Advising on Facebook

In case you are not yet convinced that it's beneficial for you to have an account on Facebook/Myspace, Art Esposito (who has authored on this blog before) recently published an article for the National ACademic ADvising Association titled, Saving Face(book): Engage Through Facebook and Retain Relevance.

Pulling from many different sources, the article begins to lay the foundation for a correlation between an advisor's relevance to a student's world, which includes Facebook, and a student's increased engagement on campus, which ultimately leads to a more successful student.

Art also pulls from his own experience as an advisor with a Facebook profile:

As an advisor, I maintain a Facebook profile and an Advising Group with over 300 friends and 262 advisees in my Group. I engage them in conversation about responsible computing and help them understand reasonable behavior—primarily by modeling it for them. I use Facebook  to deliver informational advising, appointment reminders, and programming invitations and publicity. With 75% of my caseload on Facebook, I would be foolish to ignore this opportunity. But there is more to student engagement than this.

At VCU, we believe that advisors’ three main responsibilities are informing students, relating to them, and enriching their undergraduate experiences. It’s the middle component—relating to students—that is most important to engagement and where Facebook can be most beneficial in advising. I engage my students on personal and “friendly” levels that secure my role as an advisor/friend; this strengthens the trust-based relationship we share, assures my relevance, and increases their level of engagement (see Rawlins and Rawlins, 2005 for an understanding of “advising as friendship”).

The most important thing to observe concerning Facebook is that it does not represent “college” to our students—this is where they socialize. We are the outsiders—the visitors—and must appreciate that when we try to encourage reasonable and responsible behavior. We will gain nothing by policing these sites with an aim toward listing prohibited behavior. If we engage students on their terms, we can better affect the change in behavior we desire and strengthen their engagement. In the two years I have used Facebook, I have seen students change their behavior simply because they know I can access their profile. I have commented to some, confidentially, encouraging more reasonable and responsible choices in things they have posted. Response to these “interventions” has always been positive and followed by voluntary behavioral modification. I have over 300 student "friends" on Facebook and very few have blocked me from viewing their content.

A recent survey of my Facebook students revealed that 88% of them appreciate access to me on the network with only 18% feeling uncomfortable with my presence. Furthermore, when comparing my caseload on Facebook to VCU’s First-year population, my students showed a higher level of academic success with 86% achieving good academic standing at the end of their first term, versus the 81% overall average for the VCU class of 2010. By embracing Facebook appropriately and appreciating the possibilities, academic advisors can maintain relevance, increase student engagement and success, while affecting change through trust-based dialogue to better results than afforded by a punitive approach.