Impact and Capability of Facebook as a Teaching Aid in Social Science Subject at UNITEN

The use of Facebook, which is a popular communication device among students, is perceived to have the ability of bridging the gap between students and their lecturers, which this in turn gives rise to some positive effect on the teaching and learning process. With the availability of various electronic devices that can connect to the internet, communication between students and their lecturers is just a finger click away. The present study focuses on the use of Facebook as a teaching tool in a Higher Education Institution, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). Facebook as a social networking site provides the opportunity to users to interact with each other on the internet. With respect to what this study intends to discover, its objectives are (i) to assess the capability of Facebook as a teaching aid for Malaysian Studies Subject at UNITEN, (ii) to identify students’ perceptions towards Facebook as a student-lecturer communication medium, and (iii) to investigate the impact of Facebook usage on students’ performance in Social Science subject. A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed to students from two colleges in UNITEN, Putrajaya Campus, which this involved 210 participants from the College of Engineering, and 90 participants from the College of Information Technology. The results showed that most of the students agreed that Facebook was able to produce a positive effect on teaching and learning of a Social Science subject, Malaysian Studies.