About This Page

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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What concerns may the institution have when considering developing or deploying in-house blogs and social networking services?

Academic literacy
Need staff involvement
Are rules and regulations fit for purpose - should we worry? Walk through some cases and see if rules fit. If not change them. Use examples.
Why would students use in house social networking - when they have their own.
Might be more successful for academic than for social networking

How learning skills are developed.

What concerns may the institution have when considering making use of externally-hosted blogs and social networking services?

External sites - out of uni control
Speed at which sites eg Bebo are taken down
Compliance, UAP
Dignity at work policy - Cardiff

Transient. Ephemeral. No record. Audit - eg QA, feedback loops.

Use SMS?
SMS train tickets!

How should such concerns be best addressed?

Review AUP and rules
Get advice from compliance unit?

Summary of the Discussion

Recommendations

Hear more from students
Walk through exisitng policies with a view to Web2.0 and how they might apply
Guidance from UCISA - toolkits?
Look at digital literacy aimed at academic staff.
Apply skills in real world to digital world, in an imaginative way.