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Tom Payne is a postgraduate tutor with the Department of Theatre, Film & Television Studies.  Recently he has quite effectively been using Facebook groups as part of his teaching, something he initially trialled at Coleg Ceredigion.

It serves as a space in which students can discuss lecture material and performances they have seen outside of time allocated for seminars.  Tom has also been using Facebook groups as a forum for discussions of groupwork.  This allows him to monitor the way students arrange rehearsals and meetings, as well as keeping track of who isn't contributing or groups that are struggling.

After discussing this with Tom, Andrew Filmer decided to offer students on two of his modules the option of using a Facebook group.  Andrew was already using the blog tool on Blackboard for one of the modules, so extending it with a Facebook discussion group seemed a good idea.

As a result, Andrew has created some Facebook Groups that students have taken advantage of - both to ask questions of Andrew and each other and also to respond to each other’s posts.  This has been helpful in that it provides Andrew with a gauge of sorts when planning seminar classes. The Facebook Groups serve simply as a discussion space; they are not used for any sort of assessment.