1st Edition
An Education in Facebook? Higher Education and the World's Largest Social Network
An Education in Facebook? examines and critiques the role of Facebook in the evolving landscape of higher education. At times a mandated part of classroom use, at others an informal network for students, Facebook has become an inevitable component of college life, acting alternately as an advertising, recruitment and learning tool. But what happens when educators use a corporate product, which exists outside of the control of universities, to educate students?
An Education in Facebook? provides a broad discussion of the issues educators are already facing on college campuses worldwide, particularly in areas such as privacy, copyright and social media etiquette. By examining current uses of Facebook in university settings, this book offers both a thorough analytical critique as well as practical advice for educators and administrators looking to find ways to thoughtfully integrate Facebook and other digital communication tools into their classrooms and campuses.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Chapter 1
The Revolution That's Already Happening
Dr Mike Kent & Dr Tama Leaver
Part 1: Transitions
Chapter 2
Challenges and Opportunities in Using Facebook to build a Community for Students at a UK University
Dr Nick Pearce
Chapter 3
"We use Facebook chat in Lectures of course!" Exploring the use of Facebook Group by first-year undergraduate students for social and academic support
Eve Stirling
Chapter 4
Facebook as a Student Development Tool
Shane Tilton
Part 2: Facebook in Learning and Teaching
Chapter 5
Beyond Friending: Psychosocial Engagement on Facebook and Its Implications for Academic Success
Catherine McLoughlin and Mark J. W. Lee
Chapter 6
What's on your Mind? Facebook as a forum for teaching and learning in Higher Education
Mike Kent
Chapter 7
Academic Armour: Social Etiquette, Social Media and Higher Education.
Collette Snowden and Leanne Glenny
Chapter 8
Exploring Facebook Groups’ Potential as Teaching-Learning Environment for Supervision Purposes
Mona Hajin
Part 3: Facebook as a Learning Management System?
Chapter 9
How Social Should Learning Be? Facebook as a Learning Management System
Tauel Harper
Chapter 10
Facebook and Blackboard as Learning Management Systems: case study
João Mattar
Chapter 11
Rethinking community? Facebook as a learning backchannel
Kate Orton-Johnson
Part 4: Facebook at College
Chapter 12
Facebook at Uni: Mutual Surveillance and a Sense of Belonging
A/Prof Marjorie D Kibby and Dr Janet Fulton,
Chapter 13
Facebook, Student Engagement, and the 'Uni Coffee Shop' Group
Dr Tama Leaver
Chapter 14
‘I think it's mad sometimes' - unveiling attitudes to identity-creation and network-building by Media Studies students on Facebook
Dr Kerry Gough, David Harte and Vanessa Jackson.
Chapter 15
Should We Be Friends? The Question of Facebook in Academic Libraries
Zara T. Wilkinson
Part 5: Boundaries and Privacy
Chapter 16
Unfriending Facebook? Challenges From an Educator's Perspective
Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie and Dr Clare Lloyd
Chapter 17
Role confusion in Facebook groups
Pernilla Josefsson and Fredrik Hanell
Chapter 18
Varying Cultural Conceptions of the Private Sphere and their impact upon the use of social media networks as educational tools: A German and Chinese comparison
Xun Luo and Fergal Lenehan
Part 6: (Re)Configuring Facebook
Chapter 19
Changing Facebook's architecture
Sky Croeser
Chapter 20
Facebook, Disability and Higher Education: Accessing the digital campus
Katie Ellis and Mike Kent
Part 7: Conclusions - Beyond Facebook
Chapter 21
Facebook Fatigue? A University's Quest to Build Lifelong Relationships with Students and Alumni
Maria L. Gallo and Kevin F. Adler
Chapter 22
Understanding the Social Media Ecologies of Employees within Higher Education Institutions: A UK-Based Case Study
Chris James Carter, Lee Martin and Claire O’Malley
Biography
Mike Kent is a senior lecturer in Internet Studies at Curtin University, where his research focuses on disability and the internet.
Tama Leaver is a lecturer in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. He is also a research fellow in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre for Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation working in Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology.
"Mike Kent and Tama Leaver have assembled a compelling array of studies of Facebook which range widely in their analytical preoccupations. They render significant insights for educators, students and policy-makers alike. At times intensely practical and at others more deeply theoretical, this intelligent collection generally eschews technological determinism and poses all the right questions. In their editing, Leaver and Kent have kept true to a sophisticated view which positions pedagogy, student and academic engagement and issues of identity at the core. The dynamic interaction between learners, teachers and technologies, and abiding issues including identity, privacy and copyright, assure the longevity of this work in relation to Facebook, and beyond. I read it thirstily and will benefit from its richness. In a word? ‘Like.’"
-- Professor Jane Long, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), La Trobe University, Australia
"This excellent collection of critical work on the way Facebook influences and has become part of higher education is both timely and necessary. It brings together a series of diverse perspectives that reveal how online learning cannot be reduced to simplistic policies and standardised techniques but instead is the working out of the intricate patterns of desire, attention, information and identity that is, after all, the reality of all educational encounters. Kent and Lever and their contributors have produced a work of great value, that also tells us much about the way Facebook has changed human social interaction."
--Professor Matthew Allen, Head of School and Professor of Internet Studies, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia
