Facebook and academia rarely collide, but in this case, it's perfect harmony.
Here at the Study Blog, we rarely take time to plug ourselves. OK, I'll admit we've been guilty every now and then, but for the most part, the focus remains on academics and on college life in general.
But today is an exception – and for good reason.
I'm sure the majority of you out there use Facebook. Perhaps you don't use it as fiendishly as USC football coach Pete Carroll (I'm not kidding, he has a legitimate Facebook profile), but most of you sign on now and then, or will sign on in the future.
Back when students owned Facebook and it wasn't cluttered with applications, advertisements and 80-year-old thrill seekers, there was an official "courses" feature operated by Facebook. We could find our classes and add them to a schedule that would be displayed on our profile, we could see which classes friends were taking and we could easily form study groups by looking through our class rosters.
The best part about it was everyone used it – so the class rosters were actually complete and the feature was useful.
So what happened to it? Well, in short, Facebook got rid of it, saying developers could make something better in the form of an application. In my opinion, Facebook just got lazy and wanted to focus on making money rather than on students' experience. But hey, I can't really blame them.
Lucky for us, Cramster has developed its own application – Courses 2.0 – that does everything Facebook's old courses did plus a whole lot more. One exciting feature coming soon is the ability to form an online study group without leaving Facebook.
But as you know, the app can't be at its best unless a ton of students hop on board. That's where you come in.
We've created a group called Courses 2.0 – Facebook courses the way it should be in hopes that it can spread the word and make Courses 2.0 the universal courses application just like we used to have.
C'mon – you know having a universal courses app once again would be pretty awesome.
So
join the group and spread the word! You know you want to get a sneak peek at who'll be in your classes come fall…
Joined the group or added the application already? Let us know what you think!