Changing the Conversation: Facebook as a Venue for Online Class Discussion in Higher Education

In this paper, the author reports on a study of the online activity of students in a final-year unit in the Internet Communications course at Curtin University. Student activity was recorded in the discussion forums of the Blackboard learning management system for three instances of the same unit, in 2011 and 2012. Then, in the latter two of these instances, an additional discussion forum was added, on Facebook, and activity was also recorded....