Social networking sites (SNSs) as a platform to support teaching and learning in scondary schools

As the world is becoming increasingly borderless with the advent of technology, the academic spaces  are increasingly becoming less confined to the four walls of a classroom. Many higher educational  institutions abroad have started harnessing the connective power of SNSs to further engage with  students outside the classroom. In line with this current trend in education, ideally there should  be online platforms which support the teaching and learning of subjects in Malaysian secondary  schools. This research is a systematic study of design, development and evaluation processes to  establish an empirical basis for the creation of THE EXCHANGE, a prototype of a virtual platform  using a SNS, to support the teaching and learning of English in a secondary school. The development  of THE EXCHANGE is based on an ISD model, ADDIE. The research also aims to obtain the users'  evaluation on the prototype developed in terms of its usability. THE EXCHANGE is evaluated by 46  voluntary users, who are form four students of a secondary school, based on the adapted items of  Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use questionnaire. Findings in this study show that THE  EXCHANGE  has extended student-teacher and student-student interaction in English outside the  classroom. THE EXCHANGE also becomes an outlet for students' expressions. Majority of the students  who use THE EXCHANGE finds it easy to use and consider it useful to them. This research lends  itself to be one of the initial resources regarding the use of SNSs for educational purposes in  Malaysia and contributes to the improvement of existing practices for English language learning in secondary schools.