FOCUS ON TEACHING   449

Myyry, L., & Helkama, K. (2002). The role of value priorities and professional ethics training
in moral sensitivity. Journal of Moral Education, 31, 35-50.
Nicholson, C. Y., & DeMoss, M. (2009). Teaching ethics and social responsibility: An evalua-
tion of undergraduate business education at the discipline level. Journal of Education for
Business, 84, 213-218.
Van Ments, M. (1999). The effective use of role-play. London, England: Kogan Page.

Carol M. Lehman is professor emerita in the Management and Information Systems

Department at Mississippi State University. She and Debbie D. DuFrene are authors of
Business Communication, 16th edition (2010) and are frequent presenters at business
communication conferences and consulting venues. Her recent publications have
appeared in Freiberger Beiraege zur interkulturellen und Wirtschaftskommunikation,
Journal of Business and Training Education, and Strategic Finance. Address correspon-
dence to 1112 Nottingham Road, Starkville, MS 39759; email: caroldlehman@gmail.
com.

Debbie D. DuFrene is associate dean and professor of business communication at

Stephen F. Austin State University. She currently serves as the Southwest United States
regional vice president for the Association for Business Communication, and she and
Carol Lehman are sponsors of the Meada Gibbs outstanding teaching award. She has
recent publications in Journal of Business and Training Education and Business Educa-
tion Digest. Address correspondence to College of Business, Box 13004, Stephen F.
Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX 76962; email: ddufrene@sfasu.edu.

Mark W. Lehman is associate professor emeritus in the Adkerson School of Accountancy

at Mississippi State University. He is a certified public accountant and a certified fraud
examiner with a teaching and research emphasis in forensic accounting. His recent
publications have appeared in the Journal of Forensic Studies in Accounting and Business,
Journal of Accountancy, and the Journal of Forensic Accounting. Address correspondence
to 1112 Nottingham Road, Starkville, MS 39759; email: markwlehman@gmail.com.

FACEBOOK: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

FOR BUSINESS COMMUNICATION STUDENTS
Christina Decarie
St. Lawrence College, Canada

DOI: 10.1177/1080569910385383

I RESISTED OPENING a Facebook account. I did not want to lose

precious time to online games or idle chatter. I did not want to lose my
quickly eroding privacy to the posting of candid photos. I did not want
to be on Facebook with my students and become overly familiar with
them, perhaps losing the authority that I liked to think I had. When
450   BUSINESS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / December 2010

I finally did open a Facebook account 3 years ago, many of my students

quickly found me and requested my online friendship. I very hesitantly
accepted. Within 2 hours of opening my account, one impish student
had written on my Facebook wall: “I got your wall virginity!” I gasped,
deleted the comment, and wondered what kind of Pandora’s Box I
had opened.
Although social networks have been around since the late 1990s,
Facebook has emerged as the dominant social networking site with
more than 400 million active users (Facebook, 2010). Facebook is not
the exclusive domain of young people and so should not be viewed
as a pastime that our students will abandon once they more fully enter
adulthood. Only about half (55%) its users are younger than 25 years,
and women older than 55 are its fastest growing demographic (Smith,
2009). Facebook literacy is a necessary communication skill.
Despite my rocky start with Facebook, several important challenges
and opportunities for my business communication students emerged.
Facebook requires and enhances strong writing and interpersonal
communication skills and it requires something new—a kind of lit-
eracy that we, students and teachers alike, are still learning (Maranto
& Barton, 2010; Mazman & Usluel, 2010). What it offers is also
something new—access to an entire world of networking and relation-
ship building and the chance for a small town kid to rub shoulders with
big city movers and shakers.
Getting my students to accept the value of strong writing skills can
be a challenge; Facebook has helped. To show them the impact of poor
writing skills, I find some examples of illiterate, obscene, or angry
Facebook status updates and ask the students to share what opinion they
are forming about this person. Invariably, they say they think the person
is uneducated, not very bright, unpleasant, aggressive, and generally an
undesirable person. As the discussion progresses, they easily make the
jump to the next idea I want them to examine: If they are thinking these
things, what are other people thinking—potential employers, business
contacts, future colleagues? Is someone doing the same thing when
viewing the students’ own status updates, too? Of course they are.
One of my students—and her classmates—learned a lesson about
representing yourself online in a different way. I arrived at work one
morning and checked in with Facebook before heading to class. At the
 FOCUS ON TEACHING   451

