Case Story: Maths Support Facebook Group
Case Story: Maths Support Facebook Group
| Summary | For Emerge June 2008 Workshop | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group / workshop | Status | |||
| Project details... | ||||
Situation
What was the setting in which this case study occurred?
Coventry University Faculty of Engineering and Computing.Task
What was the problem to be solved, or the intended effect?
At the beginning of May 2007, a member of staff (me - John Goodband) at Coventry University was asked by two 2nd year maths students to create a Facebook Coventry Maths group. They felt that the maths students needed an informal discussion forum that was somehow independent of the university. Conversely, they also wanted staff input to the group, which was why they asked me to create the group.Actions
What was done to fulfil the task?
I immediately created the group, calling it (unoriginally) Coventry Maths. I made a decision to limit membership to Coventry University students. Rather than email students, which I felt may have introduced too much formality, I relied on word of mouth to advertise the new group.Results
What happened? Was is a success? What contributed to the outcomes?
Within 1 month of creation, the group had attracted 48 members. This included 8 members of staff, who had (like myself) joined Facebook specifically to become members of the Coventry Maths group. Most members of staff chose to avoid membership of Facebook. Although a few interesting maths discussions appeared, the majority of threads were friendly non-maths banter. During induction week for the 2007/2008 academic year I gave a brief presentation to the new intake, mentioning the existence of the Coventry Maths Facebook group. After 1 week, only one new student had joined the group. During this week, a new group, subversively called the Coventry University Numeracy Team (N.B. the acronym) was created by five of the first year students. This group not only attracted first year students, but also became popular with the second and third years. I was the only member of staff to join, since others were offended by the acronym. Although it did not stimulate a large amount of on-line maths debate, the new group did achieve something which had not previously occurred – inter-cohort socialisation of the first, second and third years. This resulted in much informal peer support, notably between the third and first years. Several first year students contacted me directly on Facebook with either maths questions or enquiries about their courses.Lessons Learned
What did you learn from the experience?
It is apparent that students want social networking sites such as Facebook to be in their own domain. Attempting to persuade them to join an existing group, which they may (erroneously, perhaps) perceive to be controlled by “the authorities” simply results in them creating a new group within which to freely air their attitudes. In addition, in my opinion, academics who choose to ignore Facebook et al are missing an opportunity to offer additional support to students.Licensing
This document has not been assigned a license.
