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Using Facebook Groups to Extend the Classroom Experience
Louis P. Nemec
This paper was completed and submitted in partial fulfillment of the Master Teacher Program, a
2-year faculty professional development program conducted by the Center for Faculty Excellence,
United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, 2013.
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Abstract
Educational research has demonstrated the effectiveness of using “online” discussion
formats outside the classroom to enhance in class learning. However, the effectiveness of
the Facebook group as a tool to extend classroom discussion has not yet been researched.
90% of college-aged students use Facebook regularly. Developing, preparing and
implementing a separate software platform is expensive and difficult. This experiment
sought to use an existing platform most college freshmen were familiar with to move the
discussion past the time limit of the classroom and enhance the students’ learning.
Quantitative results were mixed, but qualitative feedback from students was supportive of
continued use of Facebook groups in the classroom.
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Using Facebook Groups to Extend the Classroom Experience
Most teachers wish that they could extend student learning beyond the time
students spend in the classroom. Getting students to read and do homework might be the
first thing that a teacher would ask their student to do to learn outside of the classroom,
but perhaps they second thing they would wish and ask for might be an extension of the
discussion from class. Extension of the classroom discussion allows the student to reflect
on what they learned in class and leverages the collective knowledge and experience of
not only the teacher, but all the other students in the class. In the past there have been
numerous mediums with which teachers could attempt to extend the classroom
discussion. For this experiment, I compared two mediums; traditional student email and
classrooms groups run through the social media website, Facebook.
Facebook is a ubiquitous social media website which the latest estimates place
better than 90% of college aged students in the United States are profile owning
members. There are numerous reasons that students use Facebook to include staying in
touch with distant friends, but some of those reasons include checking up on nearby
friends and communicating likes and dislikes or opinions (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe,
2007).
One thing facebook has not been used for to my knowledge is interaction of
classes of students using the “facebook group” feature of the website. Facebook groups
allow a user to create a group where depending on the security settings, others can join-in
to participate in sharing photos, files, and comments, and every poster gets the same
hiearchechal “ranking”. This is different from a Facebook “page” that many companies
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and celebrities use where the owner of the page gets to have “top-billing” for their posts.
The group is more collaborative than the page. Administrators for the facebook group can
send a link to other potential members to join without the members of the group even
being facebook “friends”. This is highly useful at a place like West Point or any college
for that matter, where fraternization amongst undergraduate students and teachers might
be a concern.
Many other forms of outside the classroom collaboration have been tried, but they
lack an essential ingredient that makes the facebook group so desireable; student
membership. Many of these “other” forums require students to create new profiles,
remember user names and passwords and go to different websites to access the forum. By
using a facebook group, instructors are using a forum that the students are more than
likely, already logged into (Brush, Bargeron, Grudin, Borning, & Gupta, 2002).
Email is another forum which is used quite a bit by teachers and instructors, but
email presents the problems of oversaturation and the dreaded “reply all” button. If
you’re conducting an extended classroom discussion and you post a question via email,
you’re going to want students to use the “reply all” button so that other students can read
comments and responses. Sometimes, students forget, or you do and then you have to try
to remember who was sent what response, etc.
My hypothesis was that by using a facebook group to extend classroom
discussion, I would overcome some of the shortfalls found in other online discussion
forums available to teachers. Since students are already facebook members, are already
logged into the system when doing homework or reading, and because of the
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functionality of the facebook group itself, I thought this would be a great tool for
extending classroom discussion.
Method
Participants
For this classroom experiment, two classes of PL100, General Psychology for
Leaders, participated. There were 32 total students all enrolled in their first year of
instruction at the United States Military Academy at West Point. No extra credit for
participation in the experiment was given and students were not told that the instructor
was conducting research.
Procedure
One section (B hour; n=17) of the instructors two sections of PL100 was randomly
selected as the “Facebook group” class and the second section (C hour; n=15) hour as the
control class. Cadets in the “facebook group” class were sent a link to the facebook group
in the introduction email for the class. This link was mentioned in the first class session
and students were told that participation in the group was completely optional and that all
coordination for class would be carried out via the facebook group and by email.
Later during the semester, as the lessons called for extended classroom
discussion, the instructor sent discussion questions to both classes via traditional cadet
email, but additionally posted the question in the facebook group for B hour. The
instructor viewed comments and provided feedback in both email replies and in the
facebook group. A demonstration of what the facebook group looked like can be viewed
below in Figure 1.
Running Head: USING FACEBOOK GROUPS TO EXTEND THE CLASSROOM
Figure 1. Shows a typical view when the instructor posted a question along with video
and students responded. Items to note are the “Seen by everyone” checkmark and the
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lengthy comments by students which can be seen by all. Because of this, thoughts can be
added and built upon.
Measures
Students frequency of responses to “post classroom” discussion question prompts
were recorded for both groups. Statistical comparisons were also conducted to compare
students performance on tests. Finally, because extra credit opportunities were posted
using traditional email and the facebook group, participation in extra credit opportunities
were compared between the two groups.
