Redes sociales en universidades del país.
Análisis descriptivo y planteamiento de una posible solución para mejorar el impacto en la actividad académica
Social
networks in universities of the country:
Descriptive analysis and
approach to a possible solution to improve the impact
on academic activity
Esteban Gordon-Salcedo
Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador
edgordon@uce.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9930-8213
Frans Noguera-Vásconez
Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador
dnoguera@uce.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8308-4814
Mario Morales-Morales
Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador
mmoralesm@uce.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7493-8072
Santiago Morales-Cardoso
Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador
smorales@uce.edu.ec
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3833-9654,
(Received
on: July 11, 2019; Accepted on: August 8,2019; Final version received on:
September 5, 2019)
Suggested citation: Gordón-Salcedo, E., Noguera-Vasconez, F., Morales-Morales, M., and Morales-Cardoso, S.
(2019). Social networks in universities
of the country: Descriptive analysis and approach to a possible
solution to improve the impact
on academic activity. Revista
Cátedra, 2(3), 16-39.
17
Resumen
El uso actual que
dan los estudiantes universitarios a las redes sociales, y la postura de los
centros educativos al momento de incorporar estos medios a sus planes
académicos, es el objetivo y
fundamento que justifica este trabajo para que se analice el uso de la data que proviene de publicaciones extraídas
de FanPages de tres universidades de Quito, además
de los comentarios y reacciones de los usuarios a dichas publicaciones. La comparación entre el uso para lo académico
y para el ocio es el principal eje que se examinó, mostrando sus resultados a
través de gráficos y estadísticas. En base en este análisis se plantea un
posible recurso basado en la tecnología de los chatbots para generar un mayor compromiso y fidelidad por parte de los
universitarios hacia su centro de educación.
De la investigación
realizada se pudo comprobar que los estudiantes buscan en las redes sociales generar
experiencias y sentimientos, por lo cual interactúan más con las páginas de ocio que con las académicas. Ahí
encuentran una cantidad de palabras y publicaciones que les permite
identificarse y convertirse en un seguidor fiel, que tiene como característica
principal, el compartir, comentar y reaccionar con la mayoría de los posteos.
Palabras clave
Academia, canales conversacionales, compromiso, ocio,
redes sociales.
Abstract
This manuscript aimed to examine the use made by university
students to social networks and the position held by educational
centers when incorporating such means to
their academic plan, being the latter the objective of this study in order to analyze the data based on publications taken
from FanPages of three universities in Quito,
in addition to comments and reactions by users of such releases. Comparison between the use for academic purposes and for leisure is the main parameters considered, and results were shown trough graphics and statistics. Based on such analysis, a possible resource was proposed,
based on chatbots technology in order to generate
more commitment and loyalty
by university students to educational
establishment.
It was found that students use social networks to generate
experiences and feelings, for which an
interaction is generated mostly with leisure websites
in comparison to academic ones, where a great amount
of words and publications
are found, allowing to identify themselves and become a follower, whose main characteristics is share,
comment and react with most of
the postings.
Keywords
Social networks, engagement, academy, leisure, conversational channels.
1.
Introduction
In this research other
types of qualitative and quantitative data
will be considered, thus forcing a different type of analysis for
the collection of unexplored information.
New technologies that have emerged for the analysis of unstructured information will be used in order to measure behavior
and impact on students and to propose a possible solution that promotes
academic knowledge using the network
Facebook. This will be a huge advantage on the part
of schools to impact positively
on the students
and make the most of the functions of booming
social media by college students.
18
Taking as a premise the current state of
knowledge, the hypothesis that the engagement (commitment) in the Academic FanPages by the university
students of Quito does not exceed
the third of the engagement
generated by pages dedicated to leisure and entertainment.
The objective is to
study the behaviors and expectations of the use of social networks by students
from three known universities in Quito. The data will
be collected from the FanPages of the universities selected and their peers dedicated to leisure; this
data will allow to observe the use that the authorities
and students give to this network.
The comparison between academic and leisure use will be the main axis in this work, which will be presented in statistical results, and solutions that provide to
university educational entities. The limitations that the work
will have are that the data extracted
for further analysis will be only from the
social network Facebook. The data to
be examined will be from the last
three months.
This study is descriptive. Its objective is the
identification of causes
and evaluation of their effects so that it will
allow to analyze the variables posed, control and measure any change in an
efficient and orderly way. This study
summarizes the most important elements and considerations that were developed
in the thesis work of (Gordon-Salcedo and
Noguera- Vásconez, 2018).
