Building and Sustaining a Community using the Social Web
UCISA SSG Communications Group Conference
Brian Kelly gave a talk on "Building and Sustaining a Community using the Social Web" at a UCISA SSG (Support Services Group) event on "Using Social Media to Communicate". The workshop was held at Austin Court Birmingham on 18th January 2012. The talk is part of the "Integrating the Tools" session and took place from 14.00-14.20.
The Twitter hashtag for this event is #ucsoc12.
Note that further information is available on the event page on the Lanyrd service.
Abstract
When the Social Web first started to become popular the response from some was to look for ways to block use since there were feelings that such services were inappropriate for use in a educational context, in addition to concerns regarding performance, capacity, legal issues, etc.
However there is now a better understanding of ways in which the Social Web can be used to support legitimate aspects of University activities including teaching and learning, research and administrative work.
The term 'social' has perhaps been responsible for such confusions since it implies non-professional activities. If, however, we regarded the social Web as supporting collaborative activities we can see that it can have a role to play in supporting those working in IT Service departments as well as teaching and learning and research staff.
In this talk Brian Kelly will explore ways in which the Social Web can be used by those working in IT Service departments by supporting collaborative activities with one's peers across the sector. In many respects this is nothing new, since IT Service staff will be familiar with use of mailing lists to engage with others. However there are now new opportunities to use technologies such as blogs and Twitter to build on existing connections and contacts and enhance the development of a Community of Practice across IT Service departments.
Materials
Slides
- Building and Sustaining a Community using the Social Web
- [MS PowerPoint 97/2000 format]
Note that the slides are also available on Slideshare and are embedded below.
Biographical Details
Brian Kelly helped to set up probably the first institutional Web service at the University of Leeds in 1993 when he was the Information Officer in the Computing Service. He has previously worked in IT Service departments in the Universities of Loughborough, Liverpool and Leeds. In 1997 he started work at UKOLN, University of Bath where he is a national adviser on innovative uses of the Web.