The Facebook Phenomenon

NC State held a panel discussion on "The Facebook Phenomenon" earlier today. The turnout was pretty good: there were a couple hundred people in the room, and the event was also available as a live webcast.  The archived version, apparently, will be available here.

It was an interesting session, and the diverse panelists each shared some interesting perspectives, from the UNC grad student who has researched Facebook usage patterns, to the IT administrator who framed the issue in terms of user education, to the pirate captain who described the Facebook experience from a user's point of view.  These and the other panelists all made some interesting points, and they all did a good job of discussing some of the larger issues that surround social networking sites like Facebook.

Due in part to the diverse perspectives on the panel, it's hard to boil the whole discussion down to an easily digestible takeaway point to share, so instead I'll offer my two (or three) cents on the matter.

Social networking sites represent one facet of the new participatory Web; sites like Facebook are allowing people to connect with other people in new ways, ways that are meaningful to those doing the connecting.  Professors and university administrators shouldn't ignore these new modes of connecting people together, but neither should they be overly insistent about trying to graft an instructional component onto this social space.

The frat party and the local bar that caters to students are social spaces, too, but it's rare (I hope) to see a professor attempting to teach a class there, simply because "this is where students interact".

Facebook is the latest website to succeed as a social interaction tool, and this success has led to heavy student adoption, so now the professors can't help but take notice.  However, I don't think that Facebook in and of itself is the most appropriate instructional tool available, and for most instructors, I would not recommend trying to use it as such.

In addition, I suspect that the perception among many student Facebook users is that this site represents a space for students.  The more professors and other "grown-ups" that invade this space, the less attractive it will be to some student users.

There are some potential dangers associated with using a social networking site, but I won't recount them here (see Tracy Mitrano's "Thoughts on Facebook").  Some of these dangers, however, only exist because the technology is still relatively new and unfamiliar.  People had to learn not to sit too close to the TV, and people had to learn to hang up on obscene phone callers, and now people are having to learn how to use social networking sites responsibly.

  Posted by swatkins ( Jan 30 2007, 05:41:21 PM EST ) Permalink