Using Facebook as collaboration tool

MBA students at school are Facebook addicts. Some may dispute this observation or suggest that I use a toned-down term, so let me restate: they're avid Facebook users. :) They spend a lot of time Facebooking, and it annoys them when they have to take time off from their favorite activity to do their assignments or collaborate with teammates on group projects.

But someone has invented Facebook groups, and voila! A new way to work on school stuff without having to leave Facebook. :) 

Group page of our team in Infote

So how does it work?

First, someone in your team has to create the Facebook group and add all team members in. You can set the group on Secret mode if you don't wish other people to see your posts (which should be the case all the time).

Second, there has to be some "rules" on how to use the page for collaboration. Otherwise, it'd be chaotic.  In our group, we use the following rules.

Events
We use this feature to record milestones or deadlines such as submission of final paper or exam or whatever. After creating an event, we invite all members in. Once they accepted, they get a notification when an event approaches, much as they would with other Facebook events (like birthdays, etc) outside of Facebook group.

Files
We normally pair Facebook with Dropbox. We have a Dropbox folder where we upload all files relevant to our projects. If we want to notify team members of a new upload or update on a file, we go to the Facebook group Files tab and click Upload file. There's an option to upload a file from Dropbox. 

Notes
We use this for posts that we want highlighted or tracked, like members' contact information, schedules, list of deliverables, etc. If we'd post these information as ordinary wall posts, they'd get buried later on when new posts come in. 

Wall posts
This is the fun part. This is how we collaborate, discuss about projects, joke with other members, etc. We tag team members whenever we want them to be notified of new posts. This will work only if team members actually post. As a team, you'll have to agree and make sure everyone is aligned.


There may still be other ways to use Facebook as collaboration tool. My other friends use Facebook's group chat feature to discuss. Really, there's no shortage of ways to add fun into the poor, boring life of an MBA student.  If you know of anything I may have missed, please holler or comment below.