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Abstract
Computer-mediated communication has become one of the many teaching strategies used to enhance students' cognitive and affective learning. What happens, however, when instructors use the Internet for personal purposes, such as staying in touch with friends and sharing gossip? This study investigated how college students perceive and communicatively manage their instructors' private information after viewing these profiles. An interpretive analysis of 21 interviews with college students confirmed previous research regarding student perceptions of instructors' self-disclosure, and students reported the information online impacted their communication with the instructor in various ways. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the Eastern Communication Association. We thank Dr. William Seiler and Dr. Blair Thompson for their thoughtful and helpful suggestions. We also thank all the interviewees for volunteering their time and sharing their experiences for this study.
Notes
This was done to prevent students from going online in search of their instructors' profiles to receive extra credit and to ensure participants had time to communicatively “do” anything with the information.
Most of the participants described viewing an instructor's Facebook® profile; this was purely a coincidence, as we opened the research call to all social networking sites.