The Facbook Conundrum

We use Vula as our LMS at UCT.  Our Gynae Vula site was criminally boring when I first joined the Department.  I found that there were concepts I wanted to convey to students with pictures, and I did not at the time realise that one could do this in Vula, so I started a Facebook page, and created albums for each disease.  It was very time consuming to find pictures for the site, and as I progressed through the MPhils ast year, I realised that I was being very teacher-centred.  I thus wanted to give the students ownership of the page.  I asked for them to send me useful photos; I asked them to help me create albums; I put up clinical problems for them to brainstorm about, but they didn't take me up on any offers.  I couldn't understand why. I thought I was engaging them in a 'language' they understood, and giving them a golden opportunity to particpiate in their own learning...

The site has degenerated into a photo album of all the student small groups that I teach in one session in the community.  Of course the students comment on these pictures, but this is in no way contributing to their learning!  The thinking behind this was to draw them into the site and hope they would look at the albums.

What I discovered today is that I missed a critical step- I failed to do a needs analysis.  This was an 'aha' moment for me.  Students are brilliant at coming up with great ideas, and I think I will be able to identify gaps in the e-learning aspects of our programme.  I will have to think carefully about how I ask them for feedback.  I want creative and reflective ideas, not only things like "we want all the Powerpoints on Vula". 

What an obvious step o have missed out!