I would be heartbroken if BYU goes with another canned piece of software that's crappy, useless, and overpriced (like blackboard). I have a LOT of ideas about this endeavor (and am excited that others at BYU are looking at creating an online social network for BYU students/alumni/faculty).
I live and breath social software. I've been researching for the past year with a few professors on how to best use web2.0/social software in education. I would love to talk to whoever is in charge of this effort as one of my long-held dreams has been to help build a social learning network for BYU. I see huge huge benefits from having all students, alumni, and falculty connected, sharing, and learning together. I built island.byu.edu using Drupal earlier this year for the ISys department to do much what you were talking about Scott. One of our several purposes is to connect alumni with students through informal mentoring. The Island website is built around groups based on topic and geographic area. These are discussion groups. Students and alumni join groups they are interested in and ask questions and share knowledge. By bringing students and alumni together in groups where they share common interests -- all those things happen that you mentioned -- sharing career opportunities, development ideas, market info, employer info, etc. in the different groups. For example, one of the groups is on business intelligence. If you love business intelligence, you would join this groups and ask questions about the field, about career opportunites, what it's really like working in the field, etc. Alumni who are working in the business intelligence field will belong to this group and will answer your questions. And that takes no organization on anyone's part. The mentoring all happens very naturally as people create/join groups they are interested in. BTW, anyone with a Route Y ID can create an account on Island -- just login and an account will be created. It was built for ISys students but anyone interested can create an account and join groups. I'd be interested to hear feedback on the site. So I'd love to see something like Island built for school-wide usage. I'd love to see groups with students and falculty from different majors/disciplines. CS/ISys/IT/Electrical Engineering, for example, have large areas of overlap but come at these areas from very different perspectives. It'd be fun and educational to see people's perspectives from different areas. My passion growing up wasn't really in the technical but in the social sciences. I'd love to join in groups on history, psychology, sociologoy, anthrapology etc. to expand my knowlege in those disciplines. I built Island using Drupal and Drupal IMHO is the best software for building community websites. Loads of community sites are built using Drupal and it's widely used in education (See Drupal in Education group<http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-education>). The biggest upside to using Drupal is Drupal makes it possible to build a very customized solution to meet BYU's specific needs (not a canned solution that sorta works). (read Situated Software<http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html>for more why that is a very good thing). If we go with Linked-In -- we'd be constrained by their limits and vision. Same problem with every other commercial "solution". It'd be much better if BYU were to roll their own solution. Ok, I have lots more I could say about this subject but I'll stop for now. Kyle On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Scott K <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Perhaps part of the answer is working hard to tap the network of BYU >> alumni. Today that might be much easier than it was 5 years ago. Not >> only can you try asking the BYU Alumni Association for help, you can >> also turn to resources like LinkedIn. It'll be hard, and probably only >> possible 2 or 3 times a year, but hopefully it would help set the tone >> for other meetings. >> > > > That should be easier in the near future. I went to a focus group a couple > months ago put on by the alumni association to figure out how to best > leverage the alumni in general for sharing career opportunities, development > ideas, market info, employer info, etc. (it was run by a consultant from > http://thecodeworksinc.com/ ). > > While they are examining several possibilities, the most likely step BYU > will make is the introduction of a social network to maximize user generated > content and participation. Contracting with Linked In or another provider to > get this up and running by April is one of the solutions they are > considering. > > If you have ideas about how to make this university endeavor work (And not > suck like the new BYU website), discuss them here, and I'll email them to > Neal, the consultant, in hopes to exchange ideas for the current direction > of the project. > > Scott K. > > -------------------- > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > > The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their > author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list > -- Research Assistant eBusiness Center @ BYU kyle.mathews2000.com/blog
-------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
