Using the Facebook for Education

Reflection of the article, "Using the Facebook groups as a learning management system (LMS)"

by Qiyun Wang, Hury Lit Woo, Choon Lang Quek, Yuqin Yang and Mei Liu

Founded by Mark Zuckerber, Facebook is website for a social networking service which was launched in 2004. According to Wikipedia updated information, as of April 2012, there are more than 900 million active users. Once registering and creating a personal profile, users may exchange messages or automatic notifications. Users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, or other categorized groups. The applied linguistics of GSU shares a group to deliver news of the department activities.

     In this study of Wang et al., the Facebook was used as a learning management system (LMS) in two courses for putting up announcements, sharing resources, organizing weekly. According to the study, using the Facebook as a LMS has both advantages and disadvantages. The results showed that students’ preference to the Facebook as a LMS was favorable, but they complained about the difficulty in uploading various format of files and not being organized in a threaded structure. Students also comments about privacy matter which might be revealed to somebody not related to the courses.

      The participants in the study expressed some satisfactions and agreements in that the Facebook provides an efficient and useful interface and platform for sharing information and resources since it looked similar to a notice board. Interestingly, many students agreed that the Facebook implemented efficiently and successfully as an LMS though, master students appeared not to agree the satisfaction.

      While reading this article written by Wang et al. (2011), I learned about social affordance referring to “the extent to which the Facebook group could provide a safe and friendly environment in which the students could conveniently communicate and interact with one another.” Technological affordance implies “the extent to which the Facebook group could be used without technical difficulties” In the discussion section, the study pointed out that the Facebook still has a number of constraints and potentials to be used as an LMS.