Rather than friending students on your personal profile, you could create a "page" related strictly to your course material. The students can "follow" the page by selecting to "like" it. Whether you teach Public Policy, or I.T., a page can serve as an additional reminder of the schedule for your class. You could post the week's homework assignments, reading, and discussion questions to FB. The great thing about FB pages is that you can schedule posts. At the beginning of class you could schedule all your updates for the entire class period.
Even though the students would have to log into the class to post to the thread for points, the Facebook page would serve as a reminder for a procrastinator who spends too much time on social media and needs a nudge. Some FB users even receive updates to their phone, so they would see the updates from anywhere.
Or you could keep a professional profile seperate from your personal profile and add your students to a "group". Groups are more private. You can select the settings so that only members may join in. The posts probably work in much the same way.
Proper boundaries are important and though I do not think it is all that safe for professors to have their students linked to their personal profiles, if you maintain a professional profile and want to use social media to keep your students linked into the course as it progresses that is probably a tech savvy move these days.
Ask your students what social media they would like to receive updates from and just clear it with your DOE. If the Program Director, or DOE say they do not want you to use FB then show them that it is simply another professional platform and that your students would not be interacting with your personal profile and friends & family lists. Demonstrate specific ways in which it can help you maintain contact with your students and outline exaclty how you plan to maintain boundaries. Some Program Directors who are not very familiar with Facebook may even be put off by the term "friend". Explain the process, what students would see and how they could use the FB page, or group to stay on task, elicit help from other students, and even track and access assignments from their phone when they are away from class and home.
As an externship/capstone instructor, I want to upload short videos or, mini-seminars on FB so that my students have access to some of the material they need. It is not always easy to get them to come in for face-to-face seminars, and yet the same issues come up with regularity. I can refer them to the videos and make sure they see them as FB gives feedback data on post interactions to pages. I can also re-use the same videos so once I take the time to make them, they are up and running. Right now I have to re-send the same emails, which is time consuming.
