Teaching on Facebook in a University in Thailand During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study

• Main Authors: Ulla, Mark B., Achivar, Jesthony S.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Autoethnography; collaborative autoethnography; COVID-19; Facebook group; online teaching
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/apssr/vol21/iss3/13; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/apssr/article/1393/viewcontent/RA_2012.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Studies agreed that the use of Facebook in classroom instruction offers benefits both for teachers and students. However, little is known about its use as an online teaching platform, especially in times of emergency health crisis such as COVID-19 when classroom teachers are not prepared to migrate to online teaching. Using the lens of collaborative autoethnography, this article reports on university teachers’ shared experiences and reflections on the use of a closed-class Facebook group’s (FBG) discussion forum and group chat (FBG messenger) as an alternative online platform to residential classroom teaching in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on our experiences and reflections, the use of FBG provided the students with an opportunity to explore their potentials as independent learners as they engaged interactively in various in-class practices remotely. Although there may be some issues (e.g., online fatigue, lesson, and class activities delivery), we argue that Facebook may have great potential to be an effective platform for online pedagogy in times of health emergencies, especially when schools do not have a learning management system (LMS).