Social Networks in Education: A Facebook-Based Educational Platform

Abstract: Social networking sites are among the most popular daily activities of students these days. Students are mostly using social networking sites for communication and sharing of their experiences. Facebook is an example of a social networking site, which supports additional features such as creating a profile page, creating group pages and supports possibility of implementing different integrated application with Facebook. These features improve the Facebook experience, allowing users to form groups, where they can introduce ideas and concepts, which can be shared and discussed in a structured style. For this thesis we have created a new learning management system by implementing an online educational platform within a Facebook context. This work introduces a new, complementary style of education, where students can improve their knowledge and sociality outside the university in an innovative way. The platform takes advantage of gamification, which introduces game-like elements to concepts such as education and learning management systems, to make them more fun and rewarding. The goal of this thesis is to extend the educational border to an interesting online environment where students can learn, communicate, and examine their knowledge globally in different courses within our application platform in Facebook.