ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to introduce the opinions regarding how and how often the social networks are used by the teachers and instructors, what their significance is in terms of student, teacher and education process, what kind of negative features they may have considering personal and educational aspects and what kind of improvements will be experienced considering the future of social networks. The study group of the research consists of 13 participants including four instructors and nine teachers who enrolled in the Computational Sciences post graduate program of Trakya University in the spring term of 2014-2015 Academic Year. The research data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and content analysis techniques were utilized to analyze the data. As a result of the findings gathered, it has been stated that social networks are quite beneficial considering education, students can share information, homework and lecture notes, and they can have a contact with their instructors easily. When we consider the teachers, they can access various visual materials with ease to use in their classes, communicate with their colleagues easily, and follow the homework and projects of the students via social networks. Additionally, social networks can be used more efficiently in education process by adding more applications with the development of technology and also besides all these positive aspects, it is emphasized that security vulnerabilities to be experienced on the social networks and the problems arising in unconsciously use of social networks will cause various problems in terms of both teachers and students.