How do you see a Facebook page as adding value to the learning
environment that you are creating?
I feel that Facebook could add tremendous value and exposure
to my learning environment in many ways.
Facebook can be utilized to communicate training opportunities, events,
and calendars to employees. It can also provide access to online discussions
and collaboration, allow for the sharing of training materials and resources,
provide links to videos and other multimedia, share pictures, provide
instructor biographies, and allow instructors and students to interact. Since employees are located around the
country and in Canada, it would be nice to allow learners to view pictures of
other employees and create groups for collaboration and sharing purposes. I can also see this being extremely useful
for new hire orientation, helping students navigate their learning requirements
and opportunities.
Given that you would use private pages for internal
postings, are there ways that you would try to encourage an ongoing community
or commitment through the Facebook venue?
In order to sustain an ongoing community or commitment to
the learning environment through Facebook, I would encourage students/learners
to like the page to be eligible to receive training updates and offerings,
access to course ratings and reviews, and training news. It can also
communicate motivational messages, daily updates, team-building opportunities,
provide access to free downloads, and interactive polls and surveys, to name a
few. In addition, they would have access
to their individual groups, employee images, and employee contact information.
How would you plan on maintaining such an outward-facing
social presence?
In order for the Facebook page to be a useful resource for
employees, it would have to be relevant and contain timely information. It would need to be maintained and updated
consistently to include new information so employees return to it often and
reply on it for informational purposes.
It will be important to know the audience and what is important and
relevant to them. What do they expect to see? What types of information would
keep them returning to the page? I
would want to understand what they expect to find on the Facebook page and what
they feel would be beneficial to them. I
can think of so many great topics that can be included. It is a great way to communicate scheduling
changes, instructor changes, new course releases, training requirements and
upcoming compliance deadlines.
Would you maintain this yourself or share the
responsibilities with the learners in your environment?
I think I would probably maintain the core components of the
page myself, however I can see many benefits with allowing learners in my
learning environment to share feedback, questions, comments, pictures, etc. Of
course this would need to be moderated, but I can definitely see value. I would want to establish rules for posting
content, and share guidelines and best practices for doing so. We would also need to establish policies and
procedures for employees to follow in regards to use of offensive terms, and
clearly state what will and will not be considered acceptable.
Are there other comments and notes that you want to make
about your personal learning and/or the challenges that will lie ahead as you
start thinking about the expectations that others may have as outcomes from
your learners?
In terms of Facebook, I would need to work closely with IT
to discuss potential risks or concerns.
Would Facebook be available to employees from within the Intranet? What would this entail? Security would be a big concern overall. As a company, we are in the process of
rolling out a new Intranet later this month.
It will offer employees access to newsfeeds, communities and other collaboration
and sharing tools. Facebook could be a
nice fit for this type of interactive environment and something that should
maybe be considered.
Also related to Facebook and security, I would like to
consider placing a link to the learning management system from the Facebook
page. This would allow learners to
enroll directly from the page where they are viewing upcoming training
opportunities. It would be nice to have
these integrated.
I am sure there will be many hurdles and challenges with
implementing this, but I think it could be a real asset to the learners in my
learning environment.
I really like the idea of the internal link that would allow learners to directly enroll. It removes that middle step of them locating it on their own, which would cut down on the amount that may think they will “do it later”. There definitely has to be rules that you as the admin/moderator can set in place and use as a way to enforce the behavior expected out of your participants, for the most part individuals should comply, but if the rules of the group were written out, there would be very little room for argument. I agree that a FB page offers an endless amount of opportunity in terms of connecting, sharing info, organizing events and creating a group forum.
ReplyDeleteThanks Shannon - my goal would be to make enrollment as efficient as possible - that should not be the tough part for the learners. I think making that step available wherever possible helps the learners to take advantage of training offerings. Every little bit helps!
ReplyDeleteWe have a company Facebook page that we also use for recruiting and I know we have moderators for that page. Because it is public facing, we need to make sure there is nothing profane, rude, discriminatory, etc posted there.
Thanks!
Cathy