Facebook returns to its roots with Groups for Schools

Facebook has a peace offering for every college student who resents the social media giant for opening the site to their parents: new pages known as Student Groups that will only be accessible for Facebook members with official “.edu” eMail addresses.

In a throwback to the nascent days of the world’s most popular social networking website, Facebook announced April 11 that its newest feature, Student Groups, would create specific pages that could only be joined by students or faculty members from that campus.

Students will be able to share files—including lecture notes, schedules, assignments, and photos—on their university Facebook page. Students who register on their college or university Student Groups page can communicate with group members without being their friend on Facebook.

The .edu eMail addresses must be active, so when students leave the campus community and their school eMail address is deactivated, they will no longer have access to the Student Groups page. In its announcement, Facebook said it would alert students when their school page was available in Student Groups.

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The closed, student-centric environment that allows file sharing and collaboration led to some speculation among social media observers that Facebook had rolled out the first phase of a learning management system (LMS), but Facebook officials who spoke to a blogger hours after Student Groups was unveiled said that wasn’t the case.

“Facebook … isn’t attempting to break into the education-software space, instead focusing on more general collaboration tools that can be applied to multiple functions,” wrote Dieter Bohn, a blogger who interviewed two Facebook spokespeople for The Verge, a technology site.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company would “likely” contract outside web developers to “build more specific educational systems” within the new Student Groups platform.

“Our focus is on helping facilitate communication,” said Kate McEwan, a Facebook spokeswoman. “Groups for schools was just a natural product evolution for us.”

Facebook’s Student Groups pages asks members to select a college or university, the dormitory in which they live, and campus clubs they have joined, among other questions.

Student Groups will also display “facepiles”—collections of profile pictures from a person’s Facebook friend list—throughout the sign-up process.