Social Network System In E-learning for University Students

Aim

The Aim of this project is to develop a Social Network System application in E-Learning for University students, which help students to contribute among themselves for their progress in the learning.

Deliverable

This project would carryout research on the following areas: 

• Project will deliver the Social Network Site for university students for e-learning, which help students to share their subject knowledge to help students who find difficult in their subject or module.
• In Social Network Site one can add friends from the registered university students who also had registration in Social Network Site.
• Registered users of Social Network Site can join in the existing communities or can form new community based on their desired subject or any topic related in which the students are interested.
• Students can share their knowledge on the module, subject, lectures, articles, proceedings, etc., which all help in the progress of the students.
• Students all should understand university plagiarism, which will not affect their study due to sharing of their knowledge with other students via Social Network Site.
• This project aim is to bring students to a platform for sharing their subject knowledge with each other for the purpose of the effective e-leaning.

Research question(s)

• How the Social Network System help in effective E-Learning among University Students?
• Role of the qualitative and quantitative method approach for building powerful Social Network System? 

Literature Review

Social network sites are meant to connect with their friends, beloved ones, etc. Social Network sites are mostly using by the teens to meet, share, and connect with each other. Social network system combining with the e-learning will bring the good result in the education system.

Razavi et al. (2006) states that social network software which allows effective connection of people to each other as well as resources and facilitates the creation of communities. Creating communities in the Social Network System also help in the education system. Razavi et al. (2006) states that knowledge management tool which encourage the connection of expertise, resource and people.

Students in the social network system in e-learning involves the sharing their knowledge accordance to module or subject related topic. Any students can post their subject related queries on social network system or in their individual community or to their friends who they have been added to each other in social network system. In the same way the students who can answer the query.

Privacy in the Social Network System is also important, which allow the individual data to be protected from seeing by the users who are not friend/colleague in the Social Network System with the user. The questions which arise in context to privacy are as follows:

• What Kind of information shared, and why? Razavi et al. (2006).
• Are current privacy management mechanisms sufficient, and (if not) what are the problems? Razavi et al. (2006).
• Are there ever been a change of preference regarding sharing a certain object, and what factors affect this decision? Razavi et al. (2006).

Above questions all depends on one individual who can only restrict that what to be shared and not to be shared in the community.

User can include the variety of information in the profile and are as follows:

• User Fundamental Information such as Name, Course, Semester, and Gender.
• User Contact Data such as Email ID, Home Address, and Phone Number.
• User Personal Data such as Hobbies, Music, Favourite Movies, Favourite Singer, Favourite Sports etc. 

• User Module and Assignment Details.
• User Pictures, Favourite Music, and Favourite Videos.
• User personal messages with their friends can be read by other friends who have been linked or not by permission from the user.
• Minifeed/Newsfeed which help user to know the activity of the friends as well as any one visiting his profile.
• Friend request sent by any individual other than known person then the recipient can go through requested profile and recipient can accept or decline if he/she feel that his profile is suit to his friend’s category or not. 

Profile can be viewed by the other users on the social network system depends on the profile setting such as: 

• Public Profiles: Profile, which can be viewed by all on the Social Network System.
• Private Profiles: Profile, which can not be viewed by all on the Social Network System except user added friends.
• Search Profile: User can restrict that his/her profile in Social Network System whether or whether not to be searchable. 

By using social network site, one can assign themselves to community/group of students according to their interest of subject/modules. If the students involves in presentation by communal activity then it is said to belonging to a community of engagement practice. In imagination students community, students must imagine with what communities that their work is related, which help in their subject related as well as their interest of subject. In alignment student’s community, students should recognize themselves with the community whose work is related to their subject of interest. 

Privacy is also one of the important aspect to consider in social network system, as many users post their personal information such as their martial status, favourite things such as color, food, dislikes, likes, etc., and as this is one of the SNS with e-learning based one will post their module details and their achievement as well as their thesis details, which will help other individual to get knowledge, if they have same module/subject in their course, which act as guidance. One should always post abstract/introduction/summary of their module/thesis, which helps other individual as guidance to their subject/module and their will be no scope for theft of data from other individual profile.  

