Class for Parents at Stanford
In 2009, we taught a class about Facebook at Stanford. We designed the class for busy parents with kids under 18 years of age. (Parents of college-age students were also welcome, of course.)We initially met as a class for four sessions of 90 minutes. We’ve now learned how to teach the same material effectively in just three sessions.
We used scientific methods to evaluate class effectiveness. You’ll see the class outcomes were very good.
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The outline below shows the overall flow of the class series.
Class topics
Class 1 - The ABC’s of Facebook: New user to fanatic
We worked with over 60 parents at our first class at Stanford, introducing them to levels of Facebook use. We assigned everyone 10 minutes of daily homework. We designed the homework to be easy and fun.
Class 2 - Ten steps to protect loved ones on Facebook
This class focused on how information gets shared on Facebook. We also outlined what to include (or exclude) on Profile Pages and how to adjust the privacy settings. We explained five ways privacy settings break.
Class 3 - Friend Lists & life skills for the future
Update: Class 3 covered Friend Lists (how to create them, how to use them for sharing) and life skills people can learn on Facebook. We also focused on implications of the Facebook redesign and evolution.
Class 4 - Five ways to stay ahead of kids on Facebook
Class 4 wrapped up our series of meetings. We covered “hot topics” from parent groups, and we shared five ways to stay ahead on Facebook
Facebook for Parents: Answers to the Top 25 Questions. This new book is now available on Amazon.
Our Class Helped Parents in 10 Ways
One goal in teaching “Facebook for Parents” at Stanford University was to create an effective curriculum, backed by research and data. In addition to gathering feedback after each class, we conducted pre- and post-tests with parents (our students) at the start and end of the class series.The results were very good.
The data show that parents in our class improved significantly on all items we measured. This means the curriculum we created was effective. Of course, we are happy about that. But we are especially pleased with how much improvement parents showed in such a short time. This was our primary goal: Create an efficient way to teach parents about Facebook.
A summary of the results is below, showing how 52 parents responded.
Before the Class versus After the Class
