The Café: creating the 'collaborative application for education'; a dedicated e-learning environment in Facebook

The pedagogical value of e-learning has led to the increased use of online learning environments within universities around the world. Facebook, the most popular social networking site in the world, affords learning qualities not commonly found within traditional online learning environments, such as learning management systems. Facebook’s intuitive interface, immense popularity and social focus make it an excellent host for an engaging and interactive online community, particularly for commencing students, who are new to university culture, and international students, who are potentially isolated within a large cohort. This paper explores the development of ‘the Cafe’, a new application housed within the Facebook framework, designed using five established principles of user-interface-design – visibility, usability, relevance, accessibility and interactivity. ‘The Cafe’ has been developed to take advantage of Facebook’s popularity, and to provide institutions with a dedicated e-learning environment that meets the needs of modern-day tertiary students and teaching staff.