SuperSatellite

Social Education

// December 6th, 2007 // Web

In the field of higher education, universities have a unique roll in terms of their web site and the services that we provide to visitors and users. Because the landscape of a university is so expansive, it can be easy to get caught up trying to showcase and provide for many different fields. Common features like e-mail are being augmented around the world at colleges and schools with things like e-portfolios, web storage space, blogs, photo galleries, e-learning software, and user communities. It is the latter that I am interested in focusing on today.

While doing web development, the important question to answer is: “What need are we fulfilling?” Often times we will rush head long into development to keep up with the work load that piles up. Until recently, this was a relatively safe procedure, because we often were trying to keep up with everything, so even if what we did wasn’t needed right then, by the time it was done, there would be a use for it. Now, however, that is changing. The big buzz word is “social media” or “Web 2.0.” Let me be perfectly straightforward with my dislike of the phrase Web 2.0. I think it is a misnomer that is dangerously abused, particularly by those not in web development.

It is this social web that is creating development and support challenges for colleges and universities. Many have tried to create their own social networks, or play off the popularity of others. So what’s the problem? Money is painfully finite. So are developer resources. By creating a network, you create a sort of implied agreement between yourself and the user that you will support that service for them. Worse than that, you create a service that people might use, that by comparison is still inferior to private sector counterparts. Eventually usage will drop off, and you are stuck supporting something that only a handful of people still use, but by that point you can’t justify simply scrapping it.

This creates a huge problem for college staff. How do you handle the constant complaints and feature requests? Remember, we are in the business of education and student support. By getting into these new areas, you are suddenly binding yourself to new areas of support and growth it fields that didn’t even exist five years ago. Why put that pressure on yourself? This is especially true in the face of tools being made available like Facebook’s API (Application Program Interface), which are there to make it easier to let them handle our needs. Facebook makes a lot of money. Certainly more than us. They have a huge support network in place. Dedicated people. By leveraging them in place of a homegrown solution, you solve a number of issues. First, growth into that area becomes a marketing issue, where it belongs. Web marketing staff can get in, set things up, and use the tools without any real need for us to step in. You don’t expend resources developing and supporting something that is, in essence, a fad. Ten years from now certain aspects of social media will survive, no doubt, but there will be a new big thing on the block. But if you decided to make your own tool, you are stuck playing catch up. Instead, you could have just dumped and moved on. At worst, you are out a little time that you spent working in the API, but that’s minor compared to the alternative.

Let us not forget the biggest issue. This is social media. It’s all about people, and people are around long before they ever get to us. In today’s world, it is the social norm to already have a MySpace, and a Facebook at the very least. The more adept kids are running Photobucket or Flickr, del.icio.us accounts, checking Technorati, blogging, and on, and on. Unless you can do a better job than these sites, why compete? If you could do better, you probably wouldn’t be working in higher ed in the first place, so why would we want to reinvent the wheel? If students come in already tooled up for their social networking skills, we are better off augmenting them in their domain, rather than trying to graft a new one on top of it. We see this a lot with .edu e-mail accounts, where the student gets it, and tends to use it grudgingly when they have no other choice. They are here for four years, and will get more e-mail addresses from ISPs and employers in the future, why should they hang on to this one? The same goes with social networking, since there isn’t anything we can effectively offer that would make sense for them to add one more thing they need to get on and check every day. Instead, get out and make a MySpace profile, and invite students to it. Go to them, and show that you are willing to work with them on their level. Then, once the fad dies off, just kill off the profile and move on. It was time well spent, and you can get focused on the next big thing.

There is a perception issue that associates with all this: embracing vs. chasing. First off, there is the community of people that will take any opportunity to criticize something a university does when it is the slightest bit deficient. Not to mention the ones that pipe up when things really are deficient. If you create a social networking portal that is weak and uninteresting, you will be reamed for it in the kids’ eyes. That also attaches a stigma to you that you just don’t “get it,” and are trying to play catch up with, and invest in, something that’s just a fad. That’s the “chasing.” On the other hand, by embracing and leveraging existing sites, you avoid that criticism. How can they come down on you for something everyone is using (unless you really screw it up)? You also gain credibility at the management level because of the time and money you’ll save, as well as your ability to stay with the trends. Instead of being a second rate copier, you suddenly are seen as an organization that understands how to actually use the tools that are out there. You get it. You see the power that others have made and can make it your own. In a single day you can have Facebook and MySpace profiles, in a week networks are growing, you can be reaching people through YouTube, and you can be making impressions on kids in a fraction of the time had you tried to redevelop similar tools.

What we finally boil down to is the concept that a “web presence” today means much more than just running a .edu on a box in our server room. That used to be it. Now the landscape is different. Things are evolving, and so too must we. Entertainment industry professionals are latching on to this idea, promoting movies, games, and music in the blogosphere and on social networking sites. People’s entire job description consists of creating these profiles and commenting on people and networking to the web users. If it works for them, why can’t we make that same strategy work for us? We must create “presence.” Show that we can operate in space and that the technology out there is something we understand and can use to reach people. If we do it all ourself, we become internet xenophobes, holed up on our domain, unwilling to exist outside the confines of our server room. This means being daring, and possibly adding staff to address it, but in the long term, it is time and money well spent, and your web staff and programmers can stay focused on true university needs.