This document is structured as follows; the introduction contains the theoretical
basis; the methodology
describes each step taken
in the research; the discussion of the results
presents an analysis of the
measurements found in the field and in the consultation; the conclusions summarize the findings
as well as possible future lines of
research.
1.1
Theoretical
framework
1.1.1
General Concepts
·
Digital social networks
Among some authors, a digital social network
is defined as a web
environment, whose objective
is to make
it easier for people to
establish relationships with each other,
create communications, organize communities, and form sites with
different content,
with the main objective of sharing information from anywhere in the world, and anyone being a potential information creator (Bustos, Flores,
and Flores, 2016). Young people
have great knowledge in social networks and
a willingness to use them for teaching
purposes, in this way, they
interact and have fun with them,
they generate an academic value consolidating forms of cooperative study (Espuny
et al., 2011). The study carried out
by (Gómez et al., 2012) points
out the main
reasons for the use of social networks, and these are: general
environment (friends, family)
75%, entertainment 61.8% and educative 24.7%.
·
Influence of social networks
in the academic field
Despite the great potential shown by digital social networks, these can become a major threat if they are not given due
use, as they can become a distraction for students and youth in general, in
whom the average use for entertainment is 7 hours, reaching in many cases up to 14 hours (Bustos et al., 2016). Huang's analysis (2018) supports these arguments in which the correlation between the use of digital social
media and student academic
performance was calculated,
and a very small negative correlation was found. All
these factors are necessarily detracted during the study
time for students, directly affecting academic performance; for these reasons, many universities have been reluctant
to use social media in educational
settings, claiming that they encourage
leisure and that publications lack a good scientific basis (Rodríguez and Patricia, 2012).
However, social networks have great
19
potential to improve cognitive and educational activities, using proper supervision
by teachers (Bustos et al.,
2016).
·
Analysis of social networks
Social networks offer the ability to
find patterns and properties in user interactions to be studied in order to understand the
relationship and behavior between the actors involved by applying some techniques use of networks and graphical theories (Dakiche et al., 2018). One technique for
these studies is to identify
how communities, or clusters are established, i.e., a high density of interactions between individuals in the same group and a low density of interactions between individuals from different groups (Leskovec et al., 2008). Another technique is content
analysis, the characteristic that consists on giving
information about unstructured data and the fluidity in the semantic text of
publications (Antolín-Prieto, 2012), helping to establish
predominant characteristics
of messages to frame publications
on different topics (Onieva, 2017).
·
Engagement.
The term engagement has evolved over the time, being a measure of the subsidy that exists between customers and the company (Erat, Desouza, Schäfer-Jugel and Kurzawa, 2006). While there is a wide variety of conceptualizations of this measure, many researchers agree that engagement is a state of mind, which leads a subject to focus on
a brand or service and engage in frequent and ongoing interactions with the focus object, which go beyond making a purchase or transaction (Thakur,
2018). Its measurement
is obtained by observing the
degree of participation that users have towards
the brand or service, whether consuming it, sharing it,
publishing it, etc (Wagner and Majchrzak, 2007).
This engagement is based on
a collage of experiences,
which are the beliefs a subject has on how he/she
can adapt a website with his/her
life (Calder et al., 2009). The high
level of satisfaction generated by these experiences
leads to the loyalty of the
person, observed in the reacquisition, in the form of support or in the form of word of mouth propaganda (Anaza and Zhao, 2013). Another factor associated with customer engagement is trust in the company (Kim et al., 2009), which
leads to user involvement not only to make
an immediate acquisition, but to be in touch with the brand.
According to (Achen, 2016) creating the engagement is important for
obtaining information about the exchange
of products and services of a particular company.
·
FanPages
These are pages that allow users
to interact and affiliate with a brand, just as they interact with
other private user profiles (Perez et al., 2018). Thus, people have a channel
to follow their favorite brands, with the
option to share and recommend their interests to their
friends, because when a customer likes one of
these pages, he/she already becomes
a fan of it, and this information becomes visible in the user's profile. FanPages have an appearance of
individual user pages, but have the
unique advantage of sending messages
quickly to a large number of
followers, reason for which many
companies use them as a business communication tool for constituting continuous dialogues with
the customers (Kudeshia et al., 2016), which are being widely accepted, achieving a significant increase in sales for organizations (Pöyry et al., 2013).