Results
Quantitative Results
There was no significant difference in the grade point averages of the control and
Facebook class at the beginning of the semester. There were no significant differences at
the end of the semester either. 83% (14/17) of students in B hour (experimental) joined
and participated in the facebook group.
B hour (facebook class) did participate in 10% more extra credit opportunities
than the control class. The facebook class also participated in 50% more ungraded out of
class discussions than did their counterparts only conducting discussions via email. An
additional factor to this out of class discussion factor is the fact that while participation in
outside the class discussion was halved for the control class by the end of the semester,
participation dropped only by a factor of 33% for the facebook class.
B hour (M=95.60, SD=12.20) also scored significantly higher than the control, C
hour (M=87.27, SD=10.94) on the fifth mid-term exam given to all students enrolled in
PL100 (t=2.35, p < 0.05).
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Qualitative Results
When solicited for feedback at the conclusion of the class, two students in B hour
provided some of the best results I could ask for. One student remarked:
“…the Facebook group provided incentive for collaboration and constant communication
between cadets ensuring our continued growth and success as cadets and eventual Army
leaders. I would absolutely recommend the continued use of this resource for your future
classes as well as imploring other instructors to experiment with its use.”
And another stated, “…it was a really good idea. I mean, let's be real, we are all
on facebook anyway.”
Discussion
I think one of the most significant results from this experiment was the high level
of student participation in the facebook group. Students readily entered the group
(voluntary) and showed no wariness over teacher “intrusion” as stated in previous
research. This was true even though these were shell-shocked first semester “plebes” at
the United States Military Academy who had just completed their summer of Cadet Basic
Training. They would be understandably shy of joining a facebook group administered by
an active duty Army major, but they weren’t.
While there was 50% more participation in outside the classroom discussion in
the facebook group class than in the control class, this result is a little artificial. The
instructor had to actively encourage students to use the facebook group to comment on
each others’ thoughts and reflections. The instructor did this for the traditional email
systems, but email doesn’t provide a happy “like” button or the instructor’s smiling face
providing them reinforcement when they engage like the facebook group. This in turn is
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another strength of the facebook group. The quality of feedback is more than just words,
but included “emoticons”, the instructor’s (presumably) smiling face in a profile picture
and the ability to “like” things with a thumbs up.
The facebook group class performed better in every aspect of measureable
academics for the course as compared to the control class, but not significantly so. On the
other hand, they had higher grade point averages than their control counterparts, but not
significantly so. This causes me not to place too much emphasis on the significantly
higher score on the fifth mid-term exam. I do think it is important to mention that posting
extra credit opportunities in the facebook group seemed to increase participation in extra
credit by 10%. I feel like this was due to the visual affect of having a picture that said
“Bonus” or “Extra Credit” posted along with the message about a new opportunity. This
really captured students’ attention and reminded them to sign up for extra credit
opportunities.
Finally, the qualitative results may be the most important as they provide a clue as
to why students participated so freely in the facebook group. Many teachers might cite
lack of participation in an online forum for other software forums they have tried, but the
qualitative feedback from the students says, “use facebook, we’re already here!” And
also, the student feedback reinforces the result that students’ liked the positive
reinforcement provided by their instructor in the facebook group. They liked the
“incentive for collaboration”, which amounted to nothing more than my “liking” their
posts and my face next to a comment about their reflection or thought.
There were some threats to validity in this experiment that should be addressed in
future research on the topic. Threats to validity included experimenter bias, class
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differences, and time of day differences. As I was the grader of all their tests and
assignments, perhaps I favored the facebook group class over the control group when
grading. Blind grading of not only names, but sections in the future would be helpful
here. Also, the two classes may have been different due to the time of day that PL100
was assigned. Perhaps based on sports schedules I had more or less athletes in one of my
sections than the other and could have had other differences between the two classes. Or
perhaps students in my C hour class were more fatigued after having two classes that
morning before arriving at PL100. Further experimentation with an entire course to
balance instructor and time of day differences is recommended for future research.
It is amazing to me how simple this experiment was to conduct and with very
little resources required at all. Just like my students, I am already a facebook member and
use the website frequently. I use facebook groups to maintain contact with members of a
volunteer organization I am a part of, to keep in touch with members of my combat
company, and to coordinate my fitness activities. I think that my very basic research
should serve to encourage more teachers to use a tool that is already available to them.
Facebook groups allow for easy and enjoyable “post-classroom” discussion, extending
classroom learning in a format that students are already registered and familiar with.
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References
Brush, A. J., Bargeron, D., Grudin, J., Borning, A., & Gupta, A. (2002, January).
Supporting interaction outside of class: anchored discussions vs. discussion
boards. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative
Learning: Foundations for a CSCL Community (pp. 425-434). International
Society of the Learning Sciences.
Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C. & Lampe, C. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:”
Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites.
Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, 12: 1143–1168.
doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00367
Valenzuela, S., Park, N., & Kee, K. F. (2009). Is There Social Capital in a Social
Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and
Participation1. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 14(4), 875-901.