Vs . moodle : what do students really think ?

In order to evaluate the educational benefits of Facebook, which plays an increasingly important role in students’ social life as well as their academic life, and to compare it with Moodle, we surveyed students on their attitudes toward Facebook and Moodle as productive online tools for teaching and learning. An analysis of the results was carried out using the SPSS software package. The results of our study provide insight on the question of whether using Facebook as an educational tool is more effective than using Moodle and how it affects their everyday learning activities. Introduction The emergence and growth of commercial social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, and MySpace has been extensive and widespread (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Given the rising popularity of both Moodle and Facebook, it seems logical to merge these two popular tools with the goal of improving online teaching and learning. Further, since students facilitate the sharing of information, personal and otherwise, the technologies used in social networking sites aid discussion and create intimacy among online students, as they have the ability to connect and build community in a socially and educationally constructed network. See Table 1 for a comparison of typical social networking sites and traditional course management systems