Every individual should have option to each and every content in the profile to keep it as private or public, which makes them to save their individual profile securely.

According to Govani et al., (2007) (in Strater et al., 2008) additionally, there is little awareness of privacy policies and use of existing privacy mechanisms among active users.

Every individual should be made awareness among the privacy policies in the SNS, which help every individual to protect their individual private/personal data. Every individual should also notified in privacy policy that inappropriate images or data posted will be removed, if any one on the SNS is reported as abuse, which help in protecting other individual privacy in SNS.

By using SNS and applying E-Learning, which give a new concept that learning subject/wisdom from many individual who on the SNS and whose thinking or subject matches with other individual as learning seems to be incremental method in their individual as days passes in their academics.

According to Teo et al., (2006) e-learning can transmit knowledge fast and effectively, many people accept it as means of upgrading themselves and keeping up with the rapid changes that define the internet.

There are many Social Network Systems available, but all are for the purpose of having contacts with their pals, but Social Network System in E-Learning is effective tool, which can bring great change in the student life, which will give answer to his/her queries from the seniors of his course who are thought to best to guide juniors. 

Research Method 

In the all proceedings and articles used in this project proposal document have employed Qualitative and Quantitative method.

Quantitative methodology help in getting the interviews as well as answers of the questionnaires from the students about the Social Network System in E-Learning and Qualitative methodology help in getting the important information from the interviews taken from the students and information from the questionnaires.

Thus it will be beneficial, if I use the Qualitative and Quantitative methodology approach in my project.

Evaluation

Effective use of Social Networking System in e-learning is one of the most important features in the current learning system found in many universities, schools, college, etc.

By use of Social Networking System in E-Learning, there will be improvement seen in the student then the general pattern of learning. Social Networking System in E-Learning will make the students explore the material used by the different students among friends to have look and gain knowledge for their own assignments, thesis, etc.

Social Networking System in E-Learning should also be used in context to the subject and requirement. One can communities in the Social Network System according to their subject aspect, so that other students who are interested in that community can join and can share their knowledge, and if any students have any queries can post their queries in the community, so that any students have any suggestions or solutions for the posted queries can send reply to the students who need reply to their posted queries.

The content shared among students is also one of the important aspects in Social Networking System in E-Learning. Students can share their assignment topics, assignment details, thesis ideas, thesis topics, subject related ideas, and subject related topics.

Privacy is also one of the important features in the Social Networking System in E-Learning, which help in individual privacy at the top priority. One has to take permission from the students, from whom he/she wants to become friend. If the friend request is accepted by the recipient then only one can became friends in the Social Network E-Learning system.

This all features will be developed in a Web-Based Application with ASP.NET as front-end and MS-SQL as back-end, which can help in communicating and helping individual students with each other mutually during their course. 

Provisional schedule

The undertaken project will be completed in three months (12 weeks). The project is divided into individual tasks, which will be carried out in 12 weeks time and the project detailed approach is as follows:

Week Number	Detail of the Individual Task
1	Starting the Project Document. Project Requirement assembling.
2	Taking interviews from the students for Social Network System development. Taking the feedback from the Student Interviews.

3	Database creation. Social Network System Interface Development.
4	Checking the document and updating document. Writing Program for the Social Network System.
5	Testing so far developed system. Taking feedback from the students with the so far developed system.
6	Checking for any errors in the Social Network System. Updating the Social Network System Document.
7	Testing the so far developed System. Completing the final coding of the Social Network System.
8	Completing Complete Documentation of the Social Network System.
9	Testing the Social Network System. Reviewing the Developed Social Network System.
10	Checking the documentation. Preparing final report.
11	Preparing Final Presentation Slides. Preparing Final Presentation Report.
12	Final Presentation. Viva

 Hardware/software needed

Hardware Requirement

• Pentium IV Processor.
• 2 GB RAM.
• 160 Hard Drive.

Software Requirement

• Front End        ASP.Net.
• Back End        MS SQL.