By Boton Li
Posted By Amir Sezavar Keshavarz
This is the evaluation of our questionnaire
1. I believe in making a lot of friends from my course when I start my first year of university.
It seems that most participants strongly agreed, however it was not an overwhelming majority as predicted, in fact five participants had a neutral response and even two people disagreed with the statement, perhaps the odd individual might prioritise studies ahead of socialising in their first year.
2. The university portal Sussed is not as effective as a great educational supplement to my university experience as it should be.
The results for this one were interesting, a big majority simply agreed with the statement but few strongly agreed. Discerning whether or not there is a big difference between strongly agreeing with this statement and just simply agreeing is not too important here, the fact that most people think Sussed is lacking as an education supplement is clear enough evidence people aren’t quite satisfied (although the fact that most simply went with ‘agree’ instead of ‘strongly agreed’ suggests they aren’t sure what they want, but Sussed isn’t certainly giving them all that they want). A small minority did disagree with the statement, but not outright.
3. The university portal Sussed is not offering sufficient social supplements to my university experience.
For this statement there was a very similar response to the last statement. Most people chose to simply ‘agree’ with the statement, people clearly don’t see Sussed bringing any social benefit to their university lives. We have again a few neutral responses but no disagreeing responses which makes the responses here easy to read.
4. Everything I want to know about my university and myself as a student I can easily find, at all times.
The responses for this statement were much interesting, as there were every kind of reaction from total disagreement to strong agreement. People who agreed with the statement in some form actually outnumber those who disagreed (8 to 7), and there were five people opting not to have any feeling whatsoever. While the issue that the statement brings up will probably vary from person to person, the fact that we have a lot of contradicting responses suggests that existing systems perhaps are doing a good job of providing information, but not every person can find what they want as easily for one reason or another. We should aim to make information that we want people to see, easy to find at all times.
5. I think having a Facebook account while at university is essential for providing me with social interactions with my university pals.
Results for this statement were not so surprising, most people chose to agree and in the current state of social networking dominance from Facebook, this one just goes to cement the held hypothesis that Facebook right now is the end-all place to be for online social interaction.
6. Facebook is helpful to my university experience in terms of making new friends from my halls of residence.
This statement was supposed to try and see if people made any sort of correlation between having Facebook and specifically making friends from their halls of residence, especially during their first year. The results seem to suggest that most people would agree with the statement, though three participants disagreed which suggests that perhaps Facebook is not quite perfectly adequate for something much more specific than Facebook was designed to cater for (where we step in of course.)
7. I like discussing lecture material and topics with fellow students on Facebook.
Another bag of mixed responses, most people agreed with this statement compared to those who didn’t (at 11 to 3); however the presence of two strong disagreeing participants has to be noted in particular. However the fact that the statement encompasses both desire to discuss on Facebook because they enjoy using Facebook for academic purposes and actually discussing on Facebook because the facilities to do so are good means we likely got people agreeing and disagreeing for different reasons – in other words, the statement doesn’t actually make it clear whether or not we are looking at technical capabilities or people’s preferences.
8. Facebook’s functionality for discussion caters well for course material and topic discussions.
More mixed responses here, we have 9 people agreeing in some form and 6 people disagreeing. This statement is essentially the follow-up to the previous statement, and by actually specifying that the key issue is functionality, we see an increase in people actually disagreeing with the statement – this coupled with how the last statement was received suggests that a good number of people don’t see Facebook as a suitable place for discussing academic matters, and in some cases, nor would they want to. Our social network can hopefully specifically combat this issue.
9. I feel that it’s easy to find, join and integrate fully into a university society using Facebook.
Mixed once again with 12 agreeing views to 4 disagreeing ones, however it is important once again to take not that just with people disagreeing, even if not the majority, shows that societies on Facebook perhaps could use some work. Reasons for disagreeing with this statement can vary from either lack of expertise in functionality (though this should be very rare), a lack of willingness to actually integrate into a society on Facebook, or just simply sometimes societies don’t make a Facebook page. We should make our system so that it is easier to make society pages, and there is more functionality for participation from members.
