other people 29 100% 231 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media Issues, Controversies, Problems Use of social media in higher education takes more and more of teachers’ and students’ working and personal time The issue of teachers’ and students’ time spent using social media reveals another problem such as efficiency of use of social media in higher education Another aspect to be discussed is the promotion of competitiveness of teaching in higher education facilitated by use of social media in higher education One of the issues on use of social media in higher education is to investigate the historical development of web technologies and web technologies in pedagogy Another issue in the present research is use of the interpretive paradigm which aims to understand other cultures, from the inside through the use of ethnographic methods such as informal interviewing, participant observation and establishment of ethically sound relationships (Taylor, & Medina, 2013) Sample size could be re-considered while further analysis of social media in higher education The present research has limitations The inter-connections between social media and web technologies have been set Another limitation is the empirical study conducted by involving only the teachers at one seminar and students of one tertiary institution Therein, the results of the study cannot be representative for the whole area Nevertheless, the results of the research – the definition of social media and web technologies as well as the comparative research design - may be used as a basis of analysis of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people in other institutions If the results of other institutions had been available for analysis, different results could have been attained There is a possibility to continue the study Solutions and Recommendations Management of teachers’ and students’ working and personal time has to be re-considered Efficiency of use of social media in higher education as well as its criteria, indicators and constructs have to be identified Competitiveness of teaching has to be defined, and its criteria, indicators and constructs have to be outlined The historical development of web technologies and web technologies in pedagogy has to be investigated from a number of perspectives on the issue of use of social media in higher education Such educational research paradigms (P C Taylor, & M N D Medina, 2013) could be applied for the analysis of use of social media in higher education as • • • • 232 The positivist paradigm that is commonly used in research to test theories or hypotheses, The post-positivist paradigm that includes the analysis of interaction between the researcher and his/her research participants via use of such quantitative methods as survey research and qualitative methods as interviewing and participant-observation (J Creswell, 2008), The critical paradigm which involves identifying and transforming socially unjust social structures, policies, beliefs and practices, The postmodern paradigm which holds that what goes on in our minds and hearts is not directly accessible to the world outside us, A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media • • The multi-paradigmatic research by combining methods and quality standards drawn from two or more of the newer paradigms, and The new ‘integral paradigm’ that provides a rationale for drawing upon multiple paradigms to design new hybrid methodologies that involve multiple epistemologies and their accompanying quality standards Formation of a sample of a proper size needs further analysis of such issues as • • • • The relationship between sample size and measurement procedures, The relationship between sample size and significance test, The relationship between sample size and results’ interpretation, and The relationship between sample size and generalisation FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS Prospects for development include modelling of a favourable teaching and learning environment for the enrichment of teachers’ use of social media Particularly, teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people has to be increased as the students’ use of social media for interaction with other people has been determined to be of a higher level The contemporary concept of Web 5.0 remains as an open point for further research Further research tends to focus on the search for relevant methods for evaluation of each criterion of the development of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people as well as data obtaining, processing, analyzing and interpretation in an empirical study within a multicultural environment Teachers’ and students’ needs in use of social media for interaction with other people are proposed to be analyzed, too Empirical studies in other institutions are proposed to be carried out Another direction of further investigation is considered as evaluation of efficiency of teachers’ and students’ use of social media for interaction with other people A comparative research of different countries could be carried out, too CONCLUSION The findings of the research allow drawing the conclusions on a lower level of teachers’ use of social media as the teachers’ use of social media for interaction with other people has been positively evaluated by only 87.5% of the teachers and a high level of students’ use of social media as the students’ use of social media for interaction with other people has been positively evaluated by 100% of the students Validity and reliability of the research results have been provided by involving other researchers into several stages of the conducted research External validity has been revealed by international cooperation as following: 233 A Comparative Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Use of Social Media • • • The research preparation has included individual interdisciplinary consultations given by other researchers, The present contribution has been worked out in co-operation with international colleagues and assessed by international colleagues, and The research has been partly presented at international conferences Therein, the findings of the 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Question (teachers? ?? and students? ?? use of social media for interaction with other people) 230 A Comparative Study of Teachers? ?? and Students? ?? Use of Social Media The relatively small number of teachers? ??... definition of social media and web technologies as well as the comparative research design - may be used as a basis of analysis of teachers? ?? and students? ?? use of social media for interaction with other