Facebook usage outside of the classroom

Abstract

This exploratory case study was a follow up exercise after performing a similar piece of research that was done regarding the usage of Twitter outside of the classroom. In this scenario, the Social Media platform utilized was Facebook. The objective of this study was to see if it could be used as a tool to maintain student engagement with course material via pedagogical objectives such as generating interest in the topic of study, maintaining a conduit for additional communication between the student and instructor (and the students themselves) in addition to creating an opportunity for informal learning via the sharing of additional contextually relevant content. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected from the students from a particular course over a period of two academic years (2016-2017/2017-2018). The data collected was in the form of a before/after questionnaire to determine how students felt about the exercise and whether it was perceived to have any benefit or a positive influence on the overall course experience. Lessons learned from this exercise are also reported in addition to some suggested best practices.