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This page has been set up to support the discussion groups.

Participants in your discussion group will have been assigned to a discussion group and given a handout with some suggestions for topics to be addressed. These topics are given below. You should stick to the broad area of the group you have been assigned to, but you should not feel contrained by the questions which are provided.

Please include notes of the discussion group below. Remember that your notes will be used by others in the final report back session, so try to ensure that your notes will be comprehensible by others.
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Discusion Group Title: Who Addresses The Users' Needs?
Reporter: Tony Brett, University of Oxford

Pre question: Who are the users? Not only students but researchers and other staff too.
Some users are not within the Universities so need solutions that allow external access too (eg NHS).
Leeds are finding external people are wanting to use their blog solution so this creates a support overhead.
What about other broad user communities? Our collaborators who are not in academia can be a problem. This can be a problem if there are people who are just using blogs and social networks and don't necessarily have email addresses in the University. Boundaries between teaching and NHS work etc. can be very vague. There are other groups like applicants, parents etc. that may need to be considered. What about ex-employees and ex-students?

Who are the main potential providers of blogs and social networking services? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these providers? When might the preferred solution in an institution not be applicable for all?

(+ = strength, - = weakness)

We work on the basis that users might be anybody. Leeds provide blogging for staff but students need to be invited by staff.

Devolved Universities tend to find that schools/departments/colleges tend to pioneer things on their own and then move to centrally provided services once technologies are more mature. It's very hard to insist on the use of central services. They have to be better and/or provide more perceived value than the independent, smaller implementations.

Keeping a central space to University-only has worked well for Leeds as it has made a Leeds-specific space that is free of spam. Word of mouth networking has spread the use of the Leedsfeeds service.

Local solutions:

+ Quick and easy to set up
- Not scalable

Institutional Solutions:

+ Sense of involvement and identity.
+ Control of data both in terms of privacy and IP.

External commercial:

+ More accountable than free-providers

External Free:

+ Avoids resource and setup costs
- Could disappear at any moment
- Ownership/IP issues.
+ Easier cross institution collaboration
- Not responsible to the HE Community
- Could start charging for service

Home-grown:

+ Quick and easy
- Not very scalable

How might an institution go about managing its preferred solution? How would use of alternatives be addressed – especially if such alternatives proved popular?

Hosting sites internally gives more control over access.
Do Institutions have a responsibility to enable access to external providers
Do institutions have a responsibility to educate staff/students in use of and access to services?
People may be more confident to post material they are unsure of if they can initially restrict access to it.
How do we make sure people are aware and getting the information they need to use the web 2.0 tools.
Information literacy should be included in all undergraduate courses. Information literacy in the digital age is an alien concept and must be taught as it is probably not taught in schools.

How should an institution go about supporting its users in an environment in which a diversity of services may be used?

We assume digital natives and we assume broadband access. Are these assumptions valid? Students from diverse countries/cultures will have very different experiences of IT use. Distance learners generally work well with blogs/social networks but they must have fast access and the skills to learn at a distance.
Some state email as primary communication and some insist on students reading email at least daily in term time.
We tend to assume we know what students want rather than actually asking them.
If we do ask students we tend to get info from the easy-to-reach ones. Very important to try to get input from students as much as possible.
Users are also colleagues - teaching, research, finance, HR etc. How do we get their requirements?
We are often playing catch-up to our students' needs.
We need to balance between media-rich and media-lean ways of teaching in order to ensure more universal access.
Key to HE is writing task and blogs/wikis fit this well.
We should be educating people about writing skills. Problems are around use of language rather than technology.
Do we need to persuade people that blogging is interesting/worthwhile before they do it.
Need to educate people in using the right tools for the right job.
Work/Personal life balance needs careful attention/consideration and perhaps we can educate users about this.
We can educate users about privacy settings, sensible policy on "making friends" with students on facebook etc. Give academic staff etc. the edge over competitors using these tools.
Who's responsibility is it to tell people which tools to use/how to use them? Is this part of StudySkills?

Summary of the Discussion

This is a good area for partnership working. Knowledge is being harvested by new IT services like facebook, blogs, secondlife etc.

Who does have the ear and trust of the students? We need to work with them.

We are in some ways in loco parentis with students and need continually to assess new technologies and make sure students are travelling down safe roads.

Recommendations

Can we make learning objects/guidance available for University teachers to use when inducting students and teaching them study skills?

Choice of provider (external/internal) really depends on whether the service is considered a core University Service and if the University is insisting on its use.

We need to keep and eye on where people are going in ways of learning and follow them there, constantly assessing the implications of new technologies on the way.