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Penn State Professor Will Use Facebook.com to Teach Class

Katlyn McGraw (September 2006)

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. - Brian Smith, a Penn State Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology and Education recently announced his plan to utilize facebook.com this fall in a class that focuses a significant portion of its time on human interaction with technology.

He chose facebook.com after leading a student panel at last year's Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium hosted by Penn State's Educational Technology Services. He found that the majority of students reported spending significant time on facebook.com and even using it as a resource to communicate for class projects. Students were already using the website for academic purposes, so Smith decided to take the idea one step further.

Smith created a group on facebook.com that includes him, his teaching assistant, and students enrolled in the class, which meets in person each week. Members of the group are able to post assignments and announcements on the board. The group is visible to all facebook.com members, however only members of the group are able to view class discussions. Smith did this to relieve student concerns about their ideas and discussions becoming public, allowing students to speak freely.

Students have also listed Smith as their friend so they can communicate with him in other ways. Being listed as friends on facebook.com is not required for the class, but many students have chosen to list Smith as their friend. Smith said that he does not use any of the privacy settings provided by facebook.com for his personal profile. Instead he selectively chooses the information he puts on the Web site. Students also have the option to place privacy settings on their personal profiles to determine what members can view.

Promptly addressing student questions and concerns is a priority for Smith. Facebook.com’s mobile feature sends text messages to his cell phone when students send messages through its internal system or post to his “wall.” If there is an emergency, or a student asks an important question, he is able to respond while standing in the middle of the grocery store or an airport security line. Most course management systems do not support content delivery to cellular phones, hence Smith’s interest in using facebook.com to see if the mobile message features allow him to respond quickly to class questions, discussions, and activities.

As an associate professor with a joint position in both the College of Information Sciences and Technology and the College of Education at Penn State, Smith focuses his research on improving computer systems used for learning in everyday settings. He uses facebook.com as a case study of human interaction with technology in his class. Not only is it a way for the class to communicate, it is a source of relevant discussion that may be applied to other types of programs.

Smith acknowledges that facebook.com does not have all the capabilities needed to run his class. But, as an educational technologist, it is his job to explore new and developing alternatives. In addition to facebook.com, Smith utilizes other web sites and services such as Edison Services to manage his syllabus. He is also experimenting with Apple Computer’s iTunes U during the semester to store and make available to students documents, videos and other materials he incorporates into his courses.

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The Penn State College of Education serves approximately 2,800 undergraduate and 1,200 graduate students each year. The College prepares administrators, counselors, psychologists and researchers, as well as K-12 teachers in 21 different specialty areas. All of the College of Education graduate programs, that are ranked by the U.S. News & World Report, appear at least in the top 15, with six programs in the top ten.The College's Higher Education Administration program is ranked 1st and the Workforce Education and Development program is ranked 2nd. The College is known nationally for its education research and outreach, housing such centers as the Center for the Study of Higher Education, the Center for Science and the Schools, the Mid-Atlantic Center for Mathematics Teaching and Learning, and the Regional Education Laboratory--Mid-Atlantic.

For more information on Penn State’s College of Education, contact EdRelations@psu.edu, call 814-863-1192, or visit www.ed.psu.edu.