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"Although social networking sites (SNS) are increasingly popular among students, their academic application is unfolding on trial basis and best practices for integration into mainstream teaching are yet to be fully realised. More importantly, is the need to understand how these sites shape academic relations and participation of heterogeneous students, particularly in resource-constrained African environments. The speculation about meaningful educational uses of SNS possibly rests on the complexity of grasping the multiple horizontal and vertical interactions that unfold via these sites. This study examines academic relations on Facebook with a view to generating a nuanced account of how power is reinforced or disrupted in interactions mediated by Facebook. The paper analyses the Facebook wall and forum postings of 165 first year Information Systems students and employs Anderson's model of six types of interactions to explore student experiences of the enactments of social power in Facebook engagements. Issues relating to power that emerged from Facebook interactions concerned asymmetrical engagements based on gender, breaching of hierarchical boundaries, compulsive academic use of Facebook, perceptions of vertical surveillance, lecturer and student projection of themselves and impression management. The paper recommends that learning with and from Facebook demands identification of leverage points in various stages of Facebook interaction."

"The purpose of this exploratory investigation was to share the strengths, challenges, and tensions of using Facebook in an undergraduate nursing program. The observations presented have emerged from information shared by study participants and the professional insights of the three researcher-authors who represent perspectives from nursing, education, and technology-enabled teaching and learning. The theoretical framework used to guide the study was Drexler's (2010) Networked Student as well as ideas based on work by Siemens (2010) and Downes (2012). Findings suggest that use of Facebook in professional programs such as nursing provides an opportunity for the modeling of professional behaviour by students and teachers. However, concerns about privacy, misinformation, and a lack of professionalism are also present in the discussions of Facebook in professional programs. As a learning strategy, Facebook is recommended when pedagogical benefits are anticipated and clear and transparent guidelines regarding its use have been established by the user group. It is respectfully acknowledged that there are many social media options available to students and teachers to support learning in a professional program. Facebook, however, was the focus of this study given its unique prevalence among university students at the present time. The paper is a first step in looking at how Facebook and other social media experiences may play a role in supporting learning in professional programs offered by universities."

"This paper reflects on the use of Facebook as an online learning environment for first year design students from 2008 to 2011. Between 2008 and 2010 three student cohorts from the University of Adelaide engaged with their peers through forums hosted by Facebook, submitting work-in-progress imagery and critiquing peers' submissions. In 2011 the study expanded to include national and international collaborators with first year cohorts from Swinburne University in Australia, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore also participating, allowing students to interact with their global peers. The online forum facilitated increased peer interaction, particularly between local and international students, and improved academic performance as a result of consistent feedback from a range of sources. At the end of 2011 students from the four participating cohorts between 2008 and 2011 were invited to take part in a survey reflecting on and evaluating the learning experiences in Facebook. The results highlighted many positive outcomes regarding the online forum, and have led to the establishment of a series of recommendations for the future use of Facebook as a learning tool, outlined at the conclusion of this paper."