20
1.2 Social networks and their apps
·
Education
The new global trend for education
is MOOC (Massive Open
Online Courses), based on collaborative interactions between all users while
developing digital skills, with free access to all information
and resources needed, without requiring classroom attendance, with the advantage
that students will advance at their own pace and at the most appropriate
times for each. Economically, these courses reduce teaching expenses by combining tutoring services with free online learning
and social media. All this makes this
new form of education very attractive to students
all over the world. MOOC providers are: Coursera, edX, Udacity, FUN, Iversity, FutureLearn, Rwaq, Edraak, among others
(Brahimi and Sarirete, 2015).
·
Marketing
Nowadays social networks
have also positioned as ideal environments to publicize a brand, a service or a product by
using the various features they offer, such
as: the ability to upload information,
the ability to share and publish written content or multimedia
files, the ease they provide to
create networks of people around
the world, the customization of commercial pages
to create a representation of their own identity
(Gonzales and Hancock, 2010), and the ability to track
user reactions with a product, thereby increasing the ability a business has to make decisions based on the results
obtained (Herrera-Torres et al., 2017).
·
Artificial intelligence on
the social media
One of the most important
aspects in social networks is the establishment of conversational channels, interactions that are not only
one-way but two-way, developing in the user a positive feeling towards service, brand or page (Onieva, 2017).
To create these communication channels, new technologies can be used, such as virtual conversation agents based on artificial intelligence,
which allow to create university
environments conducive to communication between teachers, students and staff. Even today, the full potential of this
technology is not exploited, but some success
stories have already been carried
out, such as the AgentSocialMetric tool, which helps the teacher to be aware of the current state of the classroom (Kuz et al., 2015).
For the development of this tool they
used a smart chatbot or chatbot
software agent. A chatbot is a software that uses natural
language to interact with users, thus simulating a human behavior based on models and patterns of dialogue of people to act as mediators in the distribution of cognitive tasks between machines and people. There have
been several terms to refer
to these programs, such as: virtual agent, chatterbot, dialogue
system, among others. Today a wide range of chabots have been developed for many
services and their use continues to increase
(Ciechanowski et al., 2018).
The conversational interface
software agent used in this tool was one named Albert, who acts as a mediator in the relationship between the teacher
and the students. Thus, the AgentsocialMetric
tool manages to distinguish the questions of
users and then elaborates the appropriate response, creating lines of collaboration
and an excellent
environment for the development of pedagogical works. An important feature
of this tool
is the possibility
that the teacher can talk to Albert to extract
information about the social climate of the classroom,
thus finding profiles of students such as: the annoying, the leaders, the friends, among others. In this way, a comfortable environment for
learning is developed. For future studies, it is intended to expand the
methods of communication with the conversational agent, with channels
suitable for people with visual disabilities, implementing audio functions to the
chatbot (Kuz et al., 2015).
21
1.3
Case studies
Currently several analyses of the use of social networks in different fields have been carried out, such as: sport, academia, commerce etc. Below are some of these
cases that set several examples for later studies.
1.3.1
Digital engagement and social identity of sport fans
The case of Premier League Teams on Facebook (Herrera et al., 2018). The objective
of the study was to analyze the level of fanaticism by fans to the main Fanpages of Premier
League teams, through
the correlation between interactions and the page posts. The user interactions that were taken into
account were: like, comment and share.
These three types of reactions, according
to the study,
indicate a different degree of commitment,
for example, when responding to a post with a Like.
1.3.2
Use of social networks by Andalusian Public
Universities. Content analysis
of the official
Twitter account (Onieva, 2017)
This study analyzed how Andalusian universities used social media
to reach the public. Two types of
audiences were established: internal (teachers, students, administrative and service) and an external audience
(other companies, alumni, students seeking to enter
the university and the public in general). To reduce the field
of study, only Twitter official accounts of the universities were analyzed in the months of February 2014, 2015 and 2016. Similar to
the study conducted on football
teams, this study identified in each Twitter message the interactions by users, which
would be the actions of: like,
indicating a basic interest in the message, or retweeting,
indicating the desire to make
the message known to others.
Content analysis was an
important aspect to establish the
characteristics of messages that predominate
in social networks by
universities in the Andalusian region. It was observed
that the most common topics
were related with courses, conference
information, conferences and open houses, and the topics less covered were about employment, student information, social and voluntary works, thus, confirming the communicative problem mentioned by (Paniagua et al.,
2012) that universities have adopted Internet and social networks as means of information and have not emphasized
communication with their students, professors and administrative
staff. This study also advises that
universities should consider the idiosyncrasies
of each social network to establish
their own themes, in order to better capture the attention and commitment of internal
clients and post user- friendly content from each network and not send messages
just by filling
up with posts, which could even be detrimental
to the page as mentioned by (Onieva, 2014).
