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Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Teachers around the world are using Facebook to connect learners within and beyond their classroom walls, applying practical application of critical digital skills to the learning of new content and skills while fostering classroom community.

Categories: Content Sharing

Tags: social media, messaging, social media, communication, content sharing, mobile, polling, social

Cost: Free

Key Features

Create private groups to create classroom communities within which instructors can post class announcements, share out assignments and links, and poll class members, and learners can support each other.
Develop digital literacy skills such as communication, collaboration, and digital citizenship by encouraging group discussions around class topics or activities.
Use Facebook live to support distance learning and recording and saving of in-class instruction so students can re-watch recorded lessons.
Share ideas and learn from other educators using Facebook through the hundreds of Facebook groups dedicated to using Facebook in the classroom.

Create private class groups to communicate information and assignments and facilitate group communication and collaboration.

Use polls to gather student input and check learner understanding.

Evidence of Effectiveness

As the world’s largest social media platform, many adults are comfortable with using the basic features of Facebook. Given this familiarity, teachers around the world are finding creative ways to use Facebook to increase student engagement and retention while fostering communication, collaboration, digital citizenship, and digital literacy skills needed to effectively work in the digital age.

What They're Saying

An adult school in Southern California uses a closed Facebook group between staff, current trainees and alumni from a health care training program so they can provide support to each other. The alumni motivate and provide mentoring to current students and often share job opportunities to help them secure work upon graduation.
—Shared by Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, Sacramento County Office of Education

We have effectively used closed Facebook groups to create an online professional learning communities for primary school educators and education administrators in Cambodia. We continue to use this platform to build an online community of practice, disseminate teaching and learning resources, share success stories and best practices, and engage and motivate teachers. Additionally, the platform is used to send reminders about key activities, nudge members through push notifications and/or tagging features, and connect project participants and stakeholders to engage with trainers on areas of support and learning by posting a question, direct messaging or group chat. To date, we have over 200 members in the Khmer Literacy group and member engagement on a daily basis –
—Victoria Neff, Assistant Director, EdTech Center @ World Education

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