Is your school socially neworked?
Does your school allow you to use social networking as a teaching tool in your classroom? I'm curious to find out how common it is in other institutions.
Our school, at the advice of the corporation that owns it, has rules that bar instructors from sending or accepting friend requests from students on, say, FaceBook, citing it as a violation of the school's non-fraternization policy. LinkedIn, however, is allowed.
How does it work at your school?
Facebook has been a great tool for 'study groups' for our students. Whether scheduling a meeting amongst each other, or studying through facebook, I think that many of my students appreciate this technology.
We do not allow networking with students as well, however I can see some value in this communication style. Would creating an alias breach this?
We have a strict no fraternization policy at our school. So individual or personal facebook, or any social media sites are not shared with the students. However, we have a campus site that we use to put up pictures of our students, graduation, and any special events that we may have. We also use an online gradebook called engrade.
Same at my college with an exception for Linked In ( due to its professional nature I suppose).
The same, although I encourage students to set up a professional social networking file for potential employers to view which includes some of their projects.
This is the same policy at our school as well.
We do have some limited social networking through forums that we can set up within the school; however, I have not observed any great buy-in on this type of social networking from the students.
I understand the rationale between not allowing us to be friends with students on facebook while they are students; however, I wish there was some way that we could set up course-only groups or some way that we could legitimately use facebook to interract with the students. I see benefit in that as the students are on facebook constantly. Students also report that they were able to do this in high school with their instructors, so it seems to me that it's not an unreasonable idea.
This is the same at my school as well. We are not allowed to contact students on social networking sites or "friend request" them. (This also is considered a violation of our non-fraternization policy).
Once students have completed their courses, however, contact in this manner is allowed.
