EduBridge Social

Bridging Social Networks and Learning Management Systems

Luciana Oliveira

and Álvaro Figueira

CICE/ISCAP & INESC TEC, Polythecnic of Porto, Rua Jaime Lopes Amorim, Porto, Portugal

CRACS/INESC TEC, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Keywords: Social Student Relationship Management, Educational Communication, Learning Management System,

Facebook Groups, Moodle.

Abstract: The exponential growth of social media usage and the integration of digital natives in Higher Education

Institutions (HEI) have been posing new challenges to both traditional and technology-mediated learning

environments. Nowadays social media plays an important, if not central, role in society, for professional and

personal purposes. However, it’s important to highlight that in the mind of a digital native, social media is not

just a tool, it is a place that is as real and as natural as any real-life world place where formal/informal social

interactions happen. Still, formal higher education contexts are still mostly imprisoned in locked up

institutional Learning Management Systems (LMS), while a new world of social connections grows and

develops itself outside schools. One of the main reasons we believe to be persisting in the origin of the matter

is the absence of a suitable management, monitoring and analysis tools to legitimize and to efficiently manage

the relationship with students in social networks. In this paper we discuss the growing relevance of the “Social

Student Relationship Management” concept and introduce the EduBridge Social system, which aims at

connecting the most commonly used LMS, Moodle, and the most popular social network, Facebook.

1 INTRODUCTION

The tendency to value and strategically frame the

development of social interactions transcends the

transactional and organizational needs and

environment or organizations at large, and of Higher

Education institutions in particular. It is a clear

reflexion on how communication has been evolving

since the growth and intensification of the use of

social media platforms, that impacts on how society

at large relates to organizations and, on a micro level,

on how individuals relate to each other. It reveals a

strengthening of the relationships between publics

and organizations and also the intensification of two-

way communication streams. In fact, social media has

been redefining how we relate to each other as

humans and how we as humans relate to the

organizations that serve us (Reuben, 2008). It has

been imposing a two-way dialog that brings people

together to discover and share information, share

ideas and build communities of people that share the

same interests.

The concept of Social Student Relationship

Management (Social SRM) consists of a

particularization of the Social CRM concept, applied

to the relationship between educational providers

(such as schools, universities and training centres)

and students supported by social media platforms.

Social SRM aims at amplifying the formal and

informal bonds between students and schools,

expanding their interactions into social conversations,

and strengthening educational ties through the

development of collaborative conversations that

provide mutually beneficial value and that,

ultimately, allows for the growth of social and

educational communities. It places organizations,

teachers and staff in student’s digital natural

environment, engaging them in personalized dialogs

that reinforce students’ role as empowered

participatory individuals in organizational strategic

development and also in the management of their

learning opportunities.

The educational dimension of Social SRM

comprises the set of relationship and interactions

between teachers and students, in social media, in the

domain of teaching-learning communication, in the

classroom administration and in the students’ social

integration. As a subsystem of internal organizational

162

Oliveira, L. and Figueira, Á.

EduBridge Social - Bridging Social Networks and Learning Management Systems.

In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2016) - Volume 1, pages 162-171

ISBN: 978-989-758-179-3

communication it brings organizational culture into

the relationship and builds upon it, since “students’

experiences depend on their social class backgrounds,

the responses of school staff to their behaviour within

schools, and the actions of students and staff that

create school cultures” (Parsons, 2014).

We believe that the quality of the communication

in a learning system significantly impacts on its

efficiency and that the state-of-the-art information

technologies, mainly social media, offers unlimited

resources for the communication’s streamlining and

diversification of formal and informal learning

(Dorin, 2013).

Social media has been boosting educators to drive

formal learning contexts into social networks aiming

at the development of learning communities that

allow for collaborative exploration and reflection of

ideas, in a cooperative and supportive atmosphere

(Palloff and Pratt, 2007). Besides offering

participants the potential to benefit from a ready

source of peer support it also provides the necessary

emotional support (Bruckman, 2006) to allow for

communities’ social inclusion.

In the next section of this paper we present the

background of the Social SRM concept and the

educational domains of its application, since our main

focus resides on the communicative / dialogical

nature of the interactions happening inside the

learning communities.

