Facebook’s Social Learning Group for Undergraduate Engineering Courses: A Case Study of Emergency Remote Teaching Amid Large Digital Divide

Abstract

The COVID-19 Pandemic has forced many educational institutions worldwide to adopt emergency measures to complete the semester or school-year, which was rolling before the crisis hit. Different formal and informal Course Management Systems (CMSs) were incorporated to aid in this sudden transition to virtual classroom mode. A significant challenge that emerged in the Global South during this emergency transition was the glaring presence of Digital Divide. In this paper, we explore this situation for Bangladesh through a case study of three courses where emergency remote teaching was adopted from March to June 2020. The students enrolled were surveyed using questionnaire and the collected data was analyzed to determine the potency of Facebook Social Learning groups in Emergency Remote Teaching. Even as the emergency remote teaching phase ends in many communities, the pandemic and its effects continue and institutions worldwide are preparing themselves for long-term fully online classroom settings. It is thus essential to wisely choose a platform and pedagogical system for online teaching, which can minimize the discriminating effects of the digital divide among students. With that motivation, we present our work exploring the efficacy of Facebook’s Social Learning Group as an inexpensive alternative to high-bandwidth consuming and costly CMSs.