Facebook à la Fulbright

When I began my Fulbright teaching award in Morocco, I had one Moroccan "friend" on Facebook, the international social networking website. This friend was a student at the library school where I had been assigned, the Ecole des Sciences de l’Information (ESI) in the capital city of Rabat.

A New Jersey librarian had put me in touch with this outgoing young woman, starting the social networking experience that would supplement F2F (face-to-face) contact in class throughout the academic year. I had already been using Facebook to keep in touch with friends and colleagues while in the United States. Surprisingly, Facebook also became a valuable tool for cultivating in-country connections with future information professionals during my time abroad.

In my library career, I enjoyed making use of my second master’s in French and continued to cultivate my love of foreign languages and travel. Librarians qualify for full Fulbright awards by virtue of our terminal (or professional) degree, the MLIS. Since I’d been serving as an adjunct faculty member for just about all of my career as a librarian (and TAing before that), the idea of applying for a teaching Traditional Fulbright Scholar award in Morocco was too tempting to pass up. I applied in summer 2007, was accepted in spring 2008, and found myself on the "Road to Morocco" in September 2008.

Morocco is a Muslim North African country that was colonized by the French for roughly the first half of the 20th century. Much of the current education system was influenced by that contact with the West;
for example, the language of instruction in technology dependent disciplines tends to be French. The local language is Derija and the official language is Arabic. Derija is not the same as Arabic, in the same way that Spanish or Italian are not Latin. Despite its proximity to Europe, Morocco is a developing country. It is also extremely open, the inhabitants are friendly, and tolerance is a way of life. However, as in many developing countries, illiteracy is high, and poverty is a very real problem.

Morocco has a single library and information science school, ESI. It offers a four-year undergraduate degree and a two-year master’s; the entrance competition to both is fierce. The result is that students are highly motivated and very engaged. The majority hope to work as archivists or "documentalists" when they graduate, as libraries are still underdeveloped and not professionally appealing. Like undergraduates in the United States and Canada, students are into using cell phones, taking photos of the mundane, and connecting on social networking sites-Facebook in particular. Morocco boasts some of the best Internet connectivity rates in all of Africa, making online connectivity almost as easy as a cell phone connection.

Once the school year began, it did not take the students long to figure out that I had a Facebook account. While I would never seek to "friend" a student, I accepted friend requests from current ESI students as part of the experience.
As time went on, the connections, comments, and communication became richer. Here are some highlights of how Facebook enhanced my time in Morocco through connections with aspiring information professionals.

October

Classes started in early October, right after the end of the holy month of Ramadan. In late October, I took two photos of my second-year students and posted the photos to my blog as part of an in-class lesson on Web 2.0. After class, about eight students came up to me and asked for the photos. The photos promptly started showing up in student Facebook photo albums and as their profile photos. The photos were a hit, and I got more friend requests than ever.

November

After explaining to second-year students that I am working on a PhD, I got a very kind message on Facebook from a student welcoming me to Morocco and wishing me well in my studies.

December

Guest speaker Eric Childress of OCLC Research spoke to a devoted crowd about Metadata Friday. Friday prayers draw students, especially the men, away from school in the afternoon. These dedicated master’s students and undergraduate English club students came back to school late in the afternoon that cold Friday in December to learn about OCLC. The classroom building is unheated, so we wore coats for the talk.

January

Breaks between semesters and time set aside for studying yielded extra time for students to look through my Facebook photo albums. I was glad they felt comfortable enough to make comments, especially about my photos from Morocco.

February

The seriousness of the exam period took a toll on the social networking for all of us in February.

March

The former director at ESI had retired in December 2008.

His replacement was announced on the one day of the week when I worked from home. Not a problem: many students changed their Facebook status to mention Mr. Lemallem’s appointment. The students also made a fan page for him so I was able to figure out who he was (turns out he’d been in the office next to mine).

April

ESI does not provide students with e-mail accounts, so communicating via Facebook messages was a convenient way to stay in touch with students as they worked on papers, asked about upcoming speakers, and looked for resources.
I must have received 10 messages from the third-year library students during spring break while they were working on their big papers for our class.