At the University of North Carolina, for example, administrators created a pair of dummy Facebook profiles to demonstrate what can happen when students reveal too much information about themselves. These dummy personas, Ivana Bea Stalked and Lloyed Unemployed, reveal more info about themselves than you’d probably want to encounter, from their personal contact information to images of what they look like inebriated or in limited clothing.

Last fall, Malavenda caught a group of students selling cocaine and kicked them off campus. In response, they started a Facebook group called “We hate Pablo,” complete with directions to his house and instructions to hurt and eliminate him.

Or should schools stick to doing what they know best and leave it to higher ed to tackle these issues when students graduate and move on? The answer is probably somewhere in between. Schools, quite rightly, are concerned about online safety and student responsibility, yet it’s hard to teach proper behavior in a vacuum. Given the current environment, though, is it possible to craft the right kind of compromise and make it useful to students and teachers alike?

if you are going to get students to use another social system, like WebCT, you better be damn sure it is well implemented

Students don’t want to manage 2 or more social systems.

The other method is to do the above, but also create a group for the class. Within the group you can post homework notices and other class notices, as well as have an interface for students to discuss class issues. I also like having the class group because I can see all the students have joined, and I can manage the class a little easier. If I want to send Timmy a message I can do that very easily without having to scroll through my list of friends to find him. Other students can do the same.