An Education in Facebook?: Higher Education and the World's Largest Social Network / Edition 1

by Mike Kent, Tama Leaver

Overview

An Education in Facebook? examines and critiques the role of Facebook in the evolving landscape of higher education. At times a mandated part of classroom use, at others an informal network for students, Facebook has become an inevitable component of college life, acting alternately as an advertising, recruitment and learning tool. But what happens when educators use a corporate product, which exists outside of the control of universities, to educate students?

An Education in Facebook? provides a broad discussion of the issues educators are already facing on college campuses worldwide, particularly in areas such as privacy, copyright and social media etiquette. By examining current uses of Facebook in university settings, this book offers both a thorough analytical critique as well as practical advice for educators and administrators looking to find ways to thoughtfully integrate Facebook and other digital communication tools into their classrooms and campuses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415713191
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/14/2014
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mike Kent is a senior lecturer in Internet Studies at Curtin University, where his research focuses on disability and the internet.

Tama Leaver is a lecturer in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University. He is also a research fellow in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre for Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation working in Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Chapter 1

The Revolution That's Already Happening

Dr Mike Kent & Dr Tama Leaver

Part 1: Transitions

Chapter 2

Challenges and Opportunities in Using Facebook to build a Community for Students at a UK University

Dr Nick Pearce

Chapter 3

"We use Facebook chat in Lectures of course!" Exploring the use of Facebook Group by first-year undergraduate students for social and academic support

Eve Stirling

Chapter 4

Facebook as a Student Development Tool

Shane Tilton

Part 2: Facebook in Learning and Teaching

Chapter 5

Beyond Friending: Psychosocial Engagement on Facebook and Its Implications for Academic Success

Catherine McLoughlin and Mark J. W. Lee

Chapter 6

What's on your Mind? Facebook as a forum for teaching and learning in Higher Education

Mike Kent

Chapter 7

Academic Armour: Social Etiquette, Social Media and Higher Education.

Collette Snowden and Leanne Glenny

Chapter 8

Exploring Facebook Groups’ Potential as Teaching-Learning Environment for Supervision Purposes

Mona Hajin

Part 3: Facebook as a Learning Management System?

Chapter 9

How Social Should Learning Be? Facebook as a Learning Management System

Tauel Harper

Chapter 10

Facebook and Blackboard as Learning Management Systems: case study

João Mattar

Chapter 11

Rethinking community? Facebook as a learning backchannel

Kate Orton-Johnson

Part 4: Facebook at College

Chapter 12

Facebook at Uni: Mutual Surveillance and a Sense of Belonging

A/Prof Marjorie D Kibby and Dr Janet Fulton,

Chapter 13

Facebook, Student Engagement, and the 'Uni Coffee Shop' Group

Dr Tama Leaver

Chapter 14

‘I think it's mad sometimes' - unveiling attitudes to identity-creation and network-building by Media Studies students on Facebook

Dr Kerry Gough, David Harte and Vanessa Jackson.

Chapter 15

Should We Be Friends? The Question of Facebook in Academic Libraries

Zara T. Wilkinson

Part 5: Boundaries and Privacy

Chapter 16

Unfriending Facebook? Challenges From an Educator's Perspective

Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie and Dr Clare Lloyd

Chapter 17

Role confusion in Facebook groups

Pernilla Josefsson and Fredrik Hanell

Chapter 18

Varying Cultural Conceptions of the Private Sphere and their impact upon the use of social media networks as educational tools: A German and Chinese comparison

Xun Luo and Fergal Lenehan

Part 6: (Re)Configuring Facebook

Chapter 19

Changing Facebook's architecture

Sky Croeser

Chapter 20

Facebook, Disability and Higher Education: Accessing the digital campus

Katie Ellis and Mike Kent

Part 7: Conclusions - Beyond Facebook

Chapter 21

Facebook Fatigue? A University's Quest to Build Lifelong Relationships with Students and Alumni

Maria L. Gallo and Kevin F. Adler

Chapter 22

Understanding the Social Media Ecologies of Employees within Higher Education Institutions: A UK-Based Case Study

Chris James Carter, Lee Martin and Claire O’Malley

Editorial Reviews

"Mike Kent and Tama Leaver have assembled a compelling array of studies of Facebook which range widely in their analytical preoccupations. They render significant insights for educators, students and policy-makers alike. At times intensely practical and at others more deeply theoretical, this intelligent collection generally eschews technological determinism and poses all the right questions. In their editing, Leaver and Kent have kept true to a sophisticated view which positions pedagogy, student and academic engagement and issues of identity at the core. The dynamic interaction between learners, teachers and technologies, and abiding issues including identity, privacy and copyright, assure the longevity of this work in relation to Facebook, and beyond. I read it thirstily and will benefit from its richness. In a word? ‘Like.’"

— Professor Jane Long, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), La Trobe University, Australia

"This excellent collection of critical work on the way Facebook influences and has become part of higher education is both timely and necessary. It brings together a series of diverse perspectives that reveal how online learning cannot be reduced to simplistic policies and standardised techniques but instead is the working out of the intricate patterns of desire, attention, information and identity that is, after all, the reality of all educational encounters. Kent and Lever and their contributors have produced a work of great value, that also tells us much about the way Facebook has changed human social interaction."

—Professor Matthew Allen, Head of School and Professor of Internet Studies, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia

From the Publisher