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

[Ted Coopman]

All,

We just switched from Blackboard to D2L - both suck in unique ways and are
(IMO) highly ideological in how they think you should teach and time
consuming to work with. Of course, my institution's lack of meaningful tech
support and banker's hours are also issues. I just can't rely on it being up
and functional 24/7.

I have head good things about Moodle, but I can't understand why education
LMS is so crappy in that 1997 Microsoft kind of way. U of Washington has its
own system that was pretty user friendly which is only great of you work
there.

As a rule, I use LMS for grades, quizzes, discussion boards (for all online
classes), and to post copyrighted materials. I use a combination of pbworks
(edu version is ad free and my University did pop for the enhanced version)
and Google Groups for the list function (sign-up is on the pbworks page).
These are reasonable innocuous, easy to use, and dependable.

FB is a good platform for students to use is they choose for research
projects or to study as media topic, but I find their privacy policies
problematic enough that I would not force students to use it.

-TED

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Graham Meikle <graham.meikle at stir.ac.uk>wrote:

> 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 runn
>  ing 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
> F: +44 (0) 1786 466855
> E: <graham.meikle at stir.ac.uk>
> W: <http://www.fmj.stir.ac.uk/staff/graham-meikle/graham-meikle.php>
>
> 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/<http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Edelma001/CATALST/>
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-- 
Ted M. Coopman Ph.D.
Lecturer
Department of Communication Studies
Department of Television, Radio, Film, & Theatre
San Jose State University