Facebooking It!

For a long time, I have been adamant that I would not use facebook for classroom instruction. While I do accept student friend requests and maintain a page for Xtreme Writing that students can like and follow on facebook, I have felt strongly that facebook's purpose is not formal instruction. I do post a lot on both my personal and Xtreme Writing page about teaching and writing, but I do not teach, at least not in any formal way, on facebook. Like my students, I use facebook for primarily personal reasons. I don't particularly like it when the few students who have friended me send me class-related messages or attempt to monopolize my free time by holding conferences about essays or homework via chat. Facebook is my space. (lol)

However, I have decided to bring facebook into my teaching at least for a trial run. Beginning next semester, I will set up either a group or a page for each of the courses I teach. Use of and interaction on this page will not be a required part of the class, but it will provide students an informal space to connect with their classmates in order to help each other with questions about assignments, post class notes, or chat with each other in a semi-private setting. I want to remain mostly out of the scene, but I have considered making myself available via the chat feature of group pages for virtual office hours.

My hope is to create a stronger sense of community and help my students see the limitless possibilities for using the technology most of them use everyday to enhance other areas of their lives. I also want them to see that we learn everywhere, not just in the classroom. I fully support my college's mission of lifelong learning. I practice it myself, and I hope to instill that philosophy in my students. But I don't want them taking classes forever--unless, like me, they need to avoid student loan payments. No, I want them to see that knowledge and creativity are everywhere if we are open to the possibilities all around us.

I'm not sure how many students will actually utilize the facebook page for the course. I hope that many of them do. I would think that since most of them are already on facebook, they would be more likely to use a class facebook group than the currently unused discussion forums I have set up on Blackboard for some of my classes. Blackboard isn't a place students go to hang out. Facebook is. I want my students to have a place where they can hang out together. Even if they don't use the page for helping each other with homework or working on group projects, I would consider my experiment a success if they just got together to share links, watch YouTube videos, and chat. The sense of community they might build would certainly have positive effects that would carry over into the classroom. They would be more likely to engage in discussion with each other, contradict each other's ideas, and work productively in small groups.

At this point, I'd rather set up groups than pages. The groups feature has a unique chat option where all online members of the group can chat privately with each other. The only problem is that it appears I can only add friends to a group page, and I don't want all of my students adding me as a friend in order to participate in this. They wouldn't like that either. I would also want to automatically add all my students to the group. Of course, they could remove themselves if they wanted to, but the initial add is the step most of them would likely be hesitant to take--some out of a lack of desire to participate, others out of laziness or apathy. But if they were already added to the group and started getting notifications of group activity, I think they would be much more likely to join in.

I will be researching my options over winter break, and hopefully I come up with some viable solutions. All I can do is try it and wait to see what happens. I must admit, though, I have high hopes and will disappointed if I don't get positive results.