What should be the "social network" of the university?

gabex2012-07-30 21:48:37

Social media

gabex, 2012-07-30 21:48:37

The second (second?) Facebook does not have a goal, I specify right away.
The university (represented by the rector) expresses its desire to create a social network for students, teachers and applicants of our university. In any case, at one of the events such an idea was voiced, and even the deadlines were announced (broken, I must say).
As a graduate student, I had a desire to turn the rector's idea into reality.
The resource must be unique in some way, that is, it will contain materials that are not found anywhere else, and only there, for example, it will be possible to discuss with classmates and teachers the details of a particular educational project (for which analogues will be created " groups").
And now the question is: what, in your opinion, should be the "social network" of the university?

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13 answer(s)

la0, 2012-07-30
@la0

In my opinion, none.
Forever alone, yeah
But seriously, it would be nice to trace a clear hierarchy “group-stream ...”
The most chic is integration with the access control system and things like “Achievement unlock: did not miss a single lecture in %period%”.
In general, as you understand, the devil is in such trifles.

SerDIDG, 2012-07-30
@SerDIDG

A public page on VKontakte / Facebook is enough for all this. And events and a forum, and publications.
Thoughts about a network at a university come to many people, but believe me, after a while the idea begins to seem rather wrong. Moreover, everyone knows about sites that can fully cover your requirements without physical effort in the form of man-hours for project development. For example, finding and inviting people to your group in contact will be much easier and more familiar than raising your resource. Quite often I come across self-made pages of universities, the so-called social networks, I would not use this.

Alexey Sundukov, 2012-07-30
@alekciy

What should be the network? Working. What I mean is that the problem of what the network should be is not technical, it is organizational. After all, the main thing on the resource is up-to-date information that should be filled in by representatives of the departments. Even the presence of an administrative resource in the form of support from the rector does not solve this issue. Therefore, it requires a long organizational work for which an ordinary developer usually does not have enough time or energy.

Roman Kutenko, 2012-07-31
@Sky4eg

This year I graduated from the university, so there the IP department has been developing an electronic administration for many years, there is a local forum, a student's office. But everything is done very dry, although functional. All exams, or rather almost all, we passed on this system. A plus for the university is the transparency of the change, i.e. after clicking “done”, you see your result + it is immediately sent to the general database and all the results are in the palm of your hand. In the same self-written system, there is an excellent student section where you can see your debts, schedule, calendar plan. There is also an excellent e-library. You can take preliminary tests in the subjects of the semester.
So all this can be combined with some functionality taken from FB and VK. Force registration of all students in the system. All of our students are listed in a single database. After that, he will spend money on leaflets and hang them around the university, hold meetings in the assembly hall, load advisers and elders. It is necessary to introduce an element of society, acquaintance with other students (friends, interests, etc.).
In general, it turned out chaotically, but I think I conveyed the idea.

ZloiZmei, 2012-07-31
@ZloiZmei

10 years ago it was relevant :) Everyone sat at the university forums. With the advent of social networks, they died out, all communication went there.
I probably saw a dozen such projects of university social networks, I made my own, I was offered to participate in several, I advertised others on my websites. With the growth of VKontakte, they all died, well, or drag out a miserable existence. By the way, I am one of those who planted our university on VKontakte (when there were 3 thousand people on VKontakte). Who knew that advertising the site would lead to this.
If you want to do something useful, make a distance learning or electronic document management system tailored to the structure and curriculum of your university as much as possible. With a minimum amount of social functions, they will be in low demand.

AxisPod, 2012-07-31
@AxisPod

And in general, someone needs it. A social network should remove the distances between people, and when a social network, on the contrary, limits, then who needs it?

egorinsk, 2012-07-31
@egorinsk

What do you dislike about VKontakte?