t least once a week; 48.6% of those who said that they had viewed videos stated that they had done so at least once a week. This indicates widespread support for an element of the course that was not evaluated, and it demonstrates a high level of motivation.
Student enthusiasm for using the Facebook page was also illustrated by the fact that 97.5% of 39 respondents agreed that having such a forum for interaction was useful. 92.3% took this a step further, agreeing that “Having a course Facebook page has helped me better understand communication principles and effective practice.”
The following open-ended comments from the student feedback testify to this as well: (See Appendix 5 for all comments.)
“One more way to interact and learn”
“Allows one to learn outside of class and to reflect on what has been taught earlier. Able to write short comments and allows one to share articles and videos easily. Moreover, it is something that we check very often and hence the convenience accorded by it.”
“Provides a platform for students to share what they have learnt or post relevant articles, videos etc, where they can get valuable feedback from their peers. Provide an opportunity for students to learn outside of classroom.”
“Learning outside of class hours, learning on the go, learning from almost anywhere on the planet can take place as long as there is internet connection. Bottom-line: learning is free, uncoerced, all natural and organic.”
Along with this emphasis on added learning, a number of students left comments that demonstrated that they appreciated the Facebook page for the added opportunity that it gave them for interacting with their peers, both those in their own tutorial groups and those from another group. In fact, of 30 comments given in the open-ended question about strengths of having the Facebook page, 18 students made a statement that included one (or more) of the following words to positively describe their experience of using Facebook for learning: share, interact, communicate, bond.
These findings suggest that ES2007 students were highly appreciative of the way that the Facebook page allowed them to take an active role in their learning: by sourcing and uploading relevant article and video links, by accessing and reviewing the links provided by their classmates, by expressing their opinions on information provided and the views of others that they had engaged via the Facebook wall, by interacting with others from the course community, and by having an opportunity to reflect on their learning.
Challenges in Using Facebook
Asking students to participate in a set of tasks based on a social media platform such as Facebook does pose some potential challenges. One of those is that students may feel that this particular requirement of their coursework is overlapping too closely with their private cyberworld, especially since Facebook is such a popular socializing site for so many of them. In fact, one of the respondents from ES2007S did mention this as a possible reason for not wanting to use Facebook. Another challenge for the teacher may be keeping students on task and directing their posts and comments toward course content, or in a related manner, ensuring that their contributions and interactions are not inflammatory, either in tone or in subject matter. One of this paper’s authors had a student who made several inappropriate posts, including his/her posting links to opinionated articles related to religious beliefs and sexual orientation (only tangentially related to course content), followed by contentious interpretations and assertions. That same student had a propensity for using a condescending tone when responding to opinions that disagreed with his own.
Recognizing and addressing issues such as those described above requires the teacher to closely monitor the Facebook page and then to swiftly react in much the same way that one does when other activities produce unexpected and unwanted results: with appropriate tact and intervention strategies.
The use of class Facebook pages in ES2002 and ES2007S proved 