[Air-L] question about use of Facebook in classroom

Thu Aug 21 08:10:24 PDT 2008

Fred:

I will be using both Facebook and Ning for my class because of the open
and closed nature of Facebook and the closed nature of Ning. What is
ironic is that technically speaking Facebook is a very closed network
and Ning is more democratic and open. We tend to think of Facebook as
open because of the amount of eyeballs but it is highly restrictive when
you run afoul of their rules which when you ask them to explain you get
vague answers. I had a celebrated run in with them because they disabled
my account and after I wrote a post on site (and worked through back
channels with some of my friends who have become real colleagues and
friends) my site was re-activated with all of my friends. I like Ning
because you can determine what gets in and out and there is less
advertising. Ning is Facebook before it was opened up to everyone and
before Microsoft got involved. Ironically, Mark Andreeson, a web pioneer
and created of Netscape, is one of the founders of Ning and he is now a
special advisor on Facebook's board, so I am not sure whether moving
your class to Ning will change anything in this age of media
consolidation. I spoke to Rafat Ali, CEO of paidContent, about his
recent sale for $30 million online for an interview, and he admitted
that the money changes things. I think it is safe to say that Facebook
and Ning will end up as strategic partners or Ning will get bought
outright by Microsoft or Facebook. 
My big question is why don't you have students create pseudo accounts to
protect their identities. I use Facebook as a communications tool as
well as content distribution tool.

Chris 

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Fred Stutzman
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 9:54 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-L] question about use of Facebook in classroom

Hello,

I've also used Facebook in my class - we created a private group and
hosted our online reading discussions in the group.  I felt this turned
out well - participation was opt-in, no one was compelled - but I also
worried about the ethics of such an exercise, particularly the incursion
of "school" into a primarily social place.

The particular exercise you describe is slightly worrisome.
Particularly, asking/compelling students to change their profile.  Due
to the many, mixed contexts of Facebook, such change could have
significant implications for the subject or their friend group.  And
there's certainly a question of whether the students would be
comfortable with such self-experimentation to begin.

The data collection, on the other hand, sounds like an interesting
hands-on research opportunity.  Perhaps instead of asking the students
to change their own profiles, you might think about creating a few dummy
accounts of different age/gender for pooled use by the class?

For my class this semester, we're moving our discussions out of Facebook
and into Ning.  In the end, I decided that moving school into the social
space created some issues, and a site like Ning could deliver the
affordances without all of the contextual issues.  We'll see how that
works.

Best,
Fred

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008, Stephanie Tuszynski wrote:

> Hello all-
>
> I'm teaching an "intro to advertising" class this fall and I was 
> considering using Facebook in class to talk about targeted ads. A few 
> weeks ago I was reading a discussion about the rather unpleasant 
> weight loss ads that seem to pop up to anyone identifying as female on

> FB and I switched my profile to have an unspecified gender and made my

> age something like 99 years old to see what happened. What I want to 
> do is have the students make notes for a couple weeks on what ads they

> were getting on FB and then have them replicate the same thing - 
> change gender and age status and see what happens for the next couple 
> weeks, then we'll compare the data in class to talk about what kinds 
> of ads are targeted to who, etc.
>
> I am NOT requiring students to get a FB account for the class. Those 
> who don't have one would collect the information provided by those who

> do and do some analysis. Also this is not research, it's a course 
> exercise, so HSRB isn't a factor.
>
> But still, I wanted to run this concept by the people who deal with 
> these kinds of exercises and have spent more time thinking about the 
> ethics of this kind of thing than I or any of my colleagues. Does this

> sound acceptable, from an ethical standpoint?
>
>
>
> Dr. Stephanie Tuszynski
> Assistant Professor of Communication
> Bethany College
>
>
>
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-- 

Fred Stutzman
919-260-8508
ibiblio.org/fred
fred at metalab.unc.edu

Co-Founder and Developer, ClaimID.com
Ph.D. Student, Teaching and Research Fellow, SILS UNC-Chapel Hill
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