Developing Facebook as an Accessible and Inclusive Online Personal Learning Platform: Ubiquity is Key

Abstract

A myriad of online personal learning (OPL) platforms has been developed over the past few years in order to address the burgeoning demand for avant-garde learning environments. These online learning portals have been developed to engage 21st century learners through interactive media, advanced study tools, and other innovative applications. In the Philippines, however, the use of these popular learning platforms is not fully realized. The challenge lies in the accessibility and inclusivity concerns of these OPL platforms and other related issues such as application restrictions. With this, learners especially from marginalized and differently-abled communities have difficulty accessing popular learning portals. Therefore, this study proposed that Facebook be developed as an accessible and inclusive OPL platform as its impact as a collaborative learning space was greatly realized. This was further supported by related studies and personal experiences of the author as an educator and as an open and distance learner. Facebook, as the most popular online medium today, had undoubtedly become a pervasive global informational hub and thus this study posited that it may be considered as a breeding ground for collaborative learning and knowledge creation. Since educational professionals and system developers were focused on constructing new learning platforms, the potential of Facebook as an OPL platform was deemed overlooked. This paper argued that developing an existing ubiquitous social media platform such as Facebook, can better address accessibility and inclusivity issues rather than building new learning systems which posed more constraints to different types of educators and learners in the Philippine context.