Many lecturers have real problems with the idea of integrating social networking into their teaching because of its association with leisure activities (think of what the majority of us do on Facebook: it certainly isn’t professional networking!). A new site has been developed with the aim of making more formal academic networking a possibility, so could it work?
The Students and Academics networking site offers members of universities around the country a site on which they can develop formal teaching networks or simply browse for students and staff with the same interests as them. The site is divided into subject areas.
It offers blogs, discussion fora and a private messaging service for anyone who signs up and creates a profile. But will this work? Is there a real need for a service like this?
From a lecturer’s point of view, this is certainly something that needs to be followed with interest. For distance learning courses these sorts of online gathering places are essential, but usually the university will have their own branded space in which students and teachers can gather. Conventionally taught courses often have access to WebCT type learning environments, which some students take full advantage of while others are reluctant to use.
Colleagues of mine who have tried to run online seminars rather than convention face-to-face ones have actually found that students do not seem ready to engage with this sort of technology for learning and would rather keep their learning separate from their socialising.
It is not yet clear how the Students and Academics networking site will fit in the niche between the large established social networking sites and online learning environments such as WebCT. But it could catch on: it’s well worth, watching this space!
I think that academia.edu may be more of a professional networking site than this, although it’s difficult to tell because so far little has been filled in. It’s not clear that anyone is policing content or that it couldn’t easily be dragged away from its supposed mission by saturating it with non-academic material, games, music, etc. At the moment, however, it seems to largely be a world-accessible WebCT and so, while it may serve for teachers who would like to use that but whose institutions don’t support it, that hardly seems like a growth market and such institutions will presumably be difficult about recognising such work as credit-worthy. So I wonder, really, whether there is a niche for this service. It seems to rely on people not being aware of its rivals…