PhD Pivot time

The big outcome from my interviews has been the realization that the subjects of my study are wedded to Facebook and that there's not much I can do about that. Each interview participant has come back saying they are using Facebook because everyone else is using it, and aren't using my tools because no-one else is. Several of my interview participants were selected specifically because of their posting frequency on my system - each posted a number of times, then stopped. The interviews revealed that they stopped because they discovered that everyone else was in Facebook, so if they wanted their posts to be seen and responded to, they needed to go there. And if they wanted to see what everyone else was sharing, then Facebook was the place to be. Perhaps in a different time, with a different cohort of students, this wouldn't be the case; but where I'm conducting my study, it's inescapable.

This result changes what I can do with regard to my study. The evidence is saying that regardless of what I do, there is no incremental improvement I can make to my system that will tip the balance - the network effects of students who are familiar with Facebook drawing the rest of the cohort into Facebook are overwhelming. This is an interesting developing in itself - it says a lot about the importance of various effects. It also says a lot about my original research questions: that to be an effective social network for learning, the space needs to be (a) private, (b) dedicated to learning, and (c) linked to curriculum.

The way the students are using Facebook indicates that (a) and (b) still apply, to some extent. Students are using a combination of "closed" (anyone can see the group, but needs approval to join) and "secret" (you need to be specifically invited to join) Facebook groups, so they are protecting their privacy in that way. In one sense, these groups are more private than the ones I can offer, since mine will always be vulnerable to Faculty oversight, whereas Facebook is unlikely to care about the contents of these groups except to algorithmically deliver advertising to the participants. These groups are dedicated to curriculum, and so my thoughts about students being concerned about friends and family not needing to be exposed to this content are still somewhat valid. However, the linking to curriculum isn't there at all. Several of my interviewees said that linking to curriculum would be valuable, but in the end that being in the same place as the other students was more important.

Which leads me to the conclusion that it may make sense to accept that I'm beaten, and start working with the enemy. I've started exploring the Facebook APIs, to see what is available. The features I'd like to be able to offer students include:

• Linking groups - students should be able to connect a group in the Medical Program to a Facebook group, so that links from one to the other can be created. The Medical Program's Portal can then give students links to the Facebook sites relevant to their groups.
• Curriculum linking - it would be good to give students the ability to easily link content shared in Facebook with curriculum within the Medical Program. How to do this is unclear - maybe a sharing tool within the Medical Program that pushed content to the right Facebook group? Each of the tools Facebook provides seems to be in some way limited that makes this difficult.

This shouldn't be the end if it, though. As my supervisor pointed out, it is a bit counterproductive to just assume that Facebook will be sufficient. What happens if the new cohort who arrive next year are wedded to another network, rather than Facebook? All it takes us a core of sufficiently active students to set up a group and make it interesting to others, to draw the rest of their cohort in one by one. It could be Slack or Pinterest or Instagram or Twitter or Evernote or Google+ (haha) or some other tool that becomes their central space for online interaction. To make this relevant and future-proof, and to prevent a system that tries to lock students into Facebook. I need to allow for extensibility, to encourage students to explore and find the right environment for them. How do do this in a rich and interactive way, while still coping with the tremendous variety of platforms out there, is an interesting question.

There are wider philosophical issues that come into play here, about what institutions should be doing and providing for their students, which I will cover in another post.