Blogg-Ed Indetermination

The use of social networking by organizations to promote their goals is rapidly expanding. What was once thought of as an service for individual use is quickly being embraced as an avenue for schools to communicate with many constituent groups and individuals. The field is changing so rapidly that it is difficult to promulgate guidelines let alone policies. Nonetheless, it is important to avoid serious missteps in this new medium.

Here then are some suggestions for using some of the most well-known social networking and web 2.0 technologies: Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, YouTube, and iTunes.

• Each technology should be used to its best advantage based on its users, message type, and consistency with overall school messaging protocols and strategy.
  • Fit the message to the medium. Twitter may not be the best choice to announce a tuition increase, for example, but its a great place to update sports scores.
  • Linked-In may be a better place to look for professional mentors or adveretise a job opening  for students than Facebook, whereas Facebook is terrific for connecting with alumni.
  • YouTube is the place for video. Link to it when you need to share video content, using your own school-branded channel. If the video needs to be private, use an internal network. (If you are a Google education or enterprise customers put it on your Google video site.)
• Mutli-channel communications are powerful and should be used with forethought.
  • Use the small to drive to the large; Twitter or Facebook status updates to YouTube, iTunes, or new blog entries.
    
  • Keep the daily updates down to one or two per day to start with. Anything more than that can be seen as spam by users. As your channels become more diversified, you can increase the total number of updates coming from the organization overall, while keeping the per channel communication number low.
  • Strategically link applications to reduce staff time. For example, Twitter can update Facebook status.
• Official channels of communication should be marked as such.
  • If you have a Facebook fan page or group, use your logo and something like “An official Facebook page of…”
• Determine which channels will be one-way, and which will be two-way.
  • Institutional tweets should be for announcements, not conversations; Facebook groups suggest camaraderie and message exchange whereas, Facebook fan sites can be controlled like a regular Web site; an official YouTube channel should be moderated like any other official channel of the school, with publishing guidelines understood and enforced.
  • Channels need regular feeding and attention.
• Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in and similar channels thrive on daily updates, whereas iTunes and YouTube feature episodic publishing schedules based on when new multimedia content becomes available.
  • If you are concerned about mentions of your organization through non-official channels, subscribe to any one of a number of clipping services which monitor social networks and news organizations.
  • Faculty, staff, and students should be encouraged to create content for and subscribe to these new media gain familiarity and comfort with them, distribute the burden of content creation, and enrich the experience for all users.

My thinking is far from being fully formed on this topic, and I could really use the input of others. Please comment.

For some time I have been reading about the challenges social networking present to schools. Not the students in school, mind you. They have taken to social networking like ducks to water. But the adults are a different story and are largely playing catch-up. Some schools have responded by banning all of use social networking by students and employees. Others (a small number) are using social networking tools in interesting ways. Most seem to be in the middle, engaged in much hand wringing and asking colleagues in other schools:

• What are YOU doing about Facebook and MySpace?
• Do you have a policy we can look at?
• Our faculty and staff are asking for guidance in this area. What do we tell them?

I don’t have the answer. But I do have some opinions, and I’d like to float them here to see what others have to say about them and then, in the best of social networking tradition, incorporate your suggestions into something that I can run by my colleagues. So here goes.

Proposed Guidelines for Use of Social Networks by School Faculty and Staff*

New technologies, such as social networking tools, provide exciting new ways to collaborate and communicate. Nevertheless we must exercise care to be sure we use such tools with students in ways that are both age-appropriate and consistent with the mission of the school.

School faculty and staff are expected to behave honorably in both real and virtual (online) spaces. Activities which are improper, unethical, illegal, or which cause undue discomfort for students, employees, parents, or other members of the school community should be judiciously avoided in both physical space and cyberspace.

To that end, we offer the following guidelines for school employees who use online social networking applications which may be frequented by current or former students.

1. COURSE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING: In order to provide equal, age-appropriate access for students to course materials, faculty should limit class activities to school-sanctioned online tools. New social networking tools and features are being continually introduced which may or may not be appropriate for course use. The same care must be taken in choosing such tools as other tools and support materials.
2. MODEL APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR: Exercise appropriate discretion when using social networks for personal communications (friends, colleagues, parents, former students, etc.) with the knowledge that adult behavior on social networks may be used as a model by our students.
3. FRIENDING ALUMNI: Accept social network friend requests only with alumni over the age of 18. Do not initiate friend contacts with alumni.
4. UNEQUAL RELATIONSHIPS: Understand that the uneven power dynamics of the school, in which adults have authority over former students, continues to shape those relationships.
5. OTHER FRIENDS: Remind all other members of your network of your position as an educator whose profile may be accessed by current or former students, and to monitor their posts to your network accordingly. Conversely, be judicious in your postings to all friends sites, and act immediately to remove any material that may be inappropriate from your site whether posted by you or someone else.
6. GROUPS IN YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK: Associate with social networking groups consistent with healthy, pro-social activities and the mission and reputation of the school, acting with sensitivity within context of a diverse educational environment in which both students and adults practice tolerance and accept competing views.
7. PRIVACY SETTINGS AND CONTENT: Exercise care with privacy settings and profile content. Content should be placed thoughtfully and periodically reviewed to maintain this standard.
8. MISREPRESENTATION: Faculty who use social networks should do so using their own name, not a pseudonym or nickname.
9. PUBLIC INFORMATION: Recognize that many former students have online connections with current students, and that information shared between school adults and former students is likely to be seen by current students as well.

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*Some of the ideas for this list come from a Facebook group I belong to, Faculty Ethics on Facebook. It is geared towards higher education, and so if you stumbled upon this post and really want to read about colleges and universities, head on over to Facebook. I also appreciate colleague Matt Montagne’s feedback via Google Docs on an earlier draft of these ideas.