Heuristic Evaluation of the use of Blackboard & Facebook Groups in Computing Higher Education

The features of social media sites make them potentially effective as a learning platform for student communication and collaboration in higher education. Moreover it has become apparent that student Facebook users have been repurposing its features to fit their academic requirements. This study aims to determine if Facebook Groups and the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) can enhance the learner experience, and if so, in what way. The study made use of a heuristic evaluation with an educationally relevant criteria set [1]. The results, amongst other things, indicate that Facebook Groups are more useful for peer-to-peer communication than Blackboard, probably due to the notification system in Facebook. Analysis indicated that in some instances the strengths and weaknesses of Blackboard and Facebook were complementary and therefore could, arguably, improve the overall student experience.