The Attitudes of Computer Science Students and Instructors on Academic Social Network (ASN) Site: Case of University of Sulaimani

Nowadays, Internet, specifically Social Network Sites (SNS) have a great influence on the education system and academic life in universities. The main purpose of this study was to find out and discover instructors’ and students' attitudes towards the use of both SNS and Academic Social Network (ASN) site in their academic life in university of Sulaimani. In addition, UoS_ASN site was proposed and developed as an ASN site. The development of UoS_ASN site was formulated by the design-based research approach. Later, it was tested and used by students and instructors in the same university then students’ and instructors' attitudes and opinions were examined. The core purpose of UoS_ASN site was to assemble instructors and students online which it gave opportunity to them to communicate and collaborate with each other, disseminate tutorials, research and academic papers as well as help them to express their ideas and opinions. In this research, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were administered. The semi-structure interview was used to collect qualitative data with the instructors and questionnaire tools were used to collect quantitative data with the students. The participants in this research consisted of 105 students and 11 instructors. The result of the research demonstrated that instructors and students mostly have a positive attitude toward the use of SNSs and UoS_ASN. Keywords: Social Network Sites, Academic Social Network, ICT, E-learning