Smart Use Of Facebook By College Helps Students

from the it's-a-tool dept

Thu, Oct 15th 2009 12:15am — Mike Masnick

Earlier this year, a study claiming that students who used Facebook had lower grades got a lot of attention, with the typical fear mongering and moral panics coming out of the woodwork. But, of course, correlation does not mean causation, and Facebook is just a tool. For schools that use it in a smart way, perhaps it could do good. Reader Ben Ketteridge points us to the news of how Gloucestershire College has embraced Facebook to help students do better. It's kept the staff and faculty better in touch with students and reduced drop out rates, so far. It's also helped students work together in virtual study groups, something that other colleges have complained was a form of cheating. It's nice to see at least some higher education institutions looking at ways to use tools to improve the overall experience, rather than just complaining about such online services.

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Filed Under: social networks, students
Companies: gloucestershire college

12 Comments

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Annie, 15 Oct 2009 @ 3:12am

Facebook used to....
...have a section on their site where you used to be able to load your course codes. This was back when they first launched, it was really cool since group meeting were easily set up that way and you could find your classmates. Unfortunately they took away that feature long ago and added loads of other junk to distract students with :)

That's not to say that Facebook is bad, students just need to learn how to utilize it appropriately without going into A.D.D. land :) I know I'm guilty at times!
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Misanthropist (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 4:34am

so...
they used it as an email replacement?

so its nothing but a fad then? gotcha
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AMATI, 15 Oct 2009 @ 5:42am

"
junk to distract students with :)

That's not to say that Facebook is bad, students just need to learn how to utilize it appropriately without going into A.D.D. land :) I know I'm guilty at times!

(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
#
Oct 15th, 2009 @ 4:34am
so...
by icon Misanthropist (profile)

they used it as an email replacement?

so its nothing but a fad
"

Junk in -- Junk out
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2009 @ 6:19am

Facebook might have had a chance at being a "useful tool" for academics, back when it was exclusive to college students with valid college e-mail accounts. As someone said, it used to support your class schedule and make it easier to find people in your classes, and there was far less 'junk' on it, as it's been called. It was a much "cleaner" environment.

It used to be more of a social/school 'listing'. Now It's gone the way of MySpace with endless garbage. Can't log on now without 14 invitations to kill thugs in MAFIA WARS or take some stupid quiz about which Power Ranger you are.

The only way it could possibly get worse would be to allow the annoying "auto-play radio" on everyone's MySpace pages. I believe then I'd never go back.

Hell, right now all it's good for is seeing which of my college "friends" is getting married. Oh, and picking tomatoes on FarmVille.
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..., 15 Oct 2009 @ 6:38am

"a study claiming that students who used Facebook had lower grades "

Possibly because the smart kids read the TOS
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NullOp, 15 Oct 2009 @ 6:50am

Cheating?
I applaud the use of FaceBook as a learning tool. I am appalled to learn some colleges consider study groups cheating. Those schools are obviously run by individuals with tiny minds and a huge Napoleon complex! In the works of many of the students: WTF?
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Mark Smith, 15 Oct 2009 @ 10:48am

Facebook used as tool
not only should it be used by students, but it can be used by businesses as well.
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Richard Heene, 15 Oct 2009 @ 1:13pm

Facebook Status
Facebook is a networking tool at the end of the day. People have always networked, in one for or the other!
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Daniel Minteer, 23 Nov 2009 @ 9:17pm

Spoiked
Ever get Spoiked?, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2oGysxM-j4
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Gautam D Goradia, 4 Jun 2011 @ 8:34pm

How FB can be used by Schools
Hi. The article made interesting reading. Education institutions can, and should make a lot of use of the Facebook platform. Over a period of time, each institute will find its own unique way to do so. One of the ways (other than creating a page and interacting with students on the same)in which teachers can help their students is to create a collection of interesting Posts and share them with their students as a curated collection. There is now so much information posted on FB on diverse subjects. Teachers could collect such Posts, curate them, and share them with their students as well as fellow teachers.

Teachers could also Archive important Posts that they find on FB, or important suggestions that have been offered by students.

One of the products built by our company helps FB users do what I have mentioned - Search, Archive (subject wise), Curate, and Share. I will be happy to share some of the papers published by us as to how different sections of society can make use of the huge amount of content that is passing through FB's platform.

Please do take a look at the website www.fyoapp.com

Thanks and Regards
Gautam
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lrobbo (profile), 12 Jun 2012 @ 11:11am

Exactly, just because they use Facebook more doesn't mean this is the cause of said problems. Kind of thinking and propaganda makes my head spin.
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geek, 24 Sep 2013 @ 7:10am

facebook can help same fields of students to share their ideas
facebook becomes the most popular social media.same field of students share their new ideas and tips by posting on their own created page.
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