 not access”
When asked what they thought the problems of having a course Facebook page were (see Appendix 3), most students responded that they were concerned that a student might miss posts by not accessing the page often enough, or that a student could be disadvantaged by not having a Facebook account. While both of these problems are serious concerns, during the semester when Facebook was used with ES2002 students, neither happened. All students had Facebook accounts, and on many occasions students were overheard talking about or referring one another to recent posts and Facebook updates. Arguably, if the students perceive the class page as a valuable learning resource, they will access it regularly. As one student mentioned in the feedback exercise (see Appendix 2), it is easy to revisit the class page and access links and information that have been posted for some time.
Clearly, the use of a class Facebook page in ES2002 was a success. The extension of learning beyond the classroom had noticeable benefits in the classroom. The fact that most students had watched videos or read articles posted on Facebook outside of class meant that classroom discussion and activities about course related topics started at a deeper level. This not only saved time when introducing concepts and ideas but also resulted in livelier and more engaged classroom activities.
Student feedback: ES2007S
As with ES2002, ES2007S students were asked to complete a questionnaire regarding their perceptions of the use of the course Facebook page. This survey, like the one in ES2002, was created on and disseminated via an online survey application (surveymonkey.com). Unlike ES2002, however, the 40 student respondents for ES2007S came from a total of 55 students in four tutorial groups, two each in two different semesters.
Three question types were used: “yes/no” questions, Likert-scale statements of agreement (from strongly agree to strongly disagree) and open-ended questions. (A summary of the survey findings is provided in Appendix 4.) The findings support this author’s expectation: many students showed great enthusiasm for initiating and participating in course Facebook page discussions of communications topics, even when their involvement is not being assessed.
One way that students could initiate a discussion was through finding course-related articles or videos online and then sharing links to those on the course Facebook page. Indeed, in a Likert-scale statement of agreement, 97.4% of 39 respondents agreed that “Finding/sharing video links and articles” was effective for learning. On a related “yes/no” question, 87.5% of 40 respondents asserted that they had found and uploaded a course-relevant link to the Facebook page wall during the course; 20% (8 out of 40) said that they uploaded a link at least once every two weeks.
In a related, open-ended question asking students to identify any strength of using the course Facebook page, one student wrote about this “intensive and extensive sharing of information.” Another suggested “materials can be shared without eating into curriculum time.”
On Facebook, another means of posting is by writing on the page wall rather than by uploading links, thereby initiating discussions. Some students would do this when they had an idea related to course content or to some other area of communication that they were contemplating. For the “yes/no” question: “Did you make any wall posts?”, 75% of the 40 respondents answered “yes.” Further, 87.5% answered in the affirmative to this question: “Did you leave comments on others’ wall posts and/or links?” This statistic illustrates that active initiation was matched by extensive participation.
A pair of questions explored this further. On the question as to whether or not students had accessed links to and read articles, 97.5% of the 40 respondents answered positively. On the question of whether or not students had accessed and viewed links to posted videos, 95% answered in the affirmative. 56.4% of those who said that they had accessed links to and read articles did so a