Higher education and social media
Dr James Council, Dean of Libraries at North Dakota State University, blogged an interesting viewpoint on where higher education is when it comes to social media. His take on social media and higher education? He fears that universities might be left in the dust — ignoring the modes of communication their students prefer to use on a daily basis.
Dr. Council seems intent on catching up at NDSU. It will be interesting to follow his blog over the next year to see how things go.
If (or when) higher education begins to use social media more, I have to wonder what new opportunities it will provide to students and educators to interact with government and business. When I was teaching new media at the University of Missouri — Columbia, it would have been great if I could have made a point concerning trends in the industry and then been able to point students blogs covering those issues. At that point students would have been able to pursue discussions on these trends.
tag: North Dakota, NDSU, Libraries, higher education
April 24th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Thanks for the feedback! I can’t say I’ve done any kind of sampling of other institutions, but I don’t think NDSU is unique. I wonder if the tenure system at universities biases them toward much “grayer” leadership than you find in the private sector and government.
Last week, I returned from a social media summit in which it became clear that kids don’t communicate by email, to learn that NDSU had just adopted a policy stating that email is official communication. I.e, when the administration sends out a notice on email, kids are expected to read it. Isnt’ it sad and a bit ironic that we’ve updated our communications to a form that our students have already passed by?
jc
November 21st, 2007 at 2:29 pm
James Council is not the dean of the library. He is standing in for the dean in the interim between the departure of our previous dean and the hiring of the next one.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I do believe James did mention that in our meeting. I stand corrected. I suppose I should have said, ‘acting dean’.