FACEBOOK AS LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: SOME EXPERIENCES IN BRAZIL

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 2 billion users around the globe. Brazil is the third country with more active accounts: around 117 million users and behind only India and United States. Over 80% of all Facebook users in Brazil are younger than 45 years old, which indicates a strong presence of students in the network. Many teachers and researchers are already using Facebook as a Learning Management System (LMS) as a way to make online learning more relevant and interactive for the students. In order to investigate the possibilities of using the Facebook as LMS, a research on the Brazilian Library of Thesis and Dissertations (BDTD) database was made, using the keywords “Facebook” and “Education” and got nearly fifty results in different areas, such as Sciences, Linguistics, Letters, Biology, Pedagogy, Mathematics and Physical Education. The methodology applied was a systematic literature review, which involved collecting published articles related to the topic and analyzing what could be learned through considering these collectively. The teachers worked with Facebook groups and invited the students to participate, where different kinds of activities were posted. Most students were satisfied with their learning experience using Facebook and when their impressions were examined, the students were found to consider that Facebook could be used as a LMS because it has many useful features, such as the sharing of course materials, instant messaging, opportunity to upload files, having discussions and getting instant notifications. In this paper many of these activities are described and, based on the results the teachers had, different teaching strategies using Facebook as LMS are proposed for different knowledge fields.