Facebook for e-moderation - a Latin-American experience

Abstract

Social Network Sites such as Facebook are being now used by many academics for learning purposes, taking into account studies that report that a majority of young students spend more time insocially related online activities when compared to time in classroom. In online education there are mature models for creating and conducting learning experiences, one of them is the 5 stage e-Moderation model. In this study we created an experience of doing e-Moderation of a learning process in Facebook. At the same time a comparison of interactions and learning between Facebook and traditional online discussion forums in a learning management system is performed. The participants of the course setting are university professors from diverse countries in Latin- America. Outlined are findings in organization of learning activities, new social motivation artifacts and intrinsic social behaviors, information exchange difficulties, enhanced and increased interaction, positive knowledge construction, critical thinking and reflection development, therefore leading the study results into creating effective e-Moderation learning activities in Social Network Sites.