Page Comparison

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Just capturing some thoughts

Why might an instructor or student want a social network specific to their academic work? People join Facebook and LinkedIn for different reasons. Here are some of themgoals they might have

• To promote expertise and accomplishments publicly to attract opportunities for employment or collaboration...while maintaining control over who can contact them.
• Conversely, finding people you might want to work with, based on interests/expertise, people they know, or both
• Staying current by tapping into news and events that are important to people she respects... while not getting overloaded with information.
• Be able to contact people at three levels:
  • one time interactions
  • groups for limited-time projects
  • maintain contact when colleagues change organizations

What functions are necessary according to needs above? + is definite, 0 is ideallyfor the instructor or graduate student? It depends on which goals they have. If a function is marked with a + in the table below, it is essential to meet that goal. If it is marked with a 0, it would be better with that function, but could function without it. It is not clear if the goals that involve "connections" are realistic. Adding this to 3.0 will only allow you to establish and maintain connections with Sakai users at your school, who are not people you are likely to lose track of, whereas most social networks are good for connecting with lost classmates (facebook) or former colleagues at other companies (linkedin). It might be useful, however, to have a contact network to stay current with news and events, such that your colleagues and feeding and filtering news you are interested in. Thus the first three are probably the most important.

Is this Which of these are necessary for the undergraduate student too?? At this point, privacy control becomes essential (students can't contact other students via email without consent). It is even less likely that students will maintain contacts in Sakai and will use other tools for that. They might like to stay current, but are not nearly as invested in their specialty at this point in their career. Thus, again, the first three goals are probably the most relevant, with self-promotion becoming less important after they leave school.

Note that groups are not essential, but are another way of maintaining loose affilliation--I might join a group, but I don't necessarily want to let everyone in that group in my network. For short term projects with a small number of members, direct contact is fine, but large groups with membership that shifts overtime will need a group function.