Teaching Tips and Tools: Using Facebook for Discussion Board
Are your discussion boards stagnant? Are students answering the questions, simply
to answer the questions, and not participating in real discussion? Consider bringing
your discussion board to am alternate location like Facebook.
This semester (as I do each semester), I run a survey for my students asking them
which social media site they would like to use for class discussion. This semester,
they chose Facebook (and all students in the class reported having a Facebook
account).
The great thing about Facebook groups is that people do NOT need to friend you in
order to be a part of your group. Additionally, for privacy reasons, you can set the
group up as a secret group. This means that people cannot search for the group and
find it. It also means that when students post in the group, it does not show up
anywhere else (like their own Facebook wall). The posts stay within the group.
Creating one is easy.
1. Login to your Facebook account (if you do not have a Facebook account, you
will need to create one).
2. Scroll down until you see the word “Groups” and choose “Create Group.”
3. Choose to set up your group as “Public” to start, so that students can find and
add the group (we will change it to “Secret” when all students are in the
group). Give your group a name and add at least one member (you can
remove this member later), then click “Create.” You can choose an icon or
click on “skip” on the next screen.
4. Your group should be created. Copy the URL for your group and share it with
your students. Students will be able to go to the URL and request to be added.
5. You will get a notification when a student has requested being added to the
group. You can manage these requests by going to your group, clicking on the
three dots next to “Notifications”
and choosing “Member Requests”
6. Once all class members have been added, you can change the settings of the
group. Go to the three dots once again, and choose “Edit Group Settings”
7. Change the privacy to “Secret.”
8. You can now create a post each week with a different question, ask a student
to ask a “question of the week” or have groups pose questions to the class.