ERIC Number: EJ783443
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Dec-7
Pages: 1
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-5982
EISSN: N/A
For Professors, "Friending" Can Be Fraught
Lipka, Sara
Chronicle of Higher Education, v54 n15 pA1 Dec 2007
People connect on Facebook by asking to "friend" one another. A typical user lists at least 100 such connections, while newbies are informed, "You don't have any friends yet." A humbling statement. It might make one want to find some. But friending students can be even dicier than befriending them. In the real world, casual professors may ask students to call them by their first names, meet them for lunch, a beer, even. Most still don't think of themselves as pals. Most faculty members on Facebook keep their profiles professional--nothing racier than would be posted, say, on an office door. The consensus on friending seems to be: Accept students' requests but don't initiate any. That's one of the guidelines for "Faculty Ethics on Facebook," a group started by Mark A. Clague, an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Several dozen professors have joined the group, which also urges members not to troll students' profiles, friends or not. Even though students have become savvier about what they post--and how they adjust their privacy settings--faculty members still might discover things they wish they hadn't.
Descriptors: Profiles, Ethics, College Faculty, Computer Mediated Communication, Guidelines, Teacher Student Relationship, Privacy, Higher Education, College Students
Chronicle of Higher Education. 1255 23rd Street NW Suite 700, Washington, DC 20037. Tel: 800-728-2803; e-mail: circulation@chronicle.com; Web site: http://chronicle.com/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A