Facebook in the Classroom
Joseph E. Early, Jr, Professor of Church History and QEP Director, Campbellsville University
THIS TOOLKIT WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO
Use Facebook to help students think beyond the subject matter and make connections to current events.
KEY OBJECTIVES
- To identify key concepts for course material
- To use a Facebook group to allow students to make connections between current events and key concepts
- To encourage discourse among students through social media
IMPLEMENTATION STEPS
- Step 1- Begin by creating a private group on Facebook. This will allow you to approve new members to ensure only your students participate.
- Step 2- Divide your course into “Key Concepts.” There should be 3-4 concepts that are the theme of your course content. For example, one concept from my Church History course is “Church and State work in response to each other.” Ideally, divide each section or until of your course into a concept.
- Step 3- Discuss the acceptable use and digital etiquette with students prior to sending them the link to join the Facebook group. Students are informed that by joining the group they are agreeing to follow rules for acceptable use and digital etiquette.
- Step 4- Divide students into as many groups as there are concepts. Each member of group one will search the internet for a current event story that illustrates the concept being taught in class. (For example: Concept 1- “Church and State work in response to each other” students posted current event articles that depicted church or state responding to the works of the other.) Group 1 will post the current event article and give a brief rationale for how they see the course concept present in the article.
- Step 5- The remaining classmates will read the story and comment on the connections to course content in the comment section.
- Step 6- As the professor, you will moderate the comments and facilitate further discussion. For example, you may go into the comment section and ask, “How do you think Martin Luther would have responded to this event?” Or, “What do you think the motivations of the group depicted are?” Keep the conversation moving and make students feel comfortable hypothesizing.
- Step 7- Repeat this process with other groups as you move on to new course concepts.
- Step 8- (Extension) Consider having students make videos to share in the group about their research findings before turning in a research paper. This could act as an outlining and planning stage and allow students to receive feedback from peers before submitting their work.
DESCRIPTION
This tool kit shares ideas for using Facebook and current event news articles to help students connect history (or another content area) to current events. Professors will find resources to encourage students to discuss and connect course content to what they see currently happening in the world. There is also an extension idea for using this toolkit to encourage student digital creation.
REFLECTION
This toolkit has been underway in Dr. Early’s Church History course since the beginning of the Fall 2021 semester. Overall, students are making deeper connections between history and how it affects today’s world. Some challenges we have faced include students not fully reading the article or making connections. (Their first instinct seems to be to share their opinion about the current event.) However, through prompting students and encouraging them to think more deeply (by asking questions) they have given more insightful responses. When implementing this in the future, I would use previous students’ work (with names removed) to model the type of response needed.
RESOURCES
Dyer, H. (2016, March 28). Incorporating and Accounting for Social Media in Education (video). YouTube.