In section 3 a case study focused on the

educational use of Facebook groups is presented,

consolidating the main dimensions of the Social SRM

concept, where the need for a management /

interaction system is raised. Needs addressed in this

paper are essentially concerned with systems’

integration and social media information retrieval.

This is our key priority for the first stage of

development of the system presented in section 4.

In section 4 we introduce and present the

EduBridge Social system which aims to bridge

educational environments with social networks. We

begin by describing the system’s architecture, how it

integrates with Moodle and Facebook, and how

authentication is managed. In section 5 we detail the

main aspects of the system’s interface and the

system’s relevance / contribution in terms of potential

to improve the management of the educational

environment for teachers. Finally, in the last section

we present our conclusions and future work.

2 BACKGROUNG ON SOCIAL

SRM

The concept of Social SRM builds upon previous

research on the use of Facebook groups in education,

as reported by Oliveira (2015). In order to fully

clarify it, it is essential to present its three main

components.

2.1 Teaching-learning Communication

In this domain communication serves as a vehicle for

reaching educational goals. It encompasses formal

educational communication, which is sustained by a

curriculum and pedagogic model with clear

indications of contents, methods, requirements and

assessment, and the informal educational

communication, which is not institutionalized,

methodical, structured, intentional and sustained by a

previous definition of pedagogic goals. Informal

educational communication is more prone to social

media environments, thus it’s important to

understand that the absence of a curriculum and

pedagogic model doesn’t annul its educational

potential. The spontaneous, simple conversation and

group discussion that characterizes informal

communication may produce educational effects,

when contributing to behavioural changes in

individuals.

2.2 Classroom Administration

This domain is in direct dependency of the

organizational administrative communication that

regulates learning tasks, schedules and procedures.

Social media has proven to be an excellent tool for

classroom administration, in terms of processes

clarification and celerity, student responsiveness and

time economy. This is heavily sustained by the

amount of time and attention students dedicate to

social media.

2.3 Student Social Integration

This dimension is aimed at fostering the formation of

the sense of belonging and ultimately the

development of a learning community. It consists of

the most pure form of social interaction, relying

heavily on the establishment of meaningful

conversations that allow for the development of social

and emotional bonds. From the teachers’ point of

view, and as a community builder/manager, it

requires an engaging, motivational, cooperative and

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163

personal/informal communication approach that is

favoured in social media environments.

Educational Social SRM comprises a set of

communication domains that aim to foster student

integration and avoid disengagement or dropout. It

contributes to setting a welcoming school climate

prone to success and completion, which has been

defined as “…the quality and character of school life

experiences and reflects norms, goals, values

interpersonal relationships, teaching, learning and

leadership practices, and organizational structures”

(Bryant, 2013). For instance, in a blended learning

environment, social media provides two-way

exchanges between the classroom and the virtual

interaction environment in the relationship building

process – both environments being interchangeably

reinforced.

3 FACEBOOK GROUPS IN

EDUCATION

In this section we present evidence on previous

research (Oliveira 2015) conducted on the use of

Facebook groups, as an extension of the classroom

teacher-student relationship, into a more dynamic and

informal environment.

The aim of this case study was to discover,

investigate and assess the three components of the

educational dimension of Social SRM mentioned in

the previous section. Research also allowed to obtain

insights on the benefits, challenges and tech needs for

a broader implementation of this methodology.

The study was carried out during two semesters,

in three different subjects from the first, second and

third year from two different courses. The courses

were held in traditional classroom, with Moodle

support. A Facebook group was created for each class

and the students were invited to join. Though

participation was not mandatory, all of the students

having a Facebook profile joined the groups, except

for 3 students who didn’t own a Facebook profile and

didn’t wish to own one. Among the three classes there

were 99 students (grouped in 52, 34 and 13

participants) and one teacher interacting in three

separate Facebook groups. Facebook groups were

introduced to students as a complimentary support

platform in the first class of the semester and not as a

replacement for the institutional LMS, as Wang

proposes (Wang et al., 2012).

