Continue my reflection of the application of Facebook in higher education

I have already read my classmates' thoughts against the application of Facebook in higher education. I must say they all make their own points. I want to especially address some issues here

Should higher education instructors and students be connected to each other on social media systems such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? How should they manage friendship requests? What 
action(s) should be taken when the virtual aspect of the instructor-­‐student relationship becomes uncomfortable?

According to Dennen and Burner (2014), students do not want to be friends with instructors because they want to maintain their privacy, feel  inappropriate, and not in peer group. I agree with these three reasons. I was there as an undergraduate student. When I was a college student, I did not add my instructors as my friends because I was afraid of them. I did not know how to interact with them. As Dennen and Burner (2014) found, students need to censor content they put on their page if they are friends with their instructors. I agree with this. When I realized my instructors may read my messages, I became very cautious about what I should post online. However, as time goes by, I did not think like this anymore. I actively added one of my instructors to my WeChat group because I wanted to talk with her, and know what was happening to her. We were having a great relationship. Why should we stop connecting with each other? After graduation, undergraduate will know their instructors are just like them, not so special. After graduation, they do not need to talk with their instructors about professional stuff. They may talk about some common hobbies or sharing travel experiences.

Let's look at reasons to be friends with instructors which include learning more about them, interacting socially, professional networking, Actually, I requested friendship with my instructors based on the three reasons. At the beginning, I feel nervous when posting my status because I am worried that I make some grammatical errors. Now, I feel pretty OK with posting appropriate messages even though I know my instructors will see them. I think I will be totally OK even when my instructor tell me I make mistake at some places because we always learn from mistakes. I want to build a wonderful relationship with my instructors.  As Mazer, Murphy, & Simonds argued, disclosing more personal information via Facebook led to  higher levels of trustworthiness and caring from students to those instructors (as cited in Dennen & Burner, 2013, October). Students may feel free to talk about some issues on Facebook. Those issues can be not course-related. In other words, friends with teachers on Facebook offer another way for them to communicate with each other, and broaden topics they can talk about.

In a nutshell, I think that instructors and students should be connected to each other on Facebook to enhance mutual understanding of each other. For me, I am now connected with my instructors on these three social media. I do feel nothing is wrong. For me, it's interesting to see on Facebook what is happening in my instructors' work or life even though most of time I only like and share their posts instead of leaving a comment to their post. As an international student, it's always necessary and interesting to observe American faculty's life if they is OK with that. I will consider it as necessary for experiencing different cultures.

References

Dennen, V., & Burner, K. (2013, October). Friending and Footprints: Privacy and Ethical Issues of Facebook Use in Higher Education. In World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (Vol. 2013, No. 1, pp. 642-648). 

Dennen, V. P., & Burner, K. J. (2014). FACEBOOK, “FRIENDS,” AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM: STUDENT PREFERENCES AND ATTITUDES. Selected Papers of Internet Research, 4.