Face the Social Media: Facebook is a useful tool in the classroom

Facebook (www.facebook.com)

If you have a pulse, you've probably heard of Facebook. As Emily and I walk around the technology-rich environment of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity (our place of employment), we often find students working on a class project in one monitor window with Facebook opened up on another window.

We also see students walking to their next class with their heads down, looking at their phones, checking status updates, and messaging their Facebook friends.

Facebook has their attention, and we need to use this in the classroom.

Now, I know what you may be thinking. "I'm spending my time trying to keep students off their Facebook accounts when I'm teaching, why would I use that website in my class?"

Here's why: Facebook works great in the classroom. In my experience, students are happy to see the instructor use this website as opposed to BlackBoard--where communication is more tedious.

One reason instructors don't like the idea of using Facebook is that they don't want to "Friend" their students. That's a concern I have as well, but when I teach a class the first thing I do is set up a Facebook group and ask the students to join.

Facebook groups allow people who are not "Friends" to share a virtual space in which they can communicate, share links, videos, and pictures, and actually message each other when questions arise. As the administrator of the group, I can limit the group to members of the class and can restrict posts to only be viewable to the members of the group. In other words, groups allow some level of privacy.

If a student doesn't have a Facebook account, it's easy to create one. And if privacy is an issue, it's easy to create a fun account. For example, I created one for Bebe Giraffe--the Noel Studio mascot.

Here's how it works. I'll post a link on BlackBoard or our class Blog to the Facebook group I created. I usually title the group "ekuclass" or something like that. During class, students will click on the link and then click on a button that submits a request to join the group. I'm notified when someone asks to join, and I can accept or reject the request.

Once everyone is in, we can use the group to post links to things like Prezi Meetings, post questions that we have about assignments, posts videos and pictures that complement what we learn in class, and post class projects for feedback.

As an instructor, I really enjoy seeing students provide peer review on assignments (in the form of "comments"), and I often use the "like" button as a way to generate quick feedback to figure out what student project was the class favorite. I also enjoy posting "polls" to see what the class thinks about a particular concept.

However, my favorite thing about Facebook is that more often than not, when I see that a question has been posted, another student--or several--have already posted answers before I can.

Now that's a dynamic environment.