top of my newsfeed was a conversation between two students, only

one of them was my Facebook friend. The one that was not my Face-
book friend was lamenting how boring one of her teachers was and
how she couldn’t be bothered to drive a full hour just to be put to sleep
by his class. The other student agreed and suggested her time would
be better spent sleeping in. When I got to class, I opened up my Face-
book page and projected it for all the class to see, saying nothing. There
were gasps, laughter, lots of teasing, and a comment rang out, “But
I’m not even your Facebook friend!” Luckily, she was able to remove
the conversation. Recently, when I asked her permission to use this
story for a conference presentation, she wrote to me, “That was quite
the learning experience for me. It would be a great thing for people to
hear that story and learn from it like I did” (M. Schelter, personal com-
munication, May 28, 2010).
Another student reported to me an experience in which he was able
to correct his Facebook blunder before it could have an impact on a
budding business relationship. Nick (not his real name) had requested
an appointment with our college president to ask for US$5,000 to fund
a student publishing project. As part of his persuasive pitch, he was
going to open up Facebook and show the president the number of
students who had joined the project. As he was practicing his pitch, he
opened his Facebook page on an overhead projector, and the first thing
he saw was his profile picture—shirtless, and playing the drums while
drinking a beer hands-free. Luckily, he was dressed in business attire
for the upcoming meeting and a friend was able to take a new profile
picture and upload it within minutes. After his presentation, the presi-
dent commented that he didn’t realize students were representing them-
selves so professionally on Facebook. Nick had changed the president’s
assumptions, not only of students but of Facebook too. (By the way,
his bid to secure the funding was successful.)
Recently, my own experience with networking on Facebook served
as a learning opportunity for my students. As a micro-publisher and
writer, it is important for me to know as many writers and publishers
as possible—in Canada and around the world—and I have been net-
working with several on Facebook. For the past year, I have been
interacting with an up-and-coming Vancouver writer (a long way
from tiny Kingston, Ontario), already signed to a major publishing
452   BUSINESS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY / December 2010

house and represented by an agent. Quite by chance, I recently saw

an opportunity and grabbed it: I pitched him the idea that I publish
a series of his blog entries as a chapbook (a small, low-cost, saddle-
stitched book).
The students tore apart my pitch letter, criticizing and praising it,
applying what they had learned in class. They asked for details about
how I introduced myself to this writer online, what I said and did to
develop the relationship, and most of all they wanted to know the
outcome. Do social networking and good writing really get results?
“Scroll down,” they said. “Show us his answer!”
I scrolled down to the response to my pitch letter. “I’m intrigued,”
the author had written. “Let’s talk.”
My students were excited by the possibilities that they could see
in this: Geography no longer limits their opportunities. With time,
they can develop relationships with interesting, well-placed, and
connected people that they have never met. The things they learn in
class—persuasive writing strategies, grammar, and punctuation—
matter in real life. Social networking is not merely a way to waste
time, but if used wisely it is a means of self-representation and self-
promotion. As communication teachers, it is our responsibility to
show them how.
References
Facebook. (2010). Factsheet. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics#!/
press/info.php?factsheet
Maranto, G., & Barton, M. (2010). Paradox and promise: MySpace, Facebook, and the
sociopolitics of social networking in the writing classroom. Computers and Composition,
27, 36-47.
Mazman, S. G., & Usluel, Y. K. (2010). Modeling educational usage of Facebook. Computers
and Education, 55, 444-453.
Smith, J. (2009). Fastest growing demographic on Facebook: Women over 55. Inside Facebook.
Retrieved from http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/02/fastest-growing-demographic-on-
facebook-women-over-55/

Christina Decarie is an instructor in the School of Business at St. Lawrence College,

Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In her work, she is directly concerned with teaching business
communication, including writing and public speaking, with a focus on interpersonal
communication skills. She is currently finishing her master’s thesis titled “Possible
Selves, Informational Interviews, and Younger Adult Learners” at Queen’s University.
Address correspondence to Christina Decarie, School of Business, St. Lawrence College,
100 Portsmouth Avenue, Kingston, ON, K7L 5A6, Canada; email: cdecarie@sl.on.ca.
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