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In the recent era of technology, educational institutions have been trying to innovate itself to find new ways to enrich the whole teaching and learning process. It is seen that social network is having a pervasive impact and promising future in education. The educational institution then should no longer be asking if schools and universities will use the social network. Instead, they should be asking if social networks are being utilized and adequately managed across the academe. Part of these monitoring and implementation steps is by looking into how students respond and behave inside these social networks. Student behavior should be managed so not to disturb other learners inside the social network and to ensure the smooth administration and delivery of the courses.
One classic learning theory in classroom management is operant conditioning. It is a learning process that uses both positive and negative reinforcements to encourage good and wanted behavior while deterring bad and unwanted behavior. Psychologists have observed that every action has a consequence, and if this is great, the person is more likely to do it again in the future. However, if the consequence is not so good, the individual will likely avoid doing it in a similar situation next time around.
Along with this thought, this paper discusses how to apply operant conditioning of learning when integrating social network into the classroom. It then analyzes the impact of integrating this learning theory to social network and classroom learning by measuring its impact on the academic performance of the learners. It also suggests ways and means how to leverage social networks to its full potentials. The result in this study will help to bring students and teachers to a new level of the learning experience.
Below discusses the impact, advantages, and disadvantages of social networks in education. A brief note about the operant condition of learning is also presented on the succeeding sections.
Social Network in Education
The positive impact of social networks in education is now widely accepted. Thus, more and more efforts are conducted to analyze the effects of social networks in academic institutions. The study of Stanciu, Mihai and Aleca (2012) for instance claimed the significant impact of social networks on the educational process in Romanian higher education. The researchers also proposed a model for implementing Facebook usage in higher education learning processes.
In Oman, several studies have been conducted to find the relationship of social networks and its effect on the learning process of students. The study of Al-Mukhaini, Al-Qayoudhi and Al-Badi (2017) for example was to discover the motives of using social networks by higher education students in Oman. It was also aimed to recognize the impact of social networking tools in learning and education in general. It also analyzed the problems that students encountered while using social networks and determined whether the traditional learning methods needed to change. The study highlighted the benefits of using social networks as tools for developing a unique style of learning and presented the negative impacts that can influence the process of learning, all of which is geared to justify the use of social networks in higher education. Al-Harrasi and Al-Badi (2014) on the other hand, investigated the impact of social networking on college students. They found out that: (1) college students spend a long time on social networking sites; (2) college students are facing problems in trusting, filtering, and selecting different information accessed from social networking sites; and (3) social networks affect students in both positive and negative ways. Similar findings have shared by the research conducted by Mehmood and Taswir (2013) who investigated the pedagogical impacts of social networking sites of undergraduate students at the College of Applied Sciences, Nizwa, Oman.
All of these researches try to establish the impact of social networking in education which primarily aimed to helps create better student learning strategies and shape student culture of better academic performance. However, academic institutions still suffer from the deficiency of guiding learning theories for effective implementation (Tinmaz, 2017). Thus, research which focused on how to integrate social network effectively in education applying those learning theories in education.