Fostering friendships amongst first-year university students: the use of online learning software

Research into student dropout rates has attempted to identify factors that influence a student’s chances of dropping out. One factor that has been identified is the development of supportive peer networks, groups of students who study together. When students develop these networks, they appear to help students become more integrated into campus life. It would seem that the development of friendship networks, based on socializing, could also be important, however, there has been little research in this area. This study looks at whether students who participated in online tutorial discussions, in addition to face-to-face tutorial meetings, made more friends through the class than students who did not participate in such discussions. Using a quasi-experimental research design, students in Introductory Sociology were divided into three groups, two with additional online tutorial activities, and a control group without. I found that students in both experimental groups were more likely to make friends through their tutorial (which, for the experimental groups included both faceto-face and online discussions) than control group students (who only had face-to-face discussions), who were more likely to make friends through the lecture. I also found that older students who were in the experimental groups reported making greater numbers of friends than those who were not.