We must stress that the focus resided on the

communicative / dialogical nature of the interactions

happening inside the learning communities, mainly

because there was no particular objective assigned to

participants when these communities were formed.

Students were invited to join a “support community”

where anything could happen, in order to assure that

dialogue and relationships were spontaneous and self-

motivated, as already defended by some authors

(Deng & Tavares, 2013). Students were encouraged

to bring any subject they found relevant to the group.

All the groups’ interactions were retrieved from

Facebook, using the available API. In this process, the

following fields were collected on each groups feed:

post id, post author, post message, post type and

corresponding #comments and #likes. The posts

were classified in 5 main subject categories, which

were created to fit the natural and dynamic

discussions that emerged in the groups: (1) course

administration, (2) posts related to course contents /

curriculum, (3) course unrelated personal interests /

projects, (4) posts related to academic training and

personal development and (5) social messages.

Additionally, in order to better understand these

results and to dig into personal perspectives, students

were surveyed.

Concerning the domain of educational

communication and its specificities in the social

media environment, in the case study, the three Social

SRM dimensions were not equitably detected:

messages related to teaching-learning and course

administration rounded up to 40% each and messages

aimed at the student social integration rounded only

up to 20%. Still, it was possible to identify several

positive impacts from the implementation of the

above mentioned methodology, which were

consolidated with survey responses.

When asked if they would like to connect and

communicate with other teachers on Facebook, 89%

of the students responded affirmatively. When asked

why, these mention mainly: the celerity in

responses/clarification of doubts, the increased

interaction with the teacher, the improvement of the

communication with the teacher, the easiness to keep

up and the increased visibility/sense of presence of

course activities, discussions and administration, the

enlarged team spirit and the fact that teachers post

relevant content in course’s scientific domain.

Students were also questioned about their

perspectives on the social relationship they maintain

with their teachers, in order to provide a fuller picture

on the importance of the social dimension of this

relationship. 94% of the students believes that a good

social relationship between teacher and students is

fundamental for academic success and that teachers

do not invest enough on the formation of these

relationships (74%). 93% of the students would like

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other teachers to use Facebook for educational and

social purposes, increasing teacher-student

interactions.

When asked about the Facebook group

usefulness, effectiveness, communication and

relationship potential, students reported that it

contributes to a better working relationship with peers

(96%), it increases the socialization potential among

classmates (92%), it provides a better social and

professional relationship with the teacher (96%), it

increase their motivation to learn (84%) and that they

feel more actively participating and engaged in course

activities (90%), that their peers value their

contributions in the Facebook group (89%) and that,

in the Facebook group, the class works as cooperative

team (91%). Engagement in Facebook has also been

shown to be closely related to an increase in college

students' social capital, especially for those with low

self-esteem and life satisfaction (Deng & Tavares,

2013).

On the teacher perspective, the extension of

classroom communication into social media can

provide real benefits, but it can also pose some

challenges. Using Facebook groups to answer

students’ questions and doubts can be real time-

effective, since clarification becomes widely

available for everyone. When it comes to requiring

student’s attention or immediate actions, social media

offers excellent celerity as students respond almost

immediately. Facebook groups also allowed

shy/introverted students to become more actively

engaged in discussions and, though it may be possible

to discuss details associated to teacher-student

privacy, it can be quite useful to understand the student

general state of mind, general interests and social

background context, which becomes accessible.

On the other hand, the teacher may face some

challenges during the extension of classroom

communication into social media, such as:

compromising their privacy on the network, students

expecting quicker responses and student active

engagement may require a lot of moderation time. In

these environments it is convenient to lower the level

of relationship formality, which may conflict with a

very formal classroom teacher attitude and/or

intrapersonal communication style.

Cultural issues must also be raised. There is a

profound heritage of formality and vertical

relationships in HEI’s cultural environment which

may pose additional challenges to the proposed

methodology. In order to address these challenges

further research should focus on determining how

informal should teacher-student interactions be on

social media, providing clear guidelines resulting

from the convergence of mutual expectations.

The conducted study also revealed that, in order

to efficiently manage and assess social students’

relationships, teachers need suitable monitoring and

analysis tools/applications.

