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Among various social media platforms, Facebook is one of the most popular platforms and its use for educational purpose has been studied extensively. One of the benefits of using Facebook in education is that it encourages interactions among students and between students and the instructors. Arteaga Sánchez, Cortijo, and Javed (2014) conducted a survey on 214 undergraduate students in Spain to investigate their perception of using Facebook in class. Most students believed that Facebook can create more opportunities for communication and collaboration with other students.
Facebook has been also reported to increase academic performance in Further Education and Training (FET) colleges in South Africa (Dzvapatsva, Mitrovic, & Dietrich, 2014). One of the biggest challenges in Information Technology (IT) lectures was the lack of adequate contact hours for the course which negatively affected students’ academic performance. However, Dzvapatsva, Mitrovic, and Dietrich (2014) found that students using Facebook had increased contact learning time with other students and lecturers and showed approximately 35% improvement in academic performance.
Due to the benefits of using Facebook in class, studies have also attempted to use Facebook as an alternative for LMS. LaRue (2012) examined the potential of Facebook being the sole LMS in a nursing course. The course name was ‘Internet and Health Informatics’ which consisted of face-to-face and online classes. Facebook was used for weekly blog posting with various topics related to the course. As the results, Facebook was reported to be an effective classroom management tool for both face-to-face and online sessions.
Similar findings were reported by Meishar-Tal, Kurtz, and Pieterse (2012). The study implemented Facebook as a course LMS for fifty college students. The course name was ‘International Aspects of ICT in Education’ and it was a face-to-face course with class meetings once a week over thirteen weeks. Based on students’ feedback, the study reported that Facebook can provide intensive and collaborative learning environment. This is because Facebook can easily promote interaction among students and instructors. While traditional LMS is mainly used at content-based level, Facebook was perceived by students as a dynamic learning environment.