Lenandlar Singh presented on using Facebook groups in undergraduate education at the University of Guyana. The university recently developed a Moodle platform and lecturers are exploring various tools, with Facebook being the most popular. Singh discussed related work showing both benefits and challenges of using Facebook for education. He outlined how Facebook groups are designed at the university to share files, discuss course materials, and communicate between students and lecturers. While not a replacement for an LMS, Facebook groups provide affordances like a central space for contact and modeling social learning.

1. LENANDLAR SINGH
SENIOR LECTURER
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF GUYANA
Facebook in Undergraduate Education: An Update
Moodle MOOC 6 Conference
May 05, 2015
@lenandlar lenandlar.singh@uog.edu.gy

2. Outline
 Context
 Related Work
 Facebook Group Design
 Facebook in Undergraduate Education @ UG
 Experiences
 Affordances
 References

3. Context: University of Guyana
 Recently developed a Moodle Platform!
 Lecturers are free explore any tool
 A range of technologies are adopted
 Social Networking
 Yahoo Groups
 Blogs – sharing resources, some dialog
 Google Sites – sharing resources
 Peerwise
 Facebook (Most Popular)

4. Lecturers’ Experiences
 Technologies are adopted for both formal and informal learning
 Blogs are used to post updates, share resources
 Yahoo Groups used to share files and communicate
with students
 Google sites used to share notes and other
resources
 Peerwise (used for implementing contributing
student pedagogy)
 Facebook Groups used to share files, discuss course
materials, communicate

5. Challenges for Lecturers
 Inadequate understanding of effective technology integration
 Little/no support
 No reward – a struggle to remain motivated
 Do at your own risk and at the expense of research

6. Related Work(1)
 Facebook can be used a teaching tool but
problems with accessing real effect (Boghian, 2013)
 Facebook useful for reflecting on learning
experiences (Chan et al., 2013)
 Facebook was effective a learning environment to
support collaborative learning (DeVilliers &
Pretorius, 2013)

7. Related Work(2)
 Engineering Students found that FB supported their
learning(Al-Atabi & Younis, 2010)
 Teaching and Learning using FB is a challenge for
teachers and students alike (Gray, Annabel, Kennedy,
2010)
 “Social presence is the most important factor that
determines students’ usage of Facebook. The features
of social presence indeed can also encourage students
to collaborate and work together.”
(Cheung, Chee & Lee, 2011)

8. Related Work(3)
 McCarthy(2013) identified many ‘positive
outcomes’ associated with first year students use of
Facebook as a learning tool
 Johnston, Chen and Hauman (2013) - Students are
more dependent on Facebook than Twitter and
noted “changes in usage, attitude and perception
of Facebook over time”

9. Related Work(4) : vs LMS
 Schroeder and Greenbowe (2009)
 number of posts on Facebook was nearly four times more
than on WebCT
 postings raised more complex topics
 generated more detailed replies
 DeSchryver et al (2009) - students assigned to Facebook did
not write longer or more frequent postings than the
students assigned to Moodle.
“A possible reason was that the students did not like having discussions in a
separate system—Facebook—as they had been using Moodle in the course” –
Wang et al. (2012)

10. Related Work(5): vs LMS
 Wang et al. (2012) – used FB Groups as LMS
 announcements
 sharing resources
 organizing weekly tutorials
 conducting online discussions
Students satisfied with “affordances” BUT some limitations
 File Format Issues
 Thread Management
 Uncertainty about Privacy

11. Facebook in Undergraduate
Education @ UG
 Singh,L., & Gaffar,K. (2010). Using Social Software to Support
Computer Science Education - A Case of Using Facebook Groups.
Paper presented at the 17th Biennial Conference Caribbean Academy
of Science (CAS) Conference, Antigua, November 15, 2010.
 Singh, L. (2011). Structured vs Unstructured Use of Facebook in the
Classrooms at the University of Guyana. In J. Mair (Eds.), Face the
Future: Guyana and the New Media Revolution, (pp. 55-64). Arima
Publishers.

12. Facebook in Undergraduate
Education @ UG
 Singh, L., Gaffar, K. (2011). Using Social Software to Support
Computer Science Education A Case of Using Facebook Groups. e-
Journal of the Caribbean Academy of Sciences, 5(1).
 Singh, L., & Gaffar, K. (2012). Engaging Computing Students on their
Turf - Facebook Groups at Work. Presented at the Connecting
Online (CO12) Conference. February 3-5, 2012.

