What students are saying on Facebook about their schools?

Social Networking has reached every corner of the mass population in recent years. Academic professionals have employed social networking sites (SNSs) to help them make their teaching more lively and multi-faceted. Results of using SNS in teaching have generally received positive outcomes. This paper examines the content of a forum-like discussion page on Facebook where students are free to write anything about their school. The page is setup by students from a particular school and participants are mostly the student population of that school. The page is an anonymous forum, thus, the content is not restricted to praise only. The theme of the forum is anything related to the school. By looking at what students are saying on the forum, it gives an idea of the kind of discussions or conversations that students usually engage themselves in. These are online “traces” that reveal attitude, social relationship and affiliation. The results of this paper show that student discussions are mainly involved in categories such as school policy, student conduct, reflection on teachers, reminiscence, and encouragement.