Steve Thompson at College of DuPage referred me to an interesting article titled, “I’ll See You on Facebook”
The article was a collaborative project to explore if and how teachers should use Facebook to engage students outside the classroom and what if any the effects will have back in the classroom. Even though it was written in January 2007 (which in technology terms is almost ancient) there are some interesting findings relevant to student affairs professionals and worth sharing.
The results concluded that:
…teachers high in self-disclosure [on Facebook] anticipated higher levels of [student] motivation and affective learning and a more positive classroom climate.
The danger is in the details, as too much information turned out to be damaging to the teacher/student relationship:
…instructors must balance their private information to guide the boundary management process. Teachers decide what information they want to reveal to their students in an effort to create a comfortable classroom environment that fosters student learning.
The surveyed students suggested that teacher self-discloser on Facebook should not include polarizing issues such as politics, religion, and hot topic debates. At the same time the students said the teachers should be themselves. If they are not the same person online as they are in the classroom, the students reacted negatively.
The three big no-nos from the students were:
- A teacher should not gossip about students online
- Use personal information a student shares on their profile against them
- Respect a student’s privacy, so if a student doesn’t want to be your friend online, don’t push it. (I’ve never sought out a student’s online profile to be friends, instead I give them the choice to find and befriend me.)
A while ago, I wrote a blog with guidelines for academic professionals that compliments this article’s conclusions and might be worth reading.
I think this research is further confirmation that academic professionals should be actively using online social networking sites such as Facebook as a tool in education.
Other interesting findings:
- As of May 2006, 297,000 Facebook members identified themselves as faculty or staff. I haven’t seen an updated number, but I would guess that the number is now near 600,000+ due to the larger acceptance of Facebook.
- Students felt more comfortable opening up online than face-to-face.
“Scholars found that students who communicate via [social networking sites online] with other students use more direct uncertaninty reduction strategies (e.g. more intimate questions and self-discloser) than students in face-to-face converstaions (Tidwell and Walther, 2002)” (related blog)