1.3.3
Impact of social networks on the academic
performance of students of Universidad de la Guajira (Colombia) (Martelo et al., 2017)
This study aims to find the influence of digital social
media on the academic performance of university
students. The methodology used is non-experimental, descriptive and transversal, conducted
in a sample of 368 students from the
first semester of Universidad de la Guajira in Colombia, in 2016. The analysis was based
on a hypothesis test as far as sample
ratios, comparing and obtaining
variation in grades between
two time periods; one by making
use of social media, and the
other without making use of these
websites. As results it is noted that there is a great negative influence of social
networks on the academic performance of students, results that corroborate the studies of
(Junco, 2012). It could also be seen that
the most commonly used social network is Facebook, followed by Twitter,
Instagram and YouTube.
22
2.
Methodology
This research is applied-type with a simple descriptive design and retrospective longitudinal cut; therefore, the design to be used
relates time, action and audience,
dimensions that help to conceptualize
the process of study-impact research (Willet, 1974). By observing and measuring the incidence
of the use and management of the
FanPages of the universities to be studied, as well as the pages
dedicated to leisure called MEMES, corresponding to each university center. The steps to follow
are:
·
Sample selection and characteristics
Determine the ideal sample of publications to be examined, which allow to
find trends, behaviors, characteristics and interactions made by students from
the three most important universities in the country.
·
Definition and characteristics of
the variables
Based on the current state
of knowledge and the hypothesis stated, determine the variables
and interactions necessary for the descriptive
analysis of this research.
·
Choice and use of the support tool
Compare social
media analysis and Benchmarking tools
that facilitate data extraction and analysis.
·
Analysis and recognition of
data patterns.
At this stage of
research, the statistical variables of FanPages should be compared through filters, charts,
tables, to determine
common traits that college students seek to interact
and become Fans.
·
Possible solution for a better impact in the academic area
Once determined the traits and behaviors that allow to
make greater interaction between students and FanPages, a prototype software is developed to improve
and position the educational
pages.
3.
Calculations and results
3.1 Sample selection
The study group corresponded to
the students belonging the three universities - public and private- with great
significance in Quito: Universidad Central del
Ecuador for being the university with the most
history in Ecuador, Escuela Politécnica Nacional by being a benchmark
of high academic
level in the country, and
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador for having the 71st place in the ranking of Latin American universities in QS
Latin 3American University
Ranking 2018. The total average of conglomerate people who would
interact with all FanPages is about eighty thousand users between men and women, as seen in Table 1.
23
|
Gender
|
|
Name
|
Students
|
F
|
M
|
|
Universidad Central del Ecuador
|
65.259
|
38.133
|
27.126
|
|
Escuela Politécnica Nacional del Ecuador
|
9.114
|
2.734
|
6.380
|
|
Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Ecuador
|
14.445
|
8.667
|
5.778
|
Table
1. Comparative table of universities and the number of students
The use percentage of these
universities were taken into account
for the selection
of the social network to be studied,
as seen in Figure 1. The network
used for the research is
the social network
Facebook, by being in a very high range
of acceptance among university students and because of the advantages it presents when extracting and classifying the data.
Figure
1. Use percentage of social media by university students (BrahimiySarirete,
2015).
3.2 Definition and characteristics of the variables
For the research,
variables have been established to corroborate the statistics of the
hypothesis, and were stated based on
the case studies presented in the methodology, with guidance on the
behaviors and trend of young university
students when interacting on social networks (Facebook), grouping them into 3, presented
as follows:
·
Independent variables
Those variables that allow to establish a direct relationship between the publication and
the opinion of the students
have been established in this group.
·
Digital interactions
These are the actions that can be performed on a post, comment, link, or video on Facebook, where the number determines how strong their
engagement with the community has been, determining whether it was
successful, or simply went unnoticed
in the. Interactions have been classified
hierarchically, as shown in
24
Figure 2, the most desirable
being the option to share, followed by comments
and reactions.
·
Dependent variables
Here the two main
axes of research
have been determined, being the union the
universe of study to determine the behavior and use of young university
students on Facebook, each being dependent
on the interactions
that are subjected posts made by their
administrators. The groups
are:
o
Academic
This includes
the official FanPages of each
of the universities
to analyze, where their objective
is to inform
and rescue remarkable news from their
institutions, wanting to improve their
image in the social sphere.
o
Leisure
Emphasized in FanPages that perform
a social critique through memes and generally humorous content, where their goal
is to criticize
the characteristics that define the other universities, such as the problems
they have, being very volatile
in time.
