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===Selwyn N (2009) [|Faceworking: exploring students' education-related use of Facebook], Learning, Media and Technology, 34 (2), 157-174.===

What a load of fun Neil Selwyn must have had doing this research!
===Every day for 18 weeks he got to daily rubberneck on 612 students' Facebook wall conversations. These were students with publicly accessible Facebook profiles at a British university. For those educationalists who extol the virtues of Facebook in the educational context, Selwyn has some bad news. And for those detractors who lament the intellectual “de-powering” of a generation, Selwyn has some bad news.===

1. Recounting and reflecting on the university experience
(Example: "what did you make of today's lecture?! I thought it was amazing: 'crime is going down, but some is going up, but generally its going down-not all of it though...some [is] going up'. maybe he had a bet with himself, how many times he could repeat the same thing in one lecture?! I do love him though, I just want to hug him and scratch his head:) xxx" p. 161)

2. Exchange of practical information
(Example: "omg rach i hope u get this i havent got ur number we've got a psych essay due on fri!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" p. 163)

3. Exchange of academic information
(Example: "hey, u know 4 this vygotsky stuff, when ur taking notes on the text r u writing down wot it says in text or putting it in ur own words? xxx" p. 165)

4. Displays of supplication and /or academic disengagement
(Example: "Essay not going well. Arghhhhh! xxxxxx" p. 167)

5. Silly banter
(Example: "Genetic epistemology piaget vygotsky empiricism rationalism childhood assimilation accomodation.......AAAAGGG GGGHHHHHHHHH I DON'T CARE ANYMORE! You do realise we've been in the library for 9 SOLID hours??!!! We have no life.....especially as you're sitting next to me as i write this. love u xxxxxxxx" p. 168)

While I actually LOL while reading some of the student postings, Selwyn came up with these conclusions:

 * ===Facebook is used to maintain already tight-knit relationships: an offline-online trend. Students post in order to make some sense of their university experience, with roles learned, values understood and identities shaped. Using Erving Goffman’s term it’s called “facework”, or the preservation of self in being a student (p.171).===
 * ===“Facebook provides a ready space where the ‘role conflict’ that students often experience in their relationships with university work, teaching staff, academic conventions and expectations can be worked through in a relatively closed ‘backstage’ area. In this safe space students “rehearse and explore resistance to the academic role set” of being a student” (p.172).===

So what is Selwyn’s last word on the implications of Facebook for teaching and learning?
==="Rather than attempting to appropriate //Facebook// for educationally 'appropriate' or 'valid' uses, or else to regulate students' use through coercion or surveillance, university authorities and educators are perhaps best advised to allow these practices to continue unabated and firmly 'backstage'." (p. 172-173)=== ===While Facebook deserves no particular merit as an educational application, neither should it be feared nor dismissed. It does serve a “vital contribution to the successful provision of offline university education” (p.173).===

Neil Selwyn //London Knowledge Lab//
Thursday 13 March 2008 12.00 - 1.30 p.m. (Watch a video and listen to Neil Selwyn)