Hi Nick,
Thanks very much for your very thoughtful response! And my apologies for taking what seems like an eternity to respond...
You raise excellent points with regards to incorporating blogs within an already existing Community. One of the positive challenges we all face when administering an online community is continually adapting to the technological needs of our members and staying ahead of the game, so to speak. It seems that once we adopt and understand one technology and tool, yet another one or two are introduced and we are continually upgrading our knowledge and skillset - which is not a negative thing by any means...
With regards to the initial questions you posed, our team has had some cursory discussion with regards to incorporating blogs or a blogging tool within our Community and here's what I can report on so far:
- What does the admin team think would be the value to the members of having blogs?
We're increasingly noticing that students are turning to blogs to record their thoughts, share their experiences, and network with other individuals (via links, etc.) We just recently held interviews for a few upcoming student positions and several of our candidates provided blogs as samples of their technological skills, interests, etc. As our Community is built upon sharing career development practices and experiences, we felt students may be able to create blogs to outline their co-op (work-integrated learning) experiences. In all, the initial idea was the have the blogs center around this personal/academic realm.
- Have
the members been asked? (and if they don't know what they are, how
would the potential value be communicated? i.e. the different ways of
using blogs, and the corresponding different values of blogs, be
communicated?)
At this point we haven't communicated these thoughts with our members yet, as we'd still like to assess what the benefits may be prior to polling them. As our Community is based upon academic and personal development combined, our team would need to develop a communication outlining the various benefits and opportunities available to students (i.e. blogs are an excellent way to reflect upon your learning outcomes in the work place, a great way to market yourself to future employers, a great way to inform other students about your position and the company you work for, etc.) This would also involve a great deal of brainstorming and buy-in from our staff who work directly with the students. in addition, an additional consideration we would need to take is whether to monitor the blogs and utilize them as an assessment piece.
- Do/How many members already have blogs? Do they
need another or would it be more productive to aggregate their
'external' blogs (or flickr, del.icio.us, etc) inside the community
space?
This is an excellent question, Nick, and one that we're definitely taking into account. One question we'll need to address is what proportion of our students currently have a blog, and what proportion would like to have a blog but don't know how to create and/or manage one? You raise some good points about incorporating the existing 'external' blogs utilizing various programs and features...
- What about the value of collaborative/group blogs vs individual ones?
This is one question I had never considered - establishing a collaborative/group blog. Our Community currently has discussion forums which can somewhat serve as a blogging-like experience for a collective group (i.e. students who are looking for their first work placement), however we've noticed that students are hesitant to post. We're currently looking into ways that we can encourage our members to use these means. As a result, it raises a question as to whether we should look at exploring a new initiative (blogging) until we have 'ironed out the wrinkles' in our existing features.
I must say, I'm intrigued by the idea of using a feed compiler like suprglu as suggested by many in this thread. I'll be sure to look at this option in more depth and to consult with our technical team. You've raised some great benefits associated with this.
Again, thanks for your insightful and much appreciated response. I"ll be sure to keep you posted as to our decisions.
Best,
John