Sarah Honeychurch: @NomadWarMachine

Shazia Ahmed: @ShaziaAhmed

Using Facebook groups for Peer

Assisted Learning: building

communities and enhancing the

student experience

How many of you …

• Use Facebook?

• Use Facebook professionally?

• Know the difference between:

– a profile, page and a group?

• Understand Facebook’s privacy settings?

Background

• Problems implementing F2F PAL

– Large classes

– 3 subject system

– Room bookings

– Commuting students

flickr photo by Renato Ganoza

http://flickr.com/photos/rzganoza/5814827282

shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

The beginnings

Year 1

• L1 Maths

• L1 Comp Sci

Year 2

• Groups rolled over to L2

• L1 Maths

• L1 Comp Sci

• L1 Physics and Astro

• L1 Engineering

Over 40 groups in CoSE

This year

Benefits

• Academic and social interaction

• Sharing resources and collaborating

• Always available (including holidays)– No need to wait for next week’s session/tutorial

– Can come back to old threads later

• Everyone has equal voice

• Clear articulation forced

Examples of conversations

Examples of conversations

Examples of conversations

Feedback

• “Keep going with these Facebook groups and try as hard as possible

to get EVERYONE in the group as early as possible in first year. In

my experience as a student who travels in, it helps feel a part of the

University. Without the Facebook groups I would feel a lot more

isolated and probably a lot less engaged .”

• “A good way to create a community from a large cohort of students.

Really good that it didn’t become cluttered with trivia and non-group

related matters.”

• “It builds a sense of community and you learn people’s faces and their

name.”

• “FB groups have been invaluable.”

• “Often a good way of finding information that is otherwise buried

somewhere on Moodle. Can sometimes be helpful close to exam time

when people post learning resources (e.g. shared Google Docs for

completing past papers together) that wouldn't happen without the

groups.”

Feedback

• “Personally it gives me confidence because if someone posts a

question that you were stuck on also...it makes you feel less stupid

because you know that other people are also struggling with some

concepts in the course, it’s not just you.”

• “Reading how people approach different problems.”

• “It’s like being in a tutorial sometimes.”

• “If you're stuck / need to know some piece of information it takes

literally seconds to hop on Facebook and make a post. Also, because

the uptake of the groups, in terms of membership, is so high, you're

likely to get an accurate response very quickly.”

• “During term time things being identified in notes/exercises such as

typos or mistakes were helpful.”

• “Getting other perspectives on topics. Collaborative exam solutions.”

Disadvantages

• “Dear Shazia & Sarah

It annoys me that I might be missing out on interesting

discussions. I think that it is great to encourage learning

and to discuss mathematics. However, I refuse to use

Facebook. Moreover, I don't think Facebook is the correct

place for discussing mathematics - University is the

correct place. I don't want my university experience to

become part of Facebook. Kind Regards Anon”

• “Didn't want to join them because I'm not interested in

updates from my classmates, I use Facebook just for

social events, messaging.”

Discussion

• Would you use this sort of model

with your students?

• Why (not)?

Sarah Honeychurch: @NomadWarMachine

Shazia Ahmed: @ShaziaAhmed

Using Facebook groups for Peer

Assisted Learning: building

communities and enhancing the

student experience