13. Facebook in Undergraduate
Education @ UG
 Singh, L. (2013). Guided Assessment or Open Discourse: A
Comparative Analysis of Students’ Interactions on Facebook Groups.
Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 14(1), 35-43.
 Singh, L., & Gaffar, K. (2013). On the Formal Use of Facebook in
Education in Deutsch, N. (Ed.).(2013). Connecting online for
instruction and learning: International perspectives. Charleston:
Createspace.

14. What is known?
 Facebook is easy to use
 Facebook can support elements of learning and student
engagement
 Facebook works best for Informal Learning opportunities
work
 Do not use Facebook like your traditional LMS – It is NOT!

15. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Features

16. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Enrolment Management

17. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 File Management

18. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 File Management

19. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Search

20. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Discussion Management – Doc

21. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Discussion Management – Thread

22. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Discussion Management – Thread

23. Analysis: Facebook Group Design
 Other Features
 Polling/Asking Questions
 Tagging e.g @Lenandlar
 Group Chat – not very intuitive
 No Threaded Forums – was presented in earlier versions

24. Facebook Activities in Undergraduate
Education @ UG
 Groups form the basis for all support activities
 Set up for all classes
 Students locate group and ask to join
 Communication
 Notices, updates, etc
 Resource sharing
 Lecture notes, other reading materials
 Discussions
 Any topical discussion allowed
 Some tutorials – some formal use was explored, Group Chat

25. Sample Groups

26. Inside a Facebook Group

27. File Sharing

28. Why Facebook/Groups?
 Students always on
 Students expect some element of social engagement
 Quick and easy way to communicate with students, sharing
information, post updates, etc
 Low overheads – easy to set up, easy to use
 Separate from personal Facebook profile (you don’t have to engage
outside of groups)

29. Facebook as LMS?
 Facebook Groups support some aspects of Learning Management
 Threads/Discussions
 File Sharing
 Searching
 Enrolment Management
 Biggest challenge
 User Management
 Who are legitimate group members?
 Locating Content
 Finding discussion topics

30. Affordances
 A central space for 24/7 contact among students and
between students and lecturers
 A space that could help first year students adapt
quickly to university life
 A way for lecturers/instructors to develop working
social relationships with students
 A space to model social learning

31. References
 Al-Atabi, M., & Younis, O., (2010). Use of Facebook to support module delivery for undergraduate
engineering programmes. Proceedings of the 2010 AaeE Conference, Sydney.
 Boghian, I. (2013). Using Facebook in Teaching. In M. Pătruţ, & B. Pătruţ (Eds.) Social Media in
Higher Education: Teaching in Web 2.0 (pp. 86-103). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.
doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-2970-7.ch005
 Chan, R.C.H., Lee, C.W.Y. Chan, B., Leung, C.K., & Chu, S.K.W. (2013). The application of blogs and
Facebook in scaffolding the internship learning process. Paper presented at the CITE Research
Symposium 2013, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
 Cheung, M.K.C., Chiu, P., & Lee, M.K.O.(2011). Online social networks: Why do students use
facebook? Computers in Human Behaviour, 27, pp. 1337–1343
 Cheung, C. M., Chiu, P. Y., & Lee, M. K. (2011). Online social networks: Why do students use
facebook?. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(4), 1337-1343.

32. References
 DeSchryver, M., Mishra, P., Koehler, M. & Francis, A. (2009). Moodle vs. Facebook: does using Facebook for discussions in
an online course enhance perceived social presence and student interaction? In I. Gibson et al. (Ed.), Proceedings of
society for information technology & teacher education international conference (pp. 329–336). Chesapeake, VA:
Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
 deVilliers, M.R., & Pretorium, M.C.(2013). Evaluation of a Collaborative Learning Environment on a Facebook Forum. The Electronic
Journal Information Systems Evaluation, 16(1), pp. 56-70
 Gray, K., Annabell, L., & Kennedy, G. (2010). Medical students' use of Facebook to support learning: Insights from four case studies.
Medical teacher, 32(12), 971-976.
 Johnston, K., Chen, M., Hauman, M. (2013). Changes in use, Perception and Attitude of First Year Students Towards Facebook and
Twitter. Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Management, p. 135
 McCarthy, J. (2013). Learning in Facebook: First year tertiary student reflections
from 2008 to 2011. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(3), pp. 337-356
 Schroeder, J. & Greenbowe, T. (2009). The chemistry of Facebook: using social networking to create an online community for the
organic chemistry laboratory. Journal of Online Education, 5, 4.
 Wang, Q., Woo, H.L., Quek, C.L., Yang, Y., & Liu, M. (2012). Using the Facebook group as a learning management system: An
exploratory study. British Journal of Educational Technology. 43(3). p 428–438