The International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments (http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=ijsmile) is a newly established journal for scholars to share their experiences and research finding on the use of web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning.
This special issue invites papers to report on various ways of using Facebook – a social media platform - as an educational tool for teaching and learning. Facebook was not initially designed for educational purposes. Because of its social affordances and popularity among the young generation, however, it has great potential for teaching and learning. It can be used by a teacher as a learning management system to share course resources with students and conduct discussions, by a group of students to support their group collaboration, or as a social platform to improve the student-student or student-teacher relationship.
Nevertheless, the use of Facebook may also have implementation issues. Students may not want their teachers to be their online friends, or do not want social friends to know about their academic performance in a course. Also, there might be cyber safety concerns.
This special issue will focus on using Facebook as an educational tool. Research and conceptual papers related to the use of Facebook for teaching and learning, such as social learning theories, personal experiences, practical design of Facebook-mediated learning environments and implementation issues and concerns of using Facebook for teaching and learning, are welcome.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include but are not limited to:
• Social learning theories or models
• Learning motivation and Facebook
• Literature review on using Facebook in education
• Pedagogical and social affordances of Facebook for teaching and learning
• Instructional strategies for effective use of Facebook
• Practical experiences of using Facebook for teaching and learning
• Case studies of Facebook in education
• Implementation issues and/or concerns with using Facebook for learning
• Facebook-mediated collaborative/interactive/social learning environments
• Design considerations for Facebook-mediated learning environments
• Challenges of classroom management in Facebook-mediated learning environments
• Facebook for collaborative learning
• Formal and informal learning with Facebook
• Teachers' professional development using Facebook
• Effects of using Facebook for teaching and learning
• Using Facebook as an online learning community or a knowledge building community
• Content generation or knowledge creation on Facebook
• Promoting 21st century competencies using Facebook
Notes for Prospective Authors
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been completely re-written).
All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page.

Important Dates
Full paper submission: 30 April, 2013
Notification of acceptance: 15 June, 2013
Final submission: 31 July, 2013
All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please go to Online Submissions of Papers.
More Information:
http://www.inderscience.com/info/ingeneral/cfp.php?id=2026

Dr. Qiyun Wang
Editor-in-Chief
The International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments