Facebook in class (sorta)

I’ve tried to encourage students to communicate via message boards about course topics in the past, but with very limited success. Interestingly, the most successful use of message boards that I had was when one of my classes’ forums was hijacked by a student that the authors of “Creating and Connecting” would have deemed, “nonconformist.” At first, I was somewhat bothered by the way this student was using the forum as a social outlet, but as more and more students got involved, I found that the discussion began to build a bridge between their lives in my classroom and their lives outside of class. While they did not generate any groundbreaking mathematical ideas, they did build relationships and created an aspect of the course that was entirely their own. This helped establish an in-class environment where dialogue and discussion happened more easily.

With this experience in mind, one thing that I plan to do this coming school year that will leverage my students’ participation in social networks is to use group chats on Facebook Messenger. I know from personal experience that many students use this tool to communicate with groups in which there is some common interest. For example, in our school band most of the different sections of instruments maintain ongoing chats to discuss issues in band, in their section, or to just joke around with each other (which builds rapport and improves the in-class environment). In one of our chemistry courses, students started a chat mid-year last year and used it regularly to discuss homework, labs, and to study for tests. In each one of these cases, the teacher was not in the group.

My plan for this coming school year is to establish these types of groups for all my courses. I plan to tell my students that I may or may not be online to help them via chat (I will probably establish some kind of on-line office hours), but that at any time, they can feel free to help each other all they want. I hope this will allow them to have an ongoing, free-flowing discussion that will occasionally turn to mathematical topics. Meanwhile, I will be able to monitor the conversation and step in as needed to give a “nudge” in the right direction, or to deal with inappropriate actions and comments, or to just provide a comment related to whatever has come up in the conversation. Over the course of the year, I hope it will help me to bond with students in a way I have not been able to in the past, as well as help them with math. I suspect it will also allow give me the opportunity to talk to students about what kinds or conversations are “collaborating” as opposed to conversations that cross the line into the realm of cheating.