Experimenting with Facebook in the Classroom

My Teaching Centre colleague Maurice Fitzgerald has featured Faculty Focus several times in posts over on the Teaching and Learning Blog. Based in the United States, Faculty Focus provides various free, as well as paid for, resources in the form of newsletters, downloadable reports, etc., regarding learning and teaching issues.

In the latest Faculty Focus article, Nisha Malhotra, a lecturer in economics at the University of British Columbia, talks about her positive experiences of using Facebook to support a research methods class. Read the full article here.

Here at Loughborough, the Learning and Teaching Committee (LTC) recently considered a document setting out a draft approach to the use of social media and other Web 2.0 services in teaching. The approach recommended (by my colleague Martin Hamilton, Head of Internet Services, and myself) was that the institution should support the use of such services in teaching where appropriate and with due consideration for the associated risks. What this means is that module tutors (and programme leaders) need to think carefully about the specific details of how they would like to use such services, and thus avoid negative outcomes relating to copyright, data protection, etc. LTC accepted this general approach which will now be formulated into a policy statement.

Colleagues should note that, where they are using other online services, Learn [our Moodle-based VLE] needs to remain the ‘online hub’ of every module.