Collaborating with Library Course Pages and Facebook: Exploring New Opportunities

Abstract

Technologies like library course pages and Facebook offer new opportunities for librarians and faculty to collaborate, integrate library content and services into student work spaces, and support and expand student learning. During Spring semester 2011, a library course page was developed for a graduate level education class and sent to the instructor for review. That led to comment and expansion of content on the course page. Growing out of this interaction the librarian joined the course Facebook group to explore this venue as an embedded librarian. This article includes both the librarian’s and the instructor’s perspective about this work. Collaborative use of social networking tools offers promise for a deeper and a wider range of learning opportunities by potentially enlarging the range of participants in the learning process and by moving class conversations beyond the limits of traditional course management systems.