Starting this fall, Facebook will no longer be solely a forum for friendly wall posts and guilty late night procrastination. The online social networking site has infiltrated all aspects of college life and now has a place in the Stanford classroom.

Computer Science 377W: “Create Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook” is a new experimental course offered this quarter. The class will be taught by B.J. Fogg ‘95, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab, and Dave McClure, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and software developer. Dan Ackerman-Greenberg ‘08 will serve as the course’s teaching assistant (TA).

The instructors of the class hope to gain insight into the realm of human online interaction by studying the psychology of Facebook. The inspiration for the course came from the Persuasive Technology Lab’s interest in Facebook’s ability to influence the beliefs and actions of its users, such as donating money to a cause.

Although the class is offered through the Computer Science Department, it aims to give students from all academic backgrounds the opportunity to build and market user-friendly applications via the Facebook platform and the course’s instructors have encouraged students from all disciplines to enroll. Students will work in groups of three to create applications and monitor the way others use them, thus utilizing a variety of skill sets.

“The class is not so much about Facebook but the interaction between the user and the web applications,” Fogg explained. “Therefore, the class is not focused on the building of Facebook applications but, rather, how to create persuasive and engaging user experiences. In order to do this, we’ll look at numerical measurements like number of users and engagement but also qualitative measurements like feedback from users.”

Ackerman-Greenberg, who has worked for Fogg in the Persuasive Technology Lab for the past year, added that Facebook is an ideal platform through which to interact and learn.

“B.J., Dave and I have been really excited by Facebook,” he said. “Facebook provides an awesome opportunity to look at the way people interact on the Web on our own terms, as we are able to create and tailor our applications as we wish. It is an ideal testing ground.”

The course has created quite a buzz on campus and beyond. About 90 students have already registered on Axess for the class, which will ultimately be capped at 40 to 50 students. Additionally, Ackerman-Greenberg created a private Facebook group for all registered students to share project ideas and form groups before the term began to increase their chances of remaining in the class.

A significant amount of interest has developed outside of the Stanford community, as well. The course’s Facebook group, “Creating Apps for Facebook (New Stanford Course),” already boasts 446 members — the majority of whom are not Stanford-affiliated.

“We hope to publish weekly notes or a blog of course materials and relevant notes,” Ackerman-Greenberg said. “[We hope] to post them online so that those who are not able to take the course can benefit.”

The course meets weekly on Thursdays and has a weekly Tuesday workshop in which students can seek help and advice from the course instructors and industry professionals. The class will culminate in an exposition of student teams presenting their work to an audience open to the public.

This class follows in the wake of Pitzer College’s media studies class “Learning from YouTube,” marking a growing trend of college courses centered on analyzing current online media and content.

“What is so interesting about Facebook is that nobody really understands it, and we are all still figuring it out,” Fogg said. “One of the goals of this class is for us to try to figure it out together.”