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

[Fred Stutzman]

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, Heidelberg, Chris wrote:

> Fred:
>
> 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.

Building on what Terrell has said - I'm not interested in asking/compelling 
my students to break the rules of any site.  I'm interested in courseware - 
not trying to make a political statement.

In my opinion, Facebook's groups are well-suited for reading discussions 
(and not a whole lot more).  Facebook allows private groups, allowing us to 
create a class-only board, one whose contents didn't creep into other 
spaces in Facebook.

What I was unable to get away from was the multiple-contexts of Facebook. 
The network, as opposed to affordances, creates a situation where students 
are forced to mingle the social and academic identities.  I wanted to get 
away from that - and Ning provides that space for now (but certainly not 
forever).

-Fred





>
> 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