In our perspective, and based on students’ and

teachers’ perceptions on the use of social networks as

complimentary educational systems, the teacher is the

agent facing the bigger challenges. In fact, students

naturally and easily accommodate several dimensions

of their lives in social networks (personal,

professional, social, educational), and are very open

to changes. However, on top of the previously

mentioned challenges that teachers may face, there is

also the need to institutionally and educationally

legitimize the use of social networks, since some

teachers refuse to adopt concurrent non-institutional

systems, such as the school’s LMS. This lays on top

of deep cultural issues and on the organization’s

proneness to adopt/adjust to new technologies.

Given this scenery, we believe to be of the utmost

importance to bridge between the well-established

LMS and the also well-established social networks

(ex. Facebook), taking advantage of pre-acquired

habits, knowledge and sense of control, which is

currently offered to teachers. We believe that

providing the current LMS with insights and features

that allow teachers to manage and perceive the

dynamics of students’ interactions on social media, to

manage them and to make educational sense of them,

may, in fact, facilitate and potentiate the inclusion of

social networks on the best service of education.

At this stage, and in this paper, our main focus is

to provide teachers with resources to validate the use

of social media in their educational settings. Though

research emerges at a quick pace, teachers’

technology adoption pace and the process of

integrating a wider variety of technologies in their

pedagogical framework is considerably slower. In

fact, despite the advances in research and the proven

evidence of the benefits of the educational use of

social media in education, it doesn’t necessarily mean

that there is a corresponding widespread adoption of

it. Therefore, we believe that, at a first instance, it is

necessary to gather teachers’ consensus by fomenting

a shift in practices (for instance, through teacher

training) and secondly by providing a technological

solution that assures the maintenance of the validity,

security and institutional recognition of the required

shift in pedagogical practices. Research outputs from

the work of Oliveira (2015) were already converted

into several teacher dissemination, training and

demonstration initiatives, thus its outputs are being

actively offered to educational professionals and

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165

actually being incorporated in their practices. In order

to consolidate this process, an urgent technological

development is crucial in order to facilitate the

necessary shift, and this is why, for now, teachers are

at the centre or our main concerns, since they are the

main catalyst agents.

On the following section, we present the

architecture of the EduBridge system, built fulfil the

above mentioned needs.

4 SYSTEM’S ARCHITECTURE

Our proposed system bridges one learning

management system with a social network. Our

approach was to focus on the popular of these two

systems. According to its popularity and maturity, we

naturally picked Moodle and Facebook.

The proposed system is based on a set of Moodle

blocks that share a communications engine and a

database stored locally. The system’s architecture is

based on the model – view - control pattern,

implemented through five modules. In this case, the

‘view’ is produced by each module. However, the

‘control’ is hierarchically spread through the top

level-module down to the leaves modules. This

organization is depicted in Figure 1. As a top layer we

have the communications module (

googleoauther2)

which establishes a connection between Moodle and

Facebook through the Facebook’s authentication

mechanism, using the user’s credentials. Then, the

control is passed to the module

fbgroups to retrieve

the groups owned by the user. This module is also

responsible for creating lists of users belonging to the

groups and to set some counters for usage statistics.

The module

fbcomments retrieves all the posts and

comments that were posted in timeline of the selected

group. Finally, the modules

fbstats and

fbtotalstats present the local statistics, and global

statistics, about the selected group or all the

considered groups, respectively.

Figure 1: The system’s 5 modules.

These modules were implemented as simple

Moodle blocks. The reasons for this decision mainly

rely on:

• It’s easier to maintain modular code;

• Moodle blocks have enough capabilities to

include code which is centrally administrated, and

that can share a common access to specific tables

in the database;

• The blocks positioning system is quite

customizable in versions after Moodle 2.8 making

it simpler to be adapted to the visual

organization’s preferences of each user.

4.1 Integration between Systems

Our system uses the Facebook API to access specific

data using the user’s credentials. In our case we need

to access data related to the groups created by a

specific user. Therefore, during authentication,

Facebook asks for consent to use the

user_managed_groups permission of the API. Once

this permission is granted by the user, it is stored and

is never asked again to the user.

