Starting with todays cartoon on the last page of the Observant I am compelled to relate it to a particular dilemma regarding MU's use of social media. The cartoon depicts a character who spends his evening updating his inventory of social media channels ending up with no time to study. The apparent grievance or joke touches a point worth considering here. What gives rise to the grievance is not the time consumed by the the cartoon's character but the apparent dissonance between what he says he's doing and what he actually does. Namely nothing! His homework is not finished and he did not study. What should give us a thrill is the fact that the UM website is as far from being done as the character's homework at the end of the cartoon. But instead of looking at the causes of this particular joke only its effects show off in peoples faces.
We all know that keeping an additional communication channel nice and pretty is time intense. And it is important to be on facebook, on twitter, on foresquare, on what so ever 2.0. Of course these tools are for free and therefore are used by everybody. That is the democratization of the net and the main reason behind UM's aspirations to be there is to claim part of this space in order to get the attention of prospective and current students. Primarily for the purpose of recruiting them for one of our programmes. Having said this there is no empirical evidence that it has any effect on recruting other than guesswork to my knowledge. But its like TV, newspaper, radio a legitimate channel to reach out for eyeballs. And there is nothing to support the antithesis either. So we can say, lets try and experiment with this.
But the main problem remains, namely that the primary communication channel of MU is in comparison with other University websites underdeveloped. So whatever hopes are attached to this technologies they are more like phantom pain in their appearance. Like people who lost an arm point to their missing limp as their perceived source of pain, people engaging in a dialogue about web2.0 technologies point to facebook as the sources of pain that needs a cure. This curing of non existing limps is impossible but a welcoming distraction from the homework. And it is exactly the distraction from his homework and from his study that causes us to feel pity for the Cartoon character while at the same time reminds us of our own situation.
A small make-up of SBE's facebook page and some small fixes here and there on the website was among the jobs that kept me from updating the blog. This week a wordpress MU account was launched by the Student Service Center offering students their own blogging environment. Interesting enough it is hosted in the states and initiated by students themselves. The Postgraduate Education Department, if one wants to call it like this, also launched their blog using a hosted solution offered by the same CRM than the Student Service Center. Another one of those novelties I used recently was Eventbrite for the SBE Christmas Party 2010. It's a free service offering you with more or less ease to let people register for events. I also managed to get hold on a webserver "webserver 18" as Walter calls it that will be used in the near future.
Another time consuming activity is the begging for money one. But it relates to a very important point I stressed already over and over again. There are universities that have a web team. And this is reflected in the website of these universities. But here I am my own team. And to extend it I want an student assistant. So if you read these lines, and you are a motivated, structured student at Maastricht University, with the aspirations to work for money one day a week for a year at a very challenging environment just drop me a line. Right here! Together with Julijenne I have 4 departments already in my pocket to pay for you. And the rest follows.
Some meetings where also on my agenda and together with all the above mentioned activities cost about 1/3 of my time. That is definitely too much but I am working on it. Among the meetings where those with people from METEOR, MSCM, AIM, ICTS and Cross Knowledge. Now you might ask, yourself dear reader what this is. Its a private company offering education for highly skilled and flexible knowledge worker. And if this does not sound convincing I can assure you that it is. Its an all in one package including infrastructure (meaning website, learning environment, customer relationship management software), Content (audiovisual educational content designed for distance learning activities in I think 5 different languages) and expertise. Mr. Pieters visited me early and in the exciting discussion I learned a lot about the "state of art" in selling education. The wave upon which CrossKnowledge rides high is the trend from formal to informal education. No flaws, no discontinuity and supported with a broader vision that I can relate to. In fact, it was this meeting that gave me the most joy in the past two weeks.
The big part now for the end. The department websites occupy my the second 1/3 of my time. A third training session just got confirmed today for the 16th of December. I happy with this because it means that all people are trained and have access to their parts of the website. The content is coming in slowly and I better spend more time on writing it myself. The personal pages topic is one which will not be solved soon. In the first step only the important information such as Name, Title, Availability, Room Number, Telephone, Email, and a link to their existing profile pages is oversee able. What I got from one of the meetings was that people of FIN are really happy with their System (ASP) and can be used for all of SBE.
The other points regarding the department's structure are straight forward. A description about their programs (MSc, BSc, Executive, MBA) and their research activities should be doable, I thought. And some sentences about their department's aspirations or mission statement would be already more than other universities' departments have to offer. We are getting there. ...HEELLLPPP!!!
In tandem with the department websites I also redo the METEOR site and draw on my whiteboard the outlines of the whole SBE website structure. Starting with a programme page that displays all programs that we offer is an important improvement that needs to be in place before the next semester starts. A service page, displaying all the services is indeed as necessary. And together with the departmental websites it captures the essence of what SBE does.
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