Response to Estus article & Experience with social networking

Facebook was used to augment a course that met once a week. Facebook was selected as a medium to encourage students to engage and learn the material. A few students would regularly post a topic for discussion on the Facebook site and all students were asked to participate in discussions. This study shows an example where using Facebook can be a useful medium for encouraging discussion. Students were able to more openly discuss course-related topics. An unexpected development was that older adults become involved with the Facebook site and were actively engaged. Though Facebook is mentioned, this study is essentially employing social networking and collaboration software services. Facebook happens to be an instance of this type of software service; it is unique in that it is clearly the most popular in the US. This study did not make use of the social networking facilities of Facebook, therefore, the entire utility of the software service was merely a discussion thread. I'm not sure whether hosting an academically purposed discussion thread on Facebook is counter constructive. There are many distractions such as new messages and alerts on Facebook that may deter people from focusing on the educational site. On the other hand, regular users of Facebook may log into Facebook for another reason where they are distracted from their original task towards visiting the educational site. It may be useful to consider integrating a module into the common LMS systems.


My experience with social networking
I have to admit that I am not that active in the social networking arena. Linked-In is a service I use most. Instead of leveraging my network, I utilize it as an online resume. In this function, it ranks about the same as employment sites such as Monster and Dice. Linked In appears to have become one of the leaders in the professional networking area. The majority of my Linked In engagements have been incoming traffic from recruiters. So far, I have not discovered any issues or needs that necessitate reaching out and utilizing my extended network.