Using social networking in higher education

Alex Halavais  has a good post up about the use of Twitter by universities and colleges. Part of what he is getting at in the post is the way that high ed admin is hearing more and more about big new things like Twitter and figuring they need to get in on the action and use the medium to recruit or publicize their programs or schools. But they don't really think through what they're trying to do and who the audience is and whether the task or the people they have in mind are a good match for Twitter or a blog or a wiki or whatever. They run the risk, at best,  of running out of steam and having their efforts dry up and at worst of annoying people with spam like messages.

Go read his post.

I have been thinking a lot about it in part because one of the things I am working on this summer is a briefing paper for a committee on developing an appropriate use policy for the use of these tools at my own university. As I look around I am increasingly struck by higher ed blogs that shouldn't be blogs and twitter feeds that shouldn't be either. Clearly part of what's going on is that administrators are outsourcing the blogging or the twittering to subordinates who do the actual posting. We saw this in somewhat dramatic fashion this week when it became clear that Gov Mark Sanford was missing and wasn't in contact with family or staff but kept tweeting. That's because he doesn't post his own tweets. Then why do it? I know of several senior university administrators for whom the same thing is true. And you can tell. The thing that makes blogs and tweets good is the personality and the engagement of the writer. If it's delegated to staff it is generally not going to be there.

Some in higher ed that Alex highlights as good are the University of New South Wales, RMIT  Drake, and the McCombs School at UT Austin. 

And there's more

But only slightly related (I remain, after all, the Queen of the Non Sequiter),  an interesting paper from danah boyd, Scott Golder and Gilad Lotan on retweeting as a conversational practice. 

And it just occured to me though I am sure it has been obvious to everyone else for ages. Hardly anyone uses the term microblogging. It's all twitter. Twitter is the new hoover, the xerox, the thermos, the new genericization, the new eopnym.

Comments

[Alan]

sign me up for campus twitter czar

[John decruze]

Very nice write up, Easy to understand and straight . . . Great info ... We posted a link to it.

Term papers