The undeniable popularity of Facebook has prompted many college instructors to use the social networking tool as a course management system. An obvious advantage is that students already know how to use it—unlike Blackboard, for instance, which requires at least some rudimentary training. Also, Facebook is free. Professors are making assignments, posting videos, recording grades, and chatting in online discussions with students. In other words, performing most of the functions that course management software typically provides.
Recently, About 750 professors and administrators attended a conference on "Emerging Technologies for Online Learning," presented by the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group to support teaching with technology, and two other educational software and resource providers. A breakout session on Facebook reportedly drew an impressive crowd.
Many professors have expressed reluctance to use Facebook in their classes because of privacy concerns. The simple solution, according to one presenter at the conference, is to have two Facebook profiles, one for school and one for your private life.
Below is an excerpt from a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
A session on Facebook held Thursday morning attracted a standing-room-only crowd, with people packed into the room and huddled in the doorway. One benefit of the popular social network is that, unlike course-management systems such as Blackboard, students already know how to use it, said the presenter, Denise Knowles, a Web-application specialist at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, Calif. She encouraged professors to use Facebook to send out announcements for their courses and to design assignments where students post responses using the service.
But she also recommended that professors set up two Facebook accounts—one for communicating with students and another for personal connections. That way, professors can clearly keep their professional identities walled off from other important aspects of their lives. "We need our privacy," she said. "I don't want people seeing pictures of my children, and I don't want people seeing pictures of my life."
Not everyone is so cautious, however. Tanya M. Joosten, a lecturer in the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee's department of communication, gave out her Facebook address during her session. She said she uses privacy settings in the service to control what various "friends" can see, and she suggested that professors set up a separate page on Facebook for a course, which allows students to connect to the page without seeing the personal information of the professor or others who have "liked" the page. Then professors can post updates to the course Facebook page, which are automatically pushed to the pages of students who follow it.
"It's coming right down to them in a medium that they're already using anyway," she said. A survey she did of her own students showed that 83 percent approved of professors pushing class updates via Facebook. "I've never seen ratings so high in any emerging technology project I've done," she said.
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