Linking Facebook to WordPress for educational purposes – a proposed architecture sustaining social learning

Abstract

Ensuring social educational processes does not only represent a trend in terms of the evolution of e-Learning systems, but also one of the main points of interest targeted by the developers of certain social platforms. In fact, raising awareness with respect to the importance of using Social Media tools in education leads to a two-way approach: both by integrating social tools into e-Learning systems and by integrating learning facilities into Social Media platforms. Over time, the social network Facebook has benefited from intense use at global level, including in e-Learning processes. In order to meet the current needs in terms of teaching and learning, Facebook has provided users with built-in opportunities to facilitate social learning processes. However, expanding the Social Learning features integrated in Facebook can be a challenge at present, because of the policies imposed for the social network. The present article outlines a proposed architecture for extending the Social Learning functionalities offered within Facebook Groups by ensuring the correlation with WordPress open-source CMS. Aspects related to how the correlation between the two platforms can be ensured, the necessary tools and the steps involved will be discussed. Also, the main implications and advantages offered by such an architecture and the identified limitations will be highlighted.