Figure
2. Relevance of interactions
·
Intervening variables
All variables that
can interfere with the results have
been defined, starting with the
element that characterizes young university students, being a susceptible variable in time, called
Emotion. The emotional, as an element that
is emphasized in young university students, makes them feel identified
with the options of digital interaction; therefore, there is space for fans or followers. The fans of those who tap Like to everything
that a brand publishes, almost without further knowledge of the
content of what has been published, because once it has won its emotions, digital interaction prevails impulsive; while followers keep watching each post waiting to be important
to them, now, probably being
a follower is probably the previous
step to becoming a fan.
A university student's age range varies
from 18 to 35 years old and have been classified into three subcategories
that are:
o
Initial period
Those who take a propedeutic level, where the goal is to have a better image and adaptability with the group,
letting themselves be greatly influenced bythe trends and opinions of the whole.
o
Medium period25
Those students who are in the middle levels,
having a better-formed criterion of everything
that has been presented in their university career,defending
and supporting their academy in each of the posts.
o
Advanced period
Those students about to graduate with
trained characteristics, where their focus
no longer depends on general opinions, where their intention
is to learn
in order to build their professional
and educational career.
3.3
Election
and use of the support tool
Choosing an optimal tool for the study to be carried out is essential, since the data obtained from it
will be the basis of all the
analysis. Several tools were compared
to choose the most suitable
for the study
to be performed and it was determined
to make use of the Business Intelligence (BI) tool for Social Scan of the company Golden Communications.
It has been selected for the ease
it offers when recognizing and analyzing the social media metrics present on the Facebook pages of a company
and its competition. The information can be presented in an intuitive and dynamic interface, since this tool automatically
converts the data that has been extracted
to statistical graphs for its
best understanding. In addition, it has the functions of
timelines, and drill-down and roll-up data
filtration that provide a great help for information management, thus increasing the understanding of the results.
Social Scan allows to recognize and analyze the polarity
in user comments and perform a content analysis on all posts that
are required of a FanPage, which will be very
positive when analyzing the behaviors of
users and universities on the social network.
The tool also provides great skill for real-time data extraction at high speed, saving time in data detection, extraction and visualization. And unlike other tools, it
has local support in
Ecuador.
3.4
Analysis
and recognition of patterns in the data
With the definition of all the
variables and with the help of the
chosen tool, it has been determined
to build a custom board, focused
on each of
the topics to be analyzed, emphasizing and determining what are the opinions,
interactions and reactions that motivate people
to have a better engagement of the main
axes that are Leisure and Academic.
·
General Positioning
Due to the study of
the aforementioned sample, the location
of the FanPages
to be studied has been embodied, observing in Figure 3 which of them generates
more interaction in the
social field.
In the rating quadrant, it has been observed
that the FanPageMemes UCE Quito has the largest number, approaching 60,000 of reactions, also exceeding 2,000 comments, compared to Memes PUCE and Poli
Memes being in the first hierarchies of positioning, being relegated to the other
official FanPages, with the observation
that PUCE_Ecuador is approaching the OCIO group.
26
Figure
3. Positioning FanPages reactions vs comments
Based on this data a table was created showing
the positions of FanPages by interactions
with students establishing positions as shown
in Table 2.
|
FanPage
|
N° of followers
|
N°
of post
|
N°
of shared
|
N° of comments
|
N° of reactions
|
N° of interactions
|
|
Memes
UCE
|
40.274
|
140
|
10.540
|
2.079
|
55.745
|
68.364
|
|
Memes
PUCE
|
14.427
|
140
|
28.368
|
1.613
|
35.355
|
65.336
|
|
Poli Memes
|
52.574
|
140
|
3.204
|
1.040
|
24.665
|
28.909
|
|
PUCE
Ec
|
81.495
|
140
|
1.531
|
626
|
9.411
|
11.568
|
|
EPN
|
41.593
|
140
|
938
|
276
|
4.093
|
5.307
|
|
UCE
|
100.31
|
140
|
697
|
184
|
3.039
|
3.920
|
Table
2. Fanpages positioning sorted by interactions
·
Daily average publications
In order to perform a more detailed analysis, it was necessary to create new metrics, among which is the
one that was called Daily
Average Publication defined as indicated in Equation 1.
