The eduGuru Blog

I'm obviously spending too much time on Twitter and reading other peoples blogs, but there's an interesting article here (published a few months ago) on Social Media in Higher Education, written by Rachel Reuben of State University of New York at New Paltz. The paper is "geared towards high level administrators in higher education, such as Presidents and VPs who have heard about social media, but need a complete introduction to the concept and potential."

Not that dissimilar to meetings I have been to recently where the speaker (Dave Parkes) has introduced the range of tools to senior staff, and asked the audience "who used Facebook?" "who used Twitter?" "who has a blog?". I'm not telling you the answers - you can probably guess....

Anyway, the report attached to the eduGuru blog page is a good introduction to tools and techniques, and picks up some interesting concerns:

1. Loss of control
2. Time commitment
3. Information overload
4. Anyone can create an "official"account for you University

All the usual suspects - I've written before about the link between control and innovation (thanks to Mark Stiles), and have seen plenty of groups on Facebook "belonging" to either awards or groups of students, where the control of the group may be in the hands of the students or their course leaders, and the although not official may be the first place that students look for and gain information. That's not to say it's a bad thing, but will there always be enough time available to ensure that such groups and other fora are kept up to date and relevant?