Student Facebook groups as a third space: between social life and schoolwork

Abstract

The paper examines educational potentials of Facebook groups that are created and managed by students without any involvement from teachers. The objective is to study student-managed Facebook groups as a ‘third space' between the institutional space of teacher-managed Facebook groups and the non-institutional, personal space of the Facebook network. The main study of the article examines six student-managed Facebook groups and provides an analysis of a total of 2247 posts and 12,217 comments. Furthermore, the study draws on group interviews with students from 17 Danish upper secondary schools and a survey answered by 932 students from 25 schools. Based on the survey and interviews, the paper concludes that Facebook is an important educational tool for students in Danish upper secondary schools to receive help on homework and assignments. Furthermore, on the basis of the analysis of Facebook groups, the paper concludes that the examined Facebook groups can be characterised as a third space of ‘school life' where students blend their personal, social life with academic schoolwork.

Keywords:

• Facebook
• community
• informal learning
• secondary education
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Janus Aaen is a Ph.D. fellow at the Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests include student experience, online education, new media and ICT-based educational design.

Christian Dalsgaard is Associate Professor at the Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Aarhus University, Denmark. His area of research lies within the field of online education and educational technology, and his research is primarily concerned with the study of learning potentials of online media.