Starting Your Classroom Facebook Page

Are you on Facebook? Are you having fun finding that guy or gal that rejected you in high school years ago (and hoping they’ve gained lots of extra pounds)? Or are you going to Facebook to play Farkel or farm your land are Farmville? As an educator, you can put your Facebook skills to good use. According to the Top Colleges Blog, http://www.top-colleges.com/blog/2009/11/29/social-networkingacademic/, a recent survey by the Center for Community College Student Engagement which included 400,000 students from 663 colleges, shows that students who use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to interact with their peers, faculty and other staff, are more likely to succeed then those who do not use social media.

Facebook can be very helpful in a community college where students may not have much “college” interaction outside of classes. The study doesn’t recommend a specific way to building rapport and increase student interaction, but it encourages instructors to work to find the right match for their specific course and group of students.

According to a conference paper by Caroline Lego Munoz and Terri L. Towner,  http://www46.homepage.villanova.edu/john.immerwahr/TP101/Facebook.pdf, you can use Facebook in four different ways. You can create your own profile page and let students be your “friend;” create a group page for each class; replacing or duplicating web course functions, such as discussion boards, instant messaging, or posting information about assignments; and integration of Facebook applications. All of these options allow communication with your students at a different level than is possible in the classroom. One word of caution, however, is to be careful letting students be friends on your personal page. Letting students be a friend is like letting them into your personal life, which you probably do not want to do. Set up a separate class page instead.

How do you set up a Facebook page? Just go to the main Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/.
After signing in, you’ll need to follow the steps given. It’s not very tough to do. Once the page is created, click “Edit page.” There you’ll see information about discussion boards, events, links, notes, videos and photos. My suggestion is to have the students become fans and limit the interactions to the fans so you don’t have a lot of strangers commenting on your page.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? If you’ve tried using Facebook in your classes, let us know how it worked for you. If you have questions, just ask in the comments section below.

See you next week for another technology tip!