The 5 modules are integrated into Moodle in the

form of blocks. Each one has to be stored (manually)

in a specific Moodle folder in the file system.

However, after restart of the system, they are all

detected by Moodle, and automatically integrated in

registered blocks list. We believe this organization

makes the code easier to maintain, and to deploy into

another instance of Moodle very easily.

We must stress that the systematic (though

expected) evolution of the Facebook API makes the

integration with other systems dependant on which

permissions are available. It is usual to have a certain

permission granted for one version of the API, and in

another the right to access that permission is revoked.

4.2 Authentication

Once authentication is completed in Moodle, the user

needs to authenticate himself in Facebook, using the

Facebook authentication mechanism.

This is a persistent mechanism as while the user is

logged into Moodle, it does not need to authenticate

again in Facebook. The “cookies” created by the

system ensure a validation time of 30 days.

Although there is just one pair of credentials to

use the API, and to communicate with Facebook, the

communicating token is shared by all users of the

Moodle system. However, access is only possible to

the groups created by that specific user. For example,

groups that weren’t created, but just subscribed will

not be considered by the system. Hopefully this won’t

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prevent the further developments we intend to

introduce in the system.

4.3 Using Moodle Modules as Blocks

Moodle blocks are plugins that load in the right-hand

side or left-hand side column of a Moodle site, and

display information to the user in a rectangular block.

Each side column can have zero, one or multiple

blocks loaded. Examples of built-in Moodle blocks

include: HTML content, calendars, menus, course

lists, etc. A diagram illustrating the standard areas of

Moodle is depicted in Figure 2.

Blocks are programmed by extending the PHP

class

block_base

, introducing a

init()

procedure,

and assigning content to the block by using function

get_content()

. An important advantage of using

blocks is that there is already support to

“capabilities”. Therefore, blocks may invoke the

get_context_instance

to understand what kind of

permissions that particular user has. This allows us to

use different accesses to the system (administrator,

teacher, students) in very straight forward way. For

example, we want to hide the system blocks for non-

authorized access.

Figure 2: The standard Moodle layout.

Finally, because blocks can be moved in the

Moodle standard layout, they can be repositioned

during execution time, which makes it easy to the user

to choose the most comfortable way of displaying

them.

4.4 Database Tables

Moodle supports a variety of SQL databases by

providing an abstraction layer, based on specific code

libraries, which allow the programmer to access every

type allowed database in the same way.

Every data table in Moodle has one common

integer element: the id. This id is unique in the whole

Moodle database which means that it serves as a

primary key, but also as a foreign key to any table.

This situation is a core rule to Moodle database

programming.

Almost all plugins have a hook to the database in

the form of a subfolder named ‘

’ that contains files

which manage data tables specific to the plugin (or

block). The

folder tipically contains the files

install.xml

upgrade.php

and

access.php

. The

install.xml

defines the tables required for the

system (in Listing 1 we present part of

install.xml

of block

fbcomments

Listing 1: Part of file install.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<XMLDB PATH="blocks/fbcomments/db" VERSION="20141207"

COMMENT="XMLDB file for Moodle blocks/fbcomments/db"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../../lib/xmldb/xmldb

.xsd"

<TABLE NAME="fb_user_ids" COMMENT="user identity

providers">

<FIELD NAME="id" TYPE="int" LENGTH="10"

NOTNULL="true" SEQUENCE="true"/>

<FIELD NAME="fbid" TYPE="char" LENGTH="125"

NOTNULL="true" SEQUENCE="false"/>

<FIELD NAME="courseid" TYPE="char" LENGTH="125"

NOTNULL="true" SEQUENCE="false"/>

<FIELD NAME="groupid" TYPE="char" LENGTH="125"

NOTNULL="true" SEQUENCE="false"/>

<FIELD NAME="groupname" TYPE="char" LENGTH="125"

NOTNULL="true" SEQUENCE="false"/>

</FIELDS>

<KEYS>

</KEYS>

</TABLE>

The file

upgrade.php

contains instruction to

update table elements, while file

access.php

defines

the capabilities associated with the block.

Figure 3: EduBridge Social database tables.

