Herbert SHIU Joseph FONG Jeanne Lam

 Introduction  Facebook features  Facebook as an education platform  Case study  Conclusion

 a feasibility study of using social networking websites, in particular Facebook, for conducting courses as a replacement of expensive traditional electronic learning platforms

 Internet has become a necessity of modern people for communication and information sharing purposes  Facebook ◦ was introduced in 2006 ◦ A social networking website ◦ ¼ Internet users are active Facebook users ◦ Can be accessed via all web browers and devices

 Free – free of charge  Group – users can be divided into groups  Page – create Facebook pages for particular organizations  Privacy – it is possible to set control privileges of individual items  Notifications – supports user notifications of all updates to items  Photo albums – supports user level and group level photo albums

 Discussions – supports discussions with respect to a message, a photo, a photo album  s – supports internal s between any two Facebook users  Events – supports event managements  User main page – shows all updates  Chatting – supports real time chatting  User defined software – software developers can develop  Activity log – all operations are logged

 User creations ◦ registration with Facebook with preferably university accounts  Course preparations ◦ create a Facebook page for each course  Teaching materials preparation ◦ Convert PowerPoint files into Facebook photo albums which can be accessed with various devices ◦ Post links of videos or other course materials to the course Facebook page  Conducting lectures and tutorials ◦ Can present the original PowerPoint files or Facebook photo albums ◦ Use the discussions for Facebook albums as a discussion platform  Discussions ◦ Facebook notifies users for all changes related to the course ◦ Users can add comments to any materials posted on the course Facebook page for discussions  Assessments ◦ Software developers can develop Facebook applications with Facebook API for assessments and there are Facebook applications for creating quizzes

 the use of Facebook for education have the following advantages: ◦ true cross platforms and cross devices, as almost all computers and mobile devices support Facebook, ◦ easy distributions of course teaching materials, ◦ supporting blog-like discussion on individual items, ◦ supporting online quizzes as assessments, and ◦ user friendliness as no training is required

Q & A