A few posts ago, I made a list of assumptions for Red Rover.
We are now trying to cross-compare those assumptions with published research.
One of our assumptions is that a well-designed and embedded Facebook orientation will feel safe to a new student. It could feel safe for many reasons, our guesses would be: digital native (online is playground), lowered emotional intimacy, and Facebook’s “among friends” network architecture. This feeling of safety, we assume, will increase the likely hood that a student will make a connection through the orientation application and be drawn into offline relationships that they might not otherwise have.
In short, “in-person” meeting is scary for many students. This scariness reduces connections and involvement. If we can build a gently sloping exit ramp from the safety of Facebook to the college community, it should help ease students into involvement and increase participation.
Once connected and involved, they can develop more interpersonal confidence with face-to-face interactions.
Today I was rereading one of the papers I read a while ago and found this little gem:
Although more research is needed to understand the nature of this trend, we suspect that Facebook serves to lower the barriers to participation so that students who might otherwise shy away from initiating communication with or responding to others are encouraged to do so through Facebook’s affordances.
It’s from this paper:
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social capital and college students use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 1.
Which you can find at:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html
We’re excited to try and build data for that “more research” that is needed.
And maybe if our assumptions work in theory, they might just work in practice too.