The system runs with the support of 4 new

database tables, as illustrated in Figure 3. Tables

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167

fb_group_stats and fb_users_id are used mainly

for computing statistics;

fb_appinfo is used to share

Facebook access among users, and;

auth_googleauth2_user_idps is used for users’

authentication.

Note that although figures, videos and audio do

appear in the Moodle block, they are not stored

locally. Instead, all these “heavy” media elements are

loaded on demand.

5 INTERFACE

The system’s interface is composed of a four-set

Moodle blocks which users, particularly teachers, can

display and manage in their Moodle Dashboard

(known as “My home” up to Moodle’s 2.8 version).

This aims at framing the system in the most recent

Moodle’s philosophy for managing the teacher’s

educational workspace.

The four blocks are designated as: “Facebook

Groups”, “Facebook Posts & Comments”,

“Facebooks Statistics” and “Total Statistics”.

The block’s behaviour is interdependent, thought

the information displayed on all four blocks is

adjusted to users’ interaction with the block

“Facebook Groups”. The “Facebook Groups” block

(Figure 4) retrieves the list of groups that the

authenticated user manages on Facebook. This means

that all educational and personal groups are displayed

and accessible through Moodle’s interface. This is

also the main block among the four-set, since it

allows teachers to arrange the information and views

to be generated.

Figure 4: "Facebook Groups" block.

In order to provide teachers with tools to (1)

separate personal from educational groups and (2)

arrange and match the groups to their courses on

Moodle a set of dropdown matching boxes were

incorporated.

The ability to match Facebook Groups to Moodle

courses is also aimed at providing teachers with

greater flexibility to accommodate the need for

diversity of educational scenarios, concerning the

arrangement of students in wider or narrower social

learning networks. Assigned to the same Moodle

course it is possible to have one or more Facebook

groups, whether the teacher intends to arrange the

class into separate visible or non-visible teams. This

is also aimed at providing teachers with the same

Moodle course participants’ management features,

concerning the creation of course level groups.

As illustrated on Figure 4, a dropdown box

presents teachers the full list of his/her own Moodle

courses, which can be assigned to each Facebook’s

group. Having students arranged into separate

Facebook groups will allow teachers to monitor each

group’s performance individually and to assess each

group’s participant commitment and contributions to

the assigned projects/activities, which is displayed on

the “Facebook Statistics” and “Total Statistics” block.

Figure 4 presents a real case scenario in which the

teacher only uses one Facebook group per Moodle

course. However, it is possible to have other grouping

configurations, such as the need to create several

Facebook groups belonging to the same Moodle

course, thus this feature was added the “Facebook

Groups” module. This allows the analysis of

interactions developed in separate groups that belong

to the same class/course, particularly in courses in

which students are assigned concurrent and separate

projects development and in individual / group

assessment is needed.

The system also provides teacher with the ability

to access all the group’s posts and interactions on

Moodle’s Dashboard, through the block “Facebook

Posts and Comments” (Figure 5). This block’s main

purpose is to increase the level of integration between

the two platforms, since it eliminates the need to

access a second environment (Facebook) in order to

check updates and new user’s interactions, which

may or may not require action.

It is recommended that this block is displayed on

the Dashboard’s central area, as illustrated in Figure

2, given the amount and of information it provides,

which includes every posts’ text and other visual

static or dynamic multimedia content.

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Figure 5: "Facebook Posts and Comments" block.

For each post it is possible to access the post

author, post date, time and post comments. For the

sake of economy of page height, comments are

collapsed by default, and can be further expanded by

the user, as illustrated in Figure 6.

For each comment, the block displays the

comment author, date, time, likes, comment’s likes

and replies.

Figure 6: "Facebook Posts and Comments" block with

expanded comments view.

The “Group Statistics” block presents teachers

statistical data concerning the group’s total number of

posts, total number of posts, median of comments per

post, retrieves the group’s most recent post and

comment and also the most popular post, which is the

post with more likes, as illustrated in Figure 7. This

block also displays user interaction statistics,

providing relevant information for student’s

performance assessment, as illustrated in Figure 8.

