While e-learning was first greeted with great optimism and seen as a potentially profitable market, in 2004 Massy and Zemsky argued that e-learning really had not lived up to the promise. Nevertheless, an array of various e-learning ventures has flourished in recent years. The Sloan Foundation report indicates that there has been an astonishing rate of expansion in the US: “online enrollments have continued to grow at rates far in excess of the total higher education student population, with the most recent data demonstrating no signs of slowing“. In fall semester 2008, about 4,6 million students took at least one course online, which represents a 17% increase. However, the majority of this growth has been in the for-profit sector. In Europe, the Commission has taken an interest in e-learning as a tool for lifelong learning and has started a portal E-learning Europa. From the Open University in the UK, to for-profit initiatives such as the University of Phoenix in the US, to new e-learning courses, tools, networks, and blogs supplementary in traditional higher education institutions – ICT has found its spot in the higher education landscape.

Social media is a current buzz word, having become the chosen tool for interacting, marketing and networking. From being a small scale and almost nerdy endeavor, being connected in the virtual world has become a part of daily life – either on Facebook, MySpace or the emerging alternatives such as Diaspora. Facebook is quite clearly the most influential, as a brand it has been valued at around 11 billion dollars, a movie has been made focusing on the development of Facebook, creating an almost superstar status for the developers.

So, can social media also be a site for higher learning and degree studies? Becoming “like Facebook” appears to be an attractive idea, a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article reports of initiatives that should make “studying feel like Facebook”. The article does bring out four more interesting examples for social learning: Finalsclub, offering Harvard lecture notes; Open Study offering vast online study groups; Grade Guru offering various lecture notes; Mixable by Purdue university as a virtual learning environment.

Now, integrating new and more social tools into learning environments is one thing, but what about offering learning on Facebook itself? Facebook becoming an online campus for students? The example in the Chronicle article of an MBA programme by London School of Finance offered through a Facebook application is thus an interesting case. Quite astonishingly, they report 34,000 users already and a planned 500 000 users for their test drive next year. The administrators of the program claim that “letting students test drive the online courses before actually shelling out the tuition money will boost graduation rates“.

So – is this another odd initiative for profit (at around 16 500€ per year one could argue that the price is not cheap), or is this yet another step in the for-profit initiatives that will at some point change how the future generations view learning? While it seems an alien thought now, could something like this provide an alternative? Does everything have to be more like Facebook, or, on Facebook? And if so – what does that mean for higher education?