Count(Feed_Id)
(Max(Date_Post) − Min(Date_Post))
Equation
1
Where it is clearly determined in Table 3 that the maximum
number of daily posts is made by the
FanPage Universidad Central
del Ecuador, with more than 15 posts,
and the one that publishes the least
is Memes_PUCE, with a daily average
of 0.12.
27
|
Name of the pages
|
Daily average posts
|
|
Memes
PUCE
|
0.12
|
|
Poli
Memes
|
5.19
|
|
Memes UCE Quito
|
0.34
|
|
Universidad Central Del Ecuador
|
15.56
|
|
Escuela Politécnica
Nacional
|
4.83
|
|
PUCE_Ecuador
|
1.05
|
Table
3. Daily posts by FanPage
Among the content published by the Official FanPages, they have a more
informative approach, being the most relevant publication among the three, the
video made by PUCE_Ecuador,
as seen in Figure 4. There is a lot of diversity of colors, motivating to leave
a mark with the text of: Celebrate
every achievement obtained, revel in the built and make
your mark with every step, that is to be of La
Cato.
Figure
4. Best didactic post on Facebook
It can be affirmed that
PUCE_Ecuador is the didactic FanPage closest to the pages dedicated
to leisure, where the texts
express more colloquial phrases with the
aim of allowing
students to connect with the
post.
3.5
Trend
in the time
·
Leisure in time
Thanks to the tool, it has been mentioned what are the trends and interactions over the time generated by each of its Post, observing in Figure 5 the individual behavior in which each has its own color.
28
Figure
5. Leisure in time (April-March)
Poli Memes is the FanPage that publishes the most in the
filtered days, generating an important
engagement in the students, but it
does not generate many shares, limiting itself to expanding and viralizing on the
Social Network.
·
Academic in the time
Although there
are more academic publications,
exceeding 7 daily publications on average, Figure 6 shows that its engagement rate is low,
reaching 12.6% and comparing engagement with respect to Leisure in most posts it exceeds 20%, having almost twice
as much interactions with their users.
This difference of almost 8 points
reflects the inaccuracy and little creativity of academic
pages when publishing their content, with certain exceptions
that have already been mentioned
above.
29
Figure
6. Academic in the time (April-March)
One of the visual forms provided by the tool
is to observe all FanPages in a conglomerate way, for this analysis they have been grouped according to the dependent variables: leisure and academic.
It was determined
that the day where more posts have been generated
by the Leisure
FanPages is Tuesday; one of
the reasons is the attenuation
of the start of the week and the low
pressure of the final tasks to complete the working days. It
is noted in Figure 7 that
the day with
more Academic content is Wednesday, when examining its publications,
it is evident
the importance of announcing the
events for future days over
the following weeks or months, the idea is to consider that since Wednesday is a day that divides the week, it can attract
more viewers.
30
Figure
7. Days with more academic posts
To achieve a certain number of interactions, it is necessary
to consider a strategy that includes
a specific type of publication, as well as a day of
the week that favors and increases engagement in followers or fans. The tool suggests that
publishing video-type
content on Fridays should be considered to ensure more shared numbers; however, after the ignorance of those
who manage these FanPages, it has been determined
that there is more publication incidence of photo-type
content on Wednesdays, weakening the number
of expected interactions.
·
Word detection
One of the key aspects
for engagement is the appropriate use of language and linguistics, which facilitates the specific use of words in favor of captivating followers and fans. The words that are usually used are those that are trending and that can preferably be used in code or symbols, those that have a sarcastic language, or the
fusion of a colloquial and indigenous language, as well as elegant words; the tool allows
to determine those words that have
been used the most and that
have generated the greatest number
of interactions.
Figure
8. Most used words of leisure
In the long list
that has been analyzed, in Figure 8 impact words are found in hierarchical order from the highest
to lowest, such as: memes, vos, combats, engineering, key, etc., all with the
same approach to grant confidence to their followers
or fans to feel identified, accepted to become
a member of a big digital community.
31
Figure
9. Most used academic words
On the other hand, in the pages
intended for academics in Figure 9, relevant words have been
found such as: information, study, students, enters, participates, knows, we invite, career, science, process, etc., where their interest
is clearly informative, leaving creativity aside, becoming texts full of common words.
It is worth
highlighting the work that PUCE_Ecuador
is doing by using more striking
and colloquial words and phrases, such as: La Puce, la Cato, sowing, footprint, life, feeling, unique, generating an emotion
in students, standing out
in front of the other Academic
FanPages, as it appeals to a much-needed sense of appropriation
and identity in the university life.
Figure
10. Leisure analysis
It should be noted that leisure generates more than 4000 comments, most of which are done
to defend and show the university where they belong,
and at the same time discredit and mock the other Universities,
as seen in Figure 10; there
is 22.4% of negative comments where there is
evidence of complaints and rude words. These kinds
of defensive and even affective behaviors mark a convenience agreement even between followers
and administrators
to gain the attention of more followers or fans, through positive and negative discussions in the networks.
32
Figure
11. Academic analysis
Educational FanPages generate
a small number of comments, and as shown in Figure 11 they are mostly neutral with 40% requesting more information in courses, trainings or events. The idea is to publicize the
academic offer of the universities,
and that a greater number of participants
can be consolidated in the different activities.
3.6
Proposed
solution for a better impact in the academic area
·
Sustenance for the proposal
From the analysis made to publications, it can be observed that university students tend to respond in a more positive way to comments
or phrases that are managed in a colloquial language with a common formal
language in University posts. Funny texts are widespread among university students, and it should be noted
that they can even contain very important
information in them.
Content analysis also determined
which keywords draw much more attention to young
people, and which ones are not found
in their lexicon. In addition, it was
possible to determine that the videos and images are the content that generated the most interactions
by the students.
From the current state of knowledge it can be mentioned that one of the very important aspects that generate positive feelings in users is the
possessing conversational channels with interactions
that are not only one-way but
two-way (Onieva, 2017).
Tools that chatterbots have used for the
educational environment have
generated very positive
responses, such as the AgentsocialMetric tool which manages to
distinguish users' questions and then elaborates the appropriate answer to the sentence,
creating lines of collaboration and an excellent environment for the development of pedagogical work.
·
Proposal
Based on the results obtained in the analysis and the theoretical framework found, a prototype virtual conversational agent based on
artificial intelligence was
raised. As a first step, it was necessary
to design a Facebook FanPage for the Central University of Ecuador, with the name virtual didactic ECU in which a chatbot developed with the online Chatfuel was deployed, providing
many facilities when creating chatbots, especially for Facebook
Messenger, because it has a block sequence for its construction, to which can be attached videos, images, audios,
sequences,
and even email
plugins.
The aspects that were
taken into account for the
development of the chatbot were to answer common
questions from college students and to provide information
about relevant events at the University.
33
This chatbot will allow to obtain
a two-way conversational channel, trained in understanding
and answering questions expressed in a colloquial language that young
people use and understand.
In addition, the most popular words used in the lexicon
of university students will be in the included in the questions and answers, to be able to interact with them in a friendlier and familiar way.
Another important aspect is that the chatbot handles
multimedia content (videos, audios and images) in its communication, thus generating more marked experiences and feelings in the users.
This software will serve as an impetus to develop in students a positive
feeling towards the page, thus creating a university environment conducive to communication among teachers, students and staff.
4.
Discussion
It is clear that FanPages generate great acceptance by users, and the
degree of engagement depends on several factors
that have been analyzed in this research, confirming the results of
studies prior to this work that
show a lack of skill on the
part of universities
to generate fidelity in students.
All these results have served as the basis for the
structure of a possible solution, in order to ensure
that knowledge is presented in a free, simple, pleasant and easy way for teachers
and students.
The FanPages of the three universities
analyzed have significant differences in the number of their followers, and in the same way they show that the level of interaction does not have a direct relationship with the number
of followers, noting that the
official FanPages of universities, despite having a significant number of followers, generate
very little interaction. Positioning in the last places in the interaction table compared to leisure
FanPages, which with few
followers generates a lot of interaction.
Research has proved that the number of daily posts is not a determining factor in obtaining
more interactions as discussed
in the theoretical framework on the
study of
universities, contradicting
a common and empirical knowledge that the more posts, there will be more interactions.
4.1 Topics of students
for students in the social media
It is clear that young people have a high knowledge and use of social
media, being currently a concern due to the great negative influence on the academic performance of
students, but there is
also a positive aspect in
favor which is that young people
have a great acceptance and willingness to use these social networks for an
academic purpose. In addition, it can be stated that the most
welcoming words are those with academic
definitions fused with a burlesque touch, always with
a focus on entertainment, the novel and colloquial. It is observed in the official FanPages of the three Universities their firm stance
of governing in a formal
state, where most of their posts are simple and mere informational ads that do not generate any
attractive user experience, so that they feel unidentified,
without the confidence and excitement to become a fan, while in the three
FanPages of
leisure, their criticisms of the academic, social and what is trending are done in a funny way, full of visual
content with the aim of entertaining,
leading the student to a state
of mind that allows him/her to feel identified, reflecting many of his/her prospects or
longings on the screen.
4.2 Social media in
education
Today, the world's leading universities have chosen to structure a collaborative platform in which there is
a global contribution by sharing knowledge among students and teachers, where courses are also taught, as in the Mooc's platforms. In the calculations and results, the
34
search engine words were course, homework, books, projects, etc, all of them related to the topic of
education, noting that the official
FanPages are reluctant
to use social networks for educational purposes, limiting themselves to informational
topics of little interest.
4.3 Response to publications
The comments on the
leisure pages are 4 times more
numerous than those made on
the official pages of the
universities. According to what is
researched and proposed in the methodology, it is believed
that this is because of
the emotion of feeling identified,
generating a mostly
positive polarity unlike the officials, in which a neutral position is reflected to their
publications by students.
4.4 Student behaviors on social media
Issues such as personal identity or the expression
of the self are put at stake
when the user defines himself/herself in being a fan or follower, because
the university students, in the construction of an image of acceptance, allow themselves to be attracted by their tastes
and affinities until
even elaborate a mask that allows them to
project themselves for fun rather
than academic matters; therefore, the official pages
of higher education institutions do not end up approaching
the recognition of this way
of digital interaction marked by the population of university students.
The behaviors will vary and will respond to their environments, contexts, ideologies, artistic attachments, but with a common aspect: the emotional. The uniqueness of the digital makes the user build
his/her identity
through a character that he/she can select, control with the mitigating of the idealization of himself/herself, since there is no such face to face encounter with the other; likewise,
it does not
respond necessarily at the simultaneous terms of the
temporality of the real or physical world;
therefore, these elements distance it from reality
to such an
extent that there is a risk
of creating a
virtual universe parallel to what would
be called real space.
5.
Conclusions
It could be observed that university students do not feel a real commitment to the official
Facebook pages of their universities, while the engagement generated by their peers dedicated
to leisure and entertainment is considerably higher.
It was
possible to determine that audiovisual content is a great element when
it comes to generating feelings and experiences, although not real in people's minds, thus, forging
a solid engagement with the pages
that use these resources.
Surprisingly, it was observed that the
number of followers and posts of a FanPage is not a determining factor when conceiving interactions by users.
Finally, it was found that universities have used social media as simple
means of publishing newsletters, something like a flyer board, thus
ceasing to harness the full potential offered by these channels
to capture the students' interest. Therefore, depending on the objective
being pursued, it can be thought of a hybrid model
that combines the two SQL and NoSQL technologies, where if greater
consistency is needed it can be stored in a relational way, while databases would be used for immediate
or recurrent queries.
6.
Recommendations and future lines
Universities are encouraged to use graphic and audio elements in advertisements presented in their FanPages in order to generate
more enjoyable and lasting experiences in students. There is a need
to analyze different social networks in future studies, such as Twitter,
35
YouTube, Instagram,
etc., in order to find greater features
in the users, depending on the characteristics of each network.
It is recommended
to create more channels of two-way
communication between universities and students, since it has been observed how they can enhance the relationships
between the two destinations.
36
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Authors
SANTIAGO LEONARDO MORALES CARDOSO. He has a PhD in informatics at Universidad
de Alicante, Spain. He obtained
his title in Engineering Informatics , he has a Master in Science Engineering and another in Informatic Management at Universidad Central de Ecuador.
He is a professor at the Faculty of
Engineering, Physics and Mathematics.
MARIO RAÚL MORALES-MORALES. He is a System Engineer
at Escuela Politénica Nacional, Ecuador. He has a
Master in Business at Universidad San Martín de Porres, Peru.
He has obtained certifications
in project management (PMI)
and data analysis. He has lots
of experience in project management in the Andean region.
He is a professor at the Faculty of
Engineering, Physics and Mathematics at Universidad Central del Ecuador. He is coursing a PhD in informatics at Universidad de Alicante.
ESTEBAN GORDÓN-SALCEDO. He is an informatic engineer at Universidad Central del Ecuador.
FRANZ NOGUERA-VÁSCONEZ. He is an informatic engineer at Universidad Central del Ecuador.
He is now a Project Manager in a prestigious Ecuadorian firm of data consulting.