Social Networking Project for Language Students
Those who attended the Learning and Teaching Forum on Feb 17th might have seen on the programme a session on using social network sites for educational purposes. This session was reporting on a project in which Facebook was used to support students going on a year abroad, and to foster their informal learning and intercultural awareness. It was initially funded in 2008-09 by an internal grant from the college’s Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund, and was then able to continue into 2009-10 thanks to funding from ESD, the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, and the School of Law.
In this project, the model which was used to support students was that of peer mentoring. Students in final year in modern languages (and, in 2009-10, law) were given training in mentoring and moderating online discussions, and they then used a Facebook group to mentor students in earlier years, providing them with practical information about different countries, universities and cultures. An additional benefit was the creation of a wiki – WikAbroadia – for gathering together all the information on the different parts of the Facebook group into one place. The wiki is still under construction but can be viewed here.
There will also be papers given on the project at two conferences later this year: Digital Humanities 2010 and Languages in Higher Education 2010, the conference of the HEA Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies.
There’s more detail at the project website, including a link to the presentation and also a literature review and bibliography on the use of social network sites within higher education.
Photo Credit