Social software management tips

Managing a social software teaching/learning environment

Creating a sustainable management task
Supporting students
A democratic space
Maintaining momentum
Technical management
Copyright

Creating a sustainable management task

A sustainable social software management task will have:

• small student numbers and a small number of sites - to keep the task of monitoring activity and discussion within reasonable bounds
• a strong assessment strategy including clear criteria and a small number of integrated assessment tasks - to minimise marking (see Social software assessment)
• a robust peer assessment system (see Social software assessment)
• all necessary supports and resources built into social software sites (see Preparing a social software environment)
• a team of committed and skilled staff to monitor, moderate and mark student contributions.

Supporting students

Managing a social software environment will entail a significant ongoing time commitment. You may need a team of staff to:

• help students learn to use the software
• monitor the site and related discussions to respond to queries and provide encouragement
• ensure students understand and follow the etiquette and protocols of the site
• help them interpret task requirements
• help them form groups and manage ongoing group issues
• help students develop their understanding of the subject area.

It is a good idea to build in as many self-help resources and 'scaffolds' to the site as possible (see Preparing a social software environment). However, there will always be matters that will require a teacher's individual attention.

The University requires that any environment in which students contribute content or messages is monitored and inappropriate content or comments are removed quickly.

For information and suggestions on running successful online groups, see the Institute of Teaching and Learning's webpages on Group assignments and Designing your online/blended unit in Desire2Learn: activities.

A democratic space

A social software site will work best if students see it as their own space, with their own rules (within reason). This is the point of using a democratic environment such as a wiki or blog/online discussion space. However, students who are not used to self-management may need encouragement and support to make the most of their freedom! In particular, they may find it difficult to adjust from an individualistic approach to their academic work to feeling comfortable with people commenting on and editing their contributions to a group task. Lamb (2004) provides a useful explanation of the 'wide-open ethic' of social software and how to best manage student work in this environment. Bonk (2002) also provides useful insights into how to build trusting learning environments on the Web.

Maintaining momentum

A recurring issue with social software environments is how to maintain momentum in a space in which the technology imposes no structured participation. The key to ensuring people continue to use and build a social software site is to create it for a specific and important purpose. If your students are building or contributing to a social software site as part of an assessment requirement they will have sufficient incentive to to see their task through, but will generally need strong group communication to maintain real commitment and solve incidental problems that arise in a creative way. You may need to provide a set of dates by which certain stages must be reached, as well as ongoing support and encouragement .

If your social software site is to be a knowledge base that you expect students and perhaps other users to continue to use and build, you might find that after an initial flurry, activity will decline. This may not be because there is no more that can usefully be added, it can simply mean that the project needs a champion and ideas to renew users' interest.

Technical management

How to perform common technical management tasks in each of the Deakin social software applications is covered in the administrator and user guides for each application (see the Social software main page). For further help, contact your faculty teaching and learning support staff, the Institute of Teaching and Learning or the IT Service Desk.

Major system crashes and outages are very rare, and the IT Service Desk can restore a lost or corrupted site if necessary. When you make such a service call, you will need to provide:

• the URL for the site
• a description of the issue and how long it has been evident
• dates when assessments are due, to help the IT Service Desk prioritise the issue.

Copyright

Deakin's official policy on copyright of contributions to wikis is as follows:

Wiki licensing - Contributions are 'Open Works'

Contributors to Deakin wikis relinquish all rights to their work (including all rights under the Copyright Act, save and except for (i) the right of attribution of authorship of the original contribution, and (ii) the right not to have such authorship falsely attributed) and acknowledge that their contributions may be edited, used and adapted in any way in the future. Deakin University does not accept any responsibility for contributions nor retain any copyright to wiki content.

Third party copyright

• Users are solely responsible for ensuring that their contributions to Deakin wikis are their own original work and not subject to any third party copyright.
• Appropriate referencing conventions must be used at all times.

References

Lamb, B 2004, 'Wide open spaces: wikis ready or not', Educause Review, September/October, pp. 36-48
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0452.pdf (.pdf), accessed 10 January 2008.

Bonk, C 2002, 'Frameworks for research, design, benchmarks, training and pedagogy in web-based distance education' in M Moore & W Anderson (eds),Handbook of distance education, Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey, pp. 331-48.