"Will you be my Facebook friend?

What are the boundary issues between faculty and student?"

"Will you be my Facebook friend?

What are the boundary issues between faculty and student?"

Introduction

Social networks are online forums which provide individuals opportunity to connect themselves with their peers and friends in order to share their experiences and lives with them while at the same time getting acquainted with new people. Social networks such as Facebook are used for the purpose of sharing information and daily life experiences which include personal information, pictures, thoughts and daily activities (Begovic, 2011). Thus, when student-teacher interaction occurs on these social networks it will provide access to students and teachers about each other's personal information and activities which may or may not be detrimental to the traditional student teacher relationship. Facebook is a forum where one can gain access to another individual complete life because of the information disclosure.

Discussion

Traditional student teacher relationship starts at the door of the classroom and ends when student leaves the class. The relationship consists of interactions between student and teacher is all about the subject which is being taught, background information of student and teacher as well as information regarding the future plans. With the activation of social networks information proliferation have been increasing due to which teachers and students have been able access the private information about their teachers which may be deemed inappropriate for the students because a teacher has his or her own personal life which may create a negative or positive impact on the perception of the students which they have been holding for their teacher. However, forums which are meant for the purpose of socialization can never become a place of interaction related to education and student development. There were several cases of misconduct and displaying inappropriate conduct have been highlighted which have led to investigation among the teachers for developing social relationships with their students. However, there are positive as well as negative aspects of such social relationships which have been discussed in the paper.

Benefits of Student-Teacher Social Relations

Self disclosure of sharing personal information leads to immediacy. Immediacy is a type of behavior which leads to psychological or physical relationship among the individual. This type of immediacy is detrimental to the student-teacher relationship and will tarnish the authority of the teacher on their students because there should a certain type of limitation when it comes to student teacher relationship (Frymier, 1993). However on the other side several researchers have argued that immediacy leads to closeness among student and teacher which increases the confidence and trust level of students they have in their teachers. Students are more confident in classes which lead to a greater level of interaction between student and teacher. Those students who were unable to ask questions are now comfortable in asking them because they questions may actually be important and thus increase the knowledge level of students (Frymier & Houser, 2000). Similarly, level of immediacy has also acted as motivation for students and taking the class ...