Statistical information about student’s

performance is organized in two sections: “Users who

posted” new messages in the group and the

corresponding amount of likes and “Users who

commented”, that is, the users who interacted with the

messages posted on the same group, by posting

replies of liking comments.

Users (teacher and students) are ranked by the

amount of interaction they generate in the group.

Rankings of users’ statistical data are particularly

useful during the teaching-leaning process and

specifically relevant for student continuous or final

assessment.

For instance, a user may post a lot of messages in

the group, but may not receive feedback at all (that is,

the content may not be relevant for that community)

and / or may not interact at all with other users

Figure 7: "Group Statistics" block (a).

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169

messages (that is, he / she may not find other user’s

content relevant and / or this may be an indicator of

lack of interest, inexistence of group sense of

belonging, etc.).

On the other hand, a user may not introduce any

content at all in the group, but he / she may be an

active and valuable member to the community, either

by commenting, replying to comments (i.e., fostering

discussion) or liking his / her colleagues’ messages.

It is up to the teacher to consider the weight of

these parameters in assessing individual or group

performance (is assessment is applicable).

The fourth block, “Facebook Total Statistics”

(Figure 9), displays the global statistics for the

Moodle course selected on the “Facebook Groups”

block. In case two or more Facebook groups are

assigned to the same Moodle course, this block will

Figure 8: "Group Statistics" user's interactions section (b).

Figure 9: "Facebook Total Statistics" block.

provide the teacher the aggregated statistics for that

set of groups. This feature is particularly relevant

when the teacher intends to have the class divided into

groups and uses several Facebook groups to guide

and support each group separately.

This block is also useful for teacher needing

aggregated statistics for all his / her Facebook groups

of for personalized sets of groups, which are matched

in the “Facebook Groups” block.

6 DISCUSSION

The proposed methodology, previous research

outputs and presented system allowed for the

development and implementation of “How to use

Facebook groups in education? advantages and

limitations” workshops. The workshops were

conducted by the researchers and were aimed at

teachers’ pedagogical and technological development

and diversification. A lack of pedagogical validity

was detected during this dissemination phase, which

lead us to the need of incorporating new features in

the already established LMS (Moodle). A very

relevant detail, which is not frequently mentioned in

literature, and is of the utmost importance to this

scenario, is the discrepancy between the pace of

research and its concrete / tangible corresponding

transfer into the educational context. In some

organizational cultures, the proneness to adopt or

adapt to new pedagogical methodologies /

technologies is very slow. This was recognized by

researchers during the initial stages of introduction of

institutional LMS in education (Rogers 2010), when

teachers’ proneness to adopt technology mediated

education was a hot topic. This means that, despite

the advances in research, priorities should also rely on

the academic and day-to-day practices, thus it is not

our intent to contribute to the persistent gap between

researchers and practioners. Our main goal, is to

capacitate and actually facilitate the adjustment of

teachers to new tendencies. In our perspective, this

can only be accomplished by capacitating the well-

known environments with new features, reducing the

notion of risk that teachers often associate to

pedagogical innovation.

7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

In this paper we described and discussed the concept

of “Social Student Relationship Management” as an

emergent need in the context of social media applied

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to educational environments. We describe the

motivation beyond this need and its benefits. We,

then, focus on the Facebook social network and on its

groups as a privileged environment for discussions,

much in the same line as forums, however, with much

more flexibility. We stressed the importance of

“social media” groups, relating a case study using

Facebook and reporting the results.

These results led us to create a system which

bridges Moodle with Facebook. The proposed

architecture is based on the model-view-controller

and can be applied to most social networks with

minimal effort. We described the system’s user

interface with several examples taken from its real

usage.

Future technical development includes both the

optimization of the Moodle blocks presented in this

paper, and the addition of relevant learning analytics

for teachers and for students, built upon social media

data and metrics. Learning analytics is a current hot

topic which we aim to address on the teacher and

student perspective, aiming at providing a validated

tool for formal and informal learning assessment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is supported by the ERDF – European

Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE

Programme (operational programme for

competitiveness) and by National Funds through the

FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and

Technology) within project «Reminds/ UTAP-

ICDT/EEI-CTP/0022/2014.

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