Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Article on university blogging. My article on roles blogs sometimes play in a college or university's non-teaching work has appeared on the web site of University Business, and the print version is in the mail to subscribers. The article discusses some ways that schools currently use diary-like student blogs in recruiting students, as well as ways that up-to-date campus web sites take cues from the dynamic nature of blogs. I close with a look at my campus's effort to use blogging to support a community conversation about the quality of American democracy.
The magazine is directed at campus administrators, so I'll describe the main sections of the article here so other readers can see whether they want to take a look.
1. Opening section. Some schools are using student bloggers to add a slice of campus life to the admissions page, in hopes of attracting more students. Unlike most bloggers, these writers have an instant audience in an important part of a campus's web site.
2. A Generation Gap. While campus administrators may think of the web site as a place for polished writing that presents a carefully chosen image of the institution, student bloggers usually aim for an informal way to communicate. Perhaps campuses can learn from the energy, speed, and focus of good blogging, however, in spite of this generation gap.
3. Frozen in Time. Many parts of a campus's web site may be essentially static, but students increasingly operate in a dynamic, multi-media world.
4. Doing What Blogs Do. Bloggers link, annotate, and quote from other sites to help organize a body of knowledge for a community of readers and writers, so the admissions page blogs are usually online diaries rather than blogs. A campus can use a well-stocked database and page template software to create dynamic sites that have some of the energy we find in good blogs.
5. A Campus Blog. There are some examples of campuses that are trying for a real blog. This section describes my campus's American Democracy Project blog, with its accompanying radio series. Perhaps of interest to edubloggers is a comment about the authority issue raised by campus blogging -- eg.:
Posts by professors are often informed by their scholarship, but these and other writers also gain authority by testing ideas against personal and community experience. On the blog, what counts as knowledge is not settled by the word of a university expert. This attitude is appropriate and necessary for the subject of democracy.
6. Promising Results. This brief section sketches some ways that blog has been successful and other ways in which it is still heading toward its goals and its promise.
7. Related Information. This sidebar from the print article describes the strategy of republishing, in which a campus repackages content from its database for different sections of its web site for different audiences.
8. Beyond the Viewbook. The section discusses ways that a dynamic school web site can give an audience "a look into the hive" of the campus. [0 & P]
The magazine is directed at campus administrators, so I'll describe the main sections of the article here so other readers can see whether they want to take a look.
1. Opening section. Some schools are using student bloggers to add a slice of campus life to the admissions page, in hopes of attracting more students. Unlike most bloggers, these writers have an instant audience in an important part of a campus's web site.
2. A Generation Gap. While campus administrators may think of the web site as a place for polished writing that presents a carefully chosen image of the institution, student bloggers usually aim for an informal way to communicate. Perhaps campuses can learn from the energy, speed, and focus of good blogging, however, in spite of this generation gap.
3. Frozen in Time. Many parts of a campus's web site may be essentially static, but students increasingly operate in a dynamic, multi-media world.
4. Doing What Blogs Do. Bloggers link, annotate, and quote from other sites to help organize a body of knowledge for a community of readers and writers, so the admissions page blogs are usually online diaries rather than blogs. A campus can use a well-stocked database and page template software to create dynamic sites that have some of the energy we find in good blogs.
5. A Campus Blog. There are some examples of campuses that are trying for a real blog. This section describes my campus's American Democracy Project blog, with its accompanying radio series. Perhaps of interest to edubloggers is a comment about the authority issue raised by campus blogging -- eg.:
Posts by professors are often informed by their scholarship, but these and other writers also gain authority by testing ideas against personal and community experience. On the blog, what counts as knowledge is not settled by the word of a university expert. This attitude is appropriate and necessary for the subject of democracy.
6. Promising Results. This brief section sketches some ways that blog has been successful and other ways in which it is still heading toward its goals and its promise.
7. Related Information. This sidebar from the print article describes the strategy of republishing, in which a campus repackages content from its database for different sections of its web site for different audiences.
8. Beyond the Viewbook. The section discusses ways that a dynamic school web site can give an audience "a look into the hive" of the campus. [0 & P]