The uses of Facebook© technologies in Hospitality curriculum on an experiential learning platform for a new generation of students

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the applications of the social networking software, Facebook, currently practiced by “expert user” faculty teaching within a Malaysian Higher Education Hospitality Diploma programme. Of particular interest is whether the faculty experiences with Facebook reveal its functional appropriateness for use on an experiential learning platform. The aim is also to prompt further research and experimentation with the medium on teachers and students.Design/methodology/approachPhenomenological: the researcher uses a focus group to enable the essence of teachers' experience in the utilisation of Facebook as a teaching and learning tool within the syllabus of their taught subjects in a shared hospitality curriculum to emerge.FindingsThe experiences divulged in the focus group reveal the use of Facebook as an “effective” medium for reflective purposes in relation to experiential teaching and learning activities and as a mechanism for reflective and extrapolative cognition on experiential or practical classes.Originality/valueThis lies in the focus on actual Facebook use within the syllabi of a Faculty “community of practice”. It also lies in the focus of the paper on applications within a Hospitality curriculum. In relation to marketing, the visual materials discovered to be uploaded by teachers and students on Facebook are perhaps the real teaching and learning experiences of students that could be used by marketers for promotional purposes utilising the paradigm of experiential marketing and a service‐dominant logic.