10. I first hear of university/course social events on Facebook.
For the first time we have more people disagreeing with those who agreed (11 to 8), the results can only suggest that some people for whatever reason don’t find university social events on Facebook first. The statement doesn’t make any suggestions as to why that could be, or if the university social events are known by as many students as they should be. This is something our system can address.
11. I feel I can make just as many friends from my course if I was living in private rented accommodation compared to living in halls of residence because of Facebook.
This statement is the second to draw more disagreeing viewpoints than agreeing, by a margin of 10 to 6. The fact nobody responded with ‘strongly agree’ seems to suggest that even those who agree might not fully be behind the statement. On the other hand the fact that so many people disagreed suggests that this is definitely an important factor our accommodation aspect of our system should address.
12. I believe that dissolving the barrier between the social and educational environment using a social network is a good idea.
Most people chose to agree with this statement, which is interesting, in fact only two participants disagreed with the statement which suggests that people are all for having less strict barriers between academia and social lives.
13. Facebook is much more suited for general socialising than for anything university related.
This statement is a follow up to the previews statement, and somewhat strangely and interestingly the results do not show the correlation that was expected, 12 people agreed with the statement and 5 disagreed when in the previous statement only two people disagreed. This suggests that perhaps people expect barriers between their academic and social lives to be removed, but the balance between the two is still not quite equal (with people seemingly in favour of their social life, perhaps a cultural reflection if anything).
14. I believe Facebook is not enough for me to manage my university social life calendar and my educational life calendar.
A fairly predictable and expected result, most people seemed to think that Facebook is certainly lacking in the calendar department, though perhaps the statement could have been more rephrased to pick up on any technical deficiencies Facebook might have with regards to this feature, though it is something our system is definitely looking at to have something over Facebook.
15. I like having a social identity and a separate university identity.
Another statement that is supporting statement 12, and again the results don’t quite follow the results for that statement. 11 people agreed with the statement (which falls under the same camp as the people who disagreed with 12) and only 5 disagreed (vice versa), which is rather surprising. People want barriers between their social and educational environment to be removed online, yet they also want separate identities as this statement would suggest. Perhaps more research is needed to explain these starkly contradicting results.
16. I believe the university could do more to integrate the new students socially within their courses, or even generally.
A lot of people agreed with this statement (12 to 1 disagreement) which more or less underscores the majority held view that a university can always do more for their students just starting out socially speaking, and here is the evidence for it.
17. I think that a new university exclusive and university related social network will be a great benefit both in social and educational aspects of my university experience.
This statement is just a sort of ‘testing the water’ measure for how our system may be received after it’s inception, and it seems like most participants (11) would be in favour a system such as ours, while 6 chose to not have any feeling whatsoever, and 3 choosing to disagree.
18. I consider it highly important to maintain my privacy in such a university wide social network.
The responses for this statement were pretty much as expected with 17 participants agreeing and nobody disagreeing, however it is interesting to note that a more people went with just ‘agree’ instead of ‘strongly agree’ – perhaps knowing that they want privacy but don’t know enough about the intricacies or the technical issues with it to have a clear and strong opinion perhaps?
19. I am willing to share my information with other students in a university social network.
This statement in some ways follows on from the previous statement, but shifts the focus slightly. 11 students agree that they would be willing to share their information with fellow students compared to the 3 that don’t. We can ascertain from the last two statements that people are willing to share information to other students but not have it out in the open, though it is worth noting that the phrasing of this statement makes no distinction over whether or not a user would have to know the student he or she is sharing information to in real life.
20. I think that university authorities should not control and supervise over such a social network.
The purpose of this statement is to see how people react when a subject of combining a university authority (or the university itself) gets involved with social networking specifically and follows in the vein of statements 12 13 and 15. Interestingly, while there were still a lot of people agreeing with the sentiment that they rather the authority figure (the university) not get involved in their social networking (11-4), it is interesting that when you compare this again to statements 2, 3 and 16 that people had the overall feeling the university should be doing more for their students, yet as soon as words like ‘control’ and ‘supervise’ are mentioned, people suddenly feel completely against that direction (though not entirely perhaps).