Written by: Rob Cover
Abstract: This paper addresses some questions which have arisen around the separation between study and social life in the author’s use of Facebook as a first-year teaching and learning tool. A frequent comment made by students who participated in the use of Facebook as a course learning tool is that contributions they made to study forums which appear on their own page’s wall can be “embarrassing” or “awkward” when read by friends who are not also students in the same course. The comment raises questions as to how the semi-public site of Facebook operating in teaching and learning modes has implications for privacy and anonymity. Students’ questions about such comments expressed a desire for their work to remain “private” (unseen by those other than the examiner or moderator), although were choosing a career in media production, publication, journalism or other writing. What is it about Facebook in particular that evokes questions of privacy? As a teaching and learning tool, Facebook provides an environment in which anonymity and the separation of different elements of one’s learning, study and social or personal lives are made more complex. What does the breakdown of context and distinction do for processes of learning? Theorising the relationship between privacy and the use of Facebook and other social networking sites as teaching and learning tools, this article presents a summary of its use in media and communications teaching, the mechanisms by which privacy questions are invoked in this context, the ways in which its use opens new and unexpected ways of thinking about pedagogy in relation to the everyday, and the factors that invoke questions as to how online social networking identity is managed by students using Facebook as a prescribed learning tool.
Keywords: Social networking, privacy, pedagogy, interactivity, identity