[Air-L] Examples of Successful Uses of Facebook in the Classroom?

[Graham Meikle]

Hi all. In the past semester, on an undergrad digital media theory course, I ran a small FB assignment adapted from one shared by David Silver on his blog. It asked students to create an FB group about something that mattered to them and to develop an outreach strategy to reach potential members. The assessed component was a follow-up blog post where they reflected on the process, and on whether/how they'd maintain and develop the group after the course was over. It worked quite well: screenshots of some of their work are in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K95J7b621a8. I'm not sure either I or the students would have been so comfortable with actually assessing them on their FB activity itself, though - I suspect we might all have felt that bringing assessed coursework into that space would have been invasive. I also wouldn't run that particular assignment next year, as FB is downgrading the prominence of groups. Finally, I've also had an FB group for that class running for the past three years - no assessment, just a space where they can share any relevant links: it works well for that.

Cheers, graham

Dr Graham Meikle
----------------------
Senior Lecturer,
Department of Film, Media & Journalism,
University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland.

T: +44 (0) 1786 466222
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E: <graham.meikle at stir.ac.uk>
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On 12/08/2010 20:42, "Michelle Everson" <gaddy001 at umn.edu> wrote:

Hi Everyone,

For awhile now, I've been toying with trying to incorporate Facebook into my
courses as a way for students to talk about statistics they are seeing in
the news (I teach statistics courses).  My idea is to set up a group in
Facebook where students could go to post things they are finding in the
media related to statistics and to critique these items and comment on what
others have posted.  I would likely either set this up as an extra credit
assignment (and have other options for students who do not want to use
Facebook) or as a required assignment (again with another option for those
students who might not want to use Facebook).  I'm interested in trying
Facebook because (a) I know many of my students use it and I thought this
might engage them more, and (b) I like the layout of Facebook and the way
you can easily link to things and share videos.  I haven't found a blog
interface that I like as much as Facebook.

I do have some concerns, of course, related to privacy issues, and I would
not want students to feel that I am doing this because I want to pry into
their personal lives (my goal here is not to "friend" all my students but to
get them talking about statistics they see in everyday life and sharing
things with each other).  So, I'm wondering if anyone on this list has tried
to use Facebook and would be willing to share what was done and how it
worked, or give some tips on "best practices" for use of Facebook in an
educational context.

Thank you in advance for anything you might have to share!

Sincerely,

Michelle Everson

--
Michelle Everson, Ph.D.
Quantitative Methods in Education
Department of Educational Psychology
University of Minnesota
gaddy001 at umn.edu
612-624-0691
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~delma001/CATALST/
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