Roll your own LMS with Facebook
Posted on August 16, 2007
Filed Under education, facebook, web 2.0 |
Getting tired of the Learning Management System on your campus? Ever look to see how infrequently your students actually log in to see their assignments etc? Let me tell you, it’s pretty darn infrequently. So why not create a course site on a social network where they already live? Facebook now has several apps that make a near perfect course management system. Use “Courses”, a file sharing app, and a chat app and you’ve got every tool in Blackboard on a site that doesn’t go down, isn’t so bland that it puts you and your students asleep, and actually offers collaborative resources that BB can’t provide (oh and you’re not supporting a company which caters to administrators rather than instructors and students but that’s my personal grudge).
Give it a try and come back to tell us all what you think.
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13 Responses to “Roll your own LMS with Facebook”
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I can’t say that I fully run my course on Facebook, but I have gone to using it as my means of communication with my students.
I first heard of Facebook about a year ago when I noticed that all my students were on the same page before class started (I teach in a computer lab). I never really thought much about it, but I later taught an online course and I wanted some way to get to know a little more about my students, so I required them to add me as a friend and to join a Facebook group dedicated to the course. Since then, I now require all of my students, both graduate and undergraduate, who have Facebook to add me as a friend.
It only makes sense. Many times students don’t read e-mail anymore, but they can’t wait to see who has posted on their wall. So if someone misses a class or something, I’ll drop them a note and say, “Hey, missed you in class today, everything OK?” I don’t mind taking the time, and they know that I know that they aren’t keeping up. In the case of a missing assignment, I’ll drop them a message instead of posting it on the wall, because the messages are private. As a matter of fact, most of my students don’t e-mail or call anymore because they “Facebook” me instead. The only problem I have had with this, however, is that some students can’t–or shouldn’t–be on Facebook (such as some of the high-profile athletes on campus don’t want the distraction or “public access to their private lives” or some of the student organization officers are prohibited as well), but I’ve just made other arrangements with them.
I do think that your idea is an interesting one. We’ve just gone through the process of switching CMS here at Oklahoma State, and I find that I’m using our CMS (D2L) less and less and Facebook more and more.
John: Thanks for your replay. Since I posted this this morning I’ve been thinking about any potential drawbacks of using FB as an LMS. I think you bring one important one up…what if students don’t want their school and social lives mixed? I also wonder about the privacy issues that might come up. For example, posting something about a student missing class…not sure if that violates any FERPA etc. On the other hand, your comment about students not reading email is spot on. Most of my traditional age students tell me that they only read email for messages from mom and dad or their teachers. They think of email as something old people use. Ha! Hard for us over 25s to think about but I think it’s the way of the future.
Thanks again.
Haven’t had a “good” reason to try Facebook yet, but this might be it.
I’ve been taking an online masters program which uses BB and *gasp* Windows Live. Anytime group projects are assigned, we usually take it into something like Yahoo, AIM, or Skype.
I admit, I ignore my WindowsLive email, checking it about once/week. GMail, on the other hand, I check constantly. It’s ashame forwarding isn’t easier.
How do you think using Facebook for a course structures the learning differently than using Blackboard or another more traditional LMS? This question was brought up in a presentation I attended last week, and I’m curious what your thoughts are. How would using Facebook affect the teacher-student and student-student relationships? How do social networking tools affect what we assess?
Christy: Awesome question. Certainly we have to think about how the context of learning changes the way the learning happens. Personally, I think increasing social interactions in learning is never a bad thing so using a tool that makes social interaction so easy has to be a good thing. I also think it’s beneficial to integrate learning into social spaces because it reinforces the idea that learning doesn’t just happen in privileged spaces but can happen anywhere and without the intervention of an “official teacher.” I think it helps put subject matter in a broader context of other areas that students are interested in so that the lines between “course work” and “life” aren’t so structured.
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts.
Honestly, I think I’m still trying to figure it out. Maybe that’s why I liked the question so much; it’s still percolating in my brain a week later.
I started to write my reply here, but it was getting ridiculously long for a comment. I instead.
I’ve been thinking about the potential for Facebook in this field as I have an allergic reaction to Blackboard. That said, I can’t forget that Facebook is a commercial platform which would push advertising into my course pages that I might not feel comfortable with and creates a walled garden; getting my information back out of Facebook could be problematic.
Then there is the issue of identity management. As I get more people as “friends” in Facebook I run into the inevitable problems of needing to discriminate between them. It’s an old issue with online social network sites and one which the students would have. I suspect that my settled opinion will be to think of Facebook as an outreach site, where students can interact with me and the course informally but where there’s no attempt to use Facebook as a formal learning space.
There are 3 apps on Facebook called Courses (an obvious flaw in the system). Is one of those the app you refer to?
[...] quickly got me Googling and I uncovered some great blog posts on this subject. Sarah Robbins from Ubernoggin writes: “Facebook now has several apps that make a near perfect course management system. Use [...]
I’m one of those ancients who doesn’t learn new programs easily and quickly. If Facebook has a tutorial for new users, it hasn’t revealed itself to me: is the operating assumption that the program is so simple that intuition and experiment will reveal all of its powers and possibilities? “Courses”: how do I find this program?
All help for the aged and slow will be gratefully appreciated.
[...] Facebook as LMS? August 16, 2007 Sarah Robbins posted on Ubernoggin today with the title Roll your own LMS with Facebook. She says that rather than using a traditional LMS that students don’t use as often as they [...]
[...] contrast to straight-laced, closed learning management systems (LMS), Sarah Robbins claimed on her Ubernoggin blog that the new tools available within Facebook make it a “near perfect course management [...]
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