Fighting for Facebook access

Tuesday, 19 July 2011 00:24

Written by Danilo Araña Arao

As many state universities and colleges (SUCs) in the Philippines are protesting cuts in the budget for tertiary education, some students and faculty members of Ateneo de Davao University are denouncing the alleged ban in the use of social media like Facebook.

Some people may think that it’s an overreaction, considering that restricted Internet access only happens from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. As quoted by GMA 7, a school administrator said that “the sheer number of people who go on Facebook…heavily overburdens the university’s Internet service bandwidth, such that it negatively impacts on the university’s other online services.”

Explaining further the restrictions on Internet access in his school, the administrator adds: “We want our personnel to focus more not on social networking but on their necessary work, basically educational work. And second, disciplinary also (kasi) we want to avoid students to be having Facebook while in their classes.”

Saving precious Internet bandwidth is understandable as a school tries to make do with limited resources. At the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman where I work, for example, there was a time when access to social media like Friendster and YouTube was not allowed during office hours. The increase in the university’s service bandwidth eventually made it possible to allow social media access (although there are still restrictions at present with regard to using apps on Facebook, as well as engaging in bandwidth-hogging activities like downloading large files via torrent).

What proves to be debatable, however, is the perception that social networking is not part of the learning process. In the context of e-learning, the Internet is a vital tool for research and communication. While it is true that there are people who waste their time logging on to Facebook just to play games and chat with friends, I would like to think that the more responsible students, staff and faculty members make better use of social media in getting information related to their academic work.

At a time when the Internet makes it possible for researchers to conveniently retrieve information and communicate with colleagues regardless of physical location, school administrators should be more conscious of new media’s role in the academe and should not consequently get in the way of increasing productivity through responsible use of the Internet.

The same issue was raised when the administration of the University of Southern Mindanao (USM) in Kabacan, North Cotabato prohibited access to social networking sites after its president reportedly “caught some employees inside some of the offices at the university opening Facebook and other websites during office hours.”

Even if some of them were caught playing online games, many employees "complained that the ban was unfair since they spend most of their time on the Internet researching for their reports and class subjects. For them, the latest trend in learning and teaching is using Internet." A USM faculty member argues: “This is what we call, e-learning, meaning, using modern technology to advance learning and education."

Clearly, the solution to the problem of limited Internet bandwidth in schools is not much the outright banning of social networking sites (which are precious sources of information) but the imposition of an honor code among students, staff and faculty with regard to responsible use of the Internet.

If necessary, administrators could be educated on e-learning so that they could have a better appreciation of the role of social media in education and not look at the likes of Facebook as “unnecessary distractions” on campus.

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