Social Media & Education: Using Facebook for Teaching

Social Media is definitely a huge field with numerous possibilities to interact or getting started. However facebook somehow simply is the one network which is widely known as ‘the social network’ or even ‘the internet’. So it seemed quite reasonable for me to start my series ‘Using Social Media for Education‘ with facebook as first example. I simply assume that most of you know facebook and already are there (active or passive). If this isn’t the case please feel free to head over to my ‘Social Media Explained’ section and explore facebook’s possibilites in general. But enough with the preface, let us start with the conversation.

However, before getting into examples and best practices, let us get rid of the thought that facebook is bad and the origin of all evil. I already discussed whether social media is good or bad in terms of teaching & studies, let’s not start this discussion again (if so, please in the comments section beneath the post mentioned above) and assume that facebook is not developed by the devil himself (even though I wouldn’t put my shirt on it – however it’s not the root of all evil). Here is a short informational graphic that demonstrates what I just said.

facebook & teaching. a tag team with potential.

Hopefully we can now agree on the point that facebook itself is not bad, the amount of the usage on the other hand, of course, can be damaging. But now, finally, facebook & teaching. How, why, when, what?

There are many different approaches of course and I will try to have a look at most of them. If you feel like there is something missing, please comment. I am always happy to get to know new perspectives.

Friendship

The first way to interact with facebook might be the ‘easiest’ way but could also turn out to be the most difficult one on a long run. Telling students your private facebook account and accepting friend requests from students.

This does not sound like a lot of work at first but will eventually turn exactly into that. Once you started to accept friend requests from students you have to stick with it. You have to be unbiased and accept EVERY student who has any relation whatsoever with you. You can’t just add your ‘favorite’ students and ignore the others. Furthermore having students among your friends makes it pretty much a 24/7 job (as long as you don’t adjust some settings – which I will show you shortly). Students will always be able to communicate with you. Even at night, on weekends, during holidays, etc. While I teach many communication related subjects I urge students to talk and communicate as much as possible and I am always glad when students are ‘brave’ enough to talk to me outside the classroom. However it sometimes becomes quite exhausting. That is part of the game though and you have to be aware of that possibility.

Keeping the friendship in borders

facebook lists help to organize and keep track of your students

Like mentioned above, having many students among your friends can make student communication a full-time and 24/7 job. If you want to avoid the persistent presence for your students, there are some drifts to achieve this.

Lists

First and foremost I suggest you create lists for your students. Lists are ‘categories’ in which you can divide your friends. As soon as you accept a friend request on facebook you can select the lists (multiple are possible) in which you want to move your new friend. I for example move all my students into the list ‘awesome students’. Since I work with further separation methods (I will show you later) this is enough for me (however I add them to other lists, which contain not only students, as well in order to accelerate communication – but that’s my personal thing). If you wish to divide even further you could also create lists like ‘hotel management students’ or ‘first year students’ or whatever feels convenient for you.

When you classify (that doesn’t sound nice, but it helps) your students into different lists you can easily choose whether you let them see everything on your facebook page or if they are only allowed to see certain things. This can all be done within your privacy settings (a section you should be quite familiar with when you want to use facebook with a larger audience). Simply choose the ‘custom’ menu point and select the lists that you want to block from seeing your information or the lists which you want to enable to see all your shared stuff.

customize your facebook posts to control whether students can see it or not

A similar customization can be achieved when posting status updates. You can choose with every post (except when you are using third-party providers, like tweetdeck or others, to update your status – those applications will usually use your ‘default’ settings) who will be able to see it and who won’t. As you can see it is quite easy to ‘hide’ from your students if you really want to.

Nevertheless I am a big fan of sharing and interacting with my students. I usually share most things with them since it is quite fun and interesting to talk about more different topics and not only about class related things. Communication about fun things, every day stuff or personal matters are usually way more intense and provide an incredible high learning value due to the high motivation behind the communication.

This was the ‘easy’ part in terms of preparation. ‘Simply’ becoming friends with your students. As you already may have guessed, there are some more possibilites to interact and accelerate interaction with students. One of those possibilities is the creation of a facebook group.

Facebook Groups

Facebook groups have many features like sharing documents, videos and pictures with all members as well as group chats with online members. Therefore such a group is perfect to share more specific information and to urge more interaction. To give you only one example: I run a group for my current communication students. Since a lot of students (former students or random students from the college who are not in my class) added me on facebook, I invite my actual students into this group. In this group I will post links to current presentations I used in class, polls (good way to interact and to give students the chance to ‘decide’) or simply short reminders about tests and homework.

Furthermore groups enable students to post and share homework (e.g. videos) with their friends and exchange information, questions and knowledge with classmates or older students. Students helping students. A pretty good way to get conversations started. Besides that it is also very helpful that students can ‘like’ things they posted. If students had a video homework (e.g. communication students) and others like those videos they feel, of course, endorsed and are happy with their outcome (even better when the teacher ‘likes’ it of course ;-) ).

using facebook groups for teaching purposes

As you can see I am a big fan of facebook groups for teaching purposes since they give you quite a nice set of tools to work with. Moreover they are set up pretty easily and when you don’t need them anymore, say after the term has finished, you can simply delete them again and set up another one for the upcoming term.

Facebook Fanpages

If you want to take the conversation out into to wild groups however might not be the perfect choice. They are great for a specific audience but if you are aiming on a broader target group you might consider setting up your own facebook fanpage. This is primarily recommended for schools itself, departments, faculties or private teachers.

facebook fanpage - college style

Fanpages in general give you the opportunity to communicate and to present yourself or your institution to wide facebook user range. Even ‘strangers’ who do not belong to your educational institution can ‘like’ you, post and ask questions or leave comments (again, you decide what can be done. Privacy!). The features of the fanpage are similar to those mentioned in the group section above. Sharing pictures, videos, polls, etc is also possible. The biggest difference is, like already explained, the fact that fanpages are ‘public’ and that you do not choose who connects with your fanpage, facebook users choose whether they ‘like’ you or whether they don’t. So fanpages are usually a good place to show off your skills, explain what you are all about & give some interaction and information possibilities to a larger audience.

facebook fanpage - private teacher style

Content is King

Now I am glad that I can use this catch phrase that followed me through my studies at university in one of my posts. Content is King! This means that, whatever you decide to do on facebook, success always depends on your content. If you simply post homework or test dates online that might find acceptance since it eases things up for students, however it won’t increase the interaction and the social learning abilities (which are quite crucial nowadays in my opinion). You have to implement your facebook (and further social media appearances – of which we will talk about soon) in your teaching style, update your assignments to be ‘social’ and ‘interactive’ (e.g. videos, but that’s only one very basic example) and never forget to be present yourself. Even if you decide to go the ‘hiding’ way we talked about in the beginning, you still should be present from time to time (the more the better, of course) so that students see that you care and that you use social media yourself and that this is not ‘just another assignment’ but a way of studying, exchanging and developing.

Finally I hope I could shed some light into the dark field of ‘social media & education’ on the example of facebook for teaching. More posts regarding other social media platforms and services will follow and in the end we will come up with a best practice example that combines many of the current state of the art social media offers. However, if you feel a little overwhelmed, are in the need for a talk, want specific examples, totally disagree or are eager to learn more (yes, there are courses available – for teachers as well as for students) please feel free to use the contact button up right, leave a comment or pay me a visit on facebook.

Happy social educating!