M.B.A. students taking classes on Facebook

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Permalink Reply by Amy Broomfield on December 6, 2010 at 10:16pm

I think using Facebook for class is crazy idea. If you were an employeer looking to hire and your options were two people, one with a degree from a regular college and one with a degree from some college with Facebook classes, who would you pick? Facebook is a social networking site for a reason, I do not think we should "dumb down" college by allowing people to get degrees from the same place they post last nights drunken photos.

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Permalink Reply by Lauren on December 7, 2010 at 9:23pm

I could see students using Facebook as a part of the course, but I do not think that it should be their sole communication or way of learning. There are so many different types of technology available today that there is no harm in using a social networking site as a portion of your experience. Making polls for other peers to participate would be a great example to use this technology.

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Permalink Reply by Roberta on December 8, 2010 at 3:07am

I think what students are saying is they are social and want a medium that connects them together. They want the ability to learn from each other without having to be near each other all the time. While I don't think FB is the way to go there are other course management systems that would do the job. The only drawback is that once you finish the course you lose your work and your contacts. The best would be something like FB on a school level - combine the social aspects of FB and the content needed for class, this way the student can keep the contacts. We will be experimenting with schoology that combines FB type updates with course management. BTW this will be with an 8th grade class.

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Permalink Reply by Diana Hansen on December 20, 2010 at 10:36am

Thank you so much for your feedback, Amy, Lauren and Roberta.
Roberta – I completely agree with you. I think that students desire a means to keep in touch and collaborate with their classmates without always needing to be right next to them. I read this really interesting article from The Chronicle of Higher Education today that may be relevant to the schoology technology you will be testing in your class: http://bit.ly/heYq6n I would definitely say it’s worth a read-over considering you will be testing similar technology in an 8th grade class very soon. Please let me know if it was helpful to you.
Thank you again for your feedback.
- Diana

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Permalink Reply by Mr. B on December 20, 2010 at 11:26am

I think it is a tool, just like any other tool and it depends on how it is utilized. I just wrote an article about online discussions and their benefits in the classroom. It can be found HERE. The use of Facebook for less serious matters is no different than the use of books, magazines, multimedia, and writing in general for less serious purposes. Educators are facing a day of reckoning with this stuff. We can either be part of the conversation and show our students how to have academic networks (not just social networks) or we can sit on the sidelines. There is a real opportunity here for us to harness and leverage the power of networking to the advantage of learning, rather than see it as an enemy. Tricky business. But it is our business.

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Permalink Reply by Diana Hansen on December 23, 2010 at 10:38am

Thanks for your feedback, Mr. B. I agree with you as well – social networks are a tool that can be used to enhance a student’s educational experience.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on December 24, 2010 at 9:14am

Actually, it's a marketing gimmick for the British university....a way to get people interested in their program for the most part. Call it marketing, not really education. Read the whole article!

 

Other comments: Folks at Indiana University reported this fall that students do NOT have to have their professors communicating with them in Facebook. "It's for our social lives, and we don't want to mix a professor or someone from a class who isn't a friend in with people who are our friends," they say. IU has developed its own course delivery platform, OnCourse (like Angel or Blackboard) and have included social network features within the platform. They advise professors not to use Facebook for the course, because it doesn't have all the features they might want in the course. For the social aspects within the course, the OnCourse platform works well. The British university professor may just be lazy, or may be going for publicity. There are multiple better options for the class than using Facebook's structure for "conducting the class."

IU folks advise to think through any social network and be aware of US laws governing what can be posted about student grades etc. (serious laws for universities about what can and cannot be disclosed)

They didn't discourage social networks, but they had some great guidelines on when and what to consider and some key questions about privacy of student data.

 

The Chronicle article says: "...Facebook generally lacks the infrastructure to track student progress, manage data, and prevent cheating that is built into more traditional course-management systems. Programs like BlackBoard and Moodle “are designed to do that, where Facebook is not really designed to facilitate coursework,” said Steve Parscale.

Parscale, director of accreditation for the Kansas-based Accreditation Council for Business Schools & Programs, said sample classes offered through social-networking sites could provide great advertising opportunities for online colleges. “The younger generation is all on social media,” Mr. Parscale said. “If you can get them on Facebook to test-drive a class, then you can get them to actually enroll.”

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Anyone using Facebook or other social media with children younger than age 13 need to be sure to check the Terms of Service and ensure they have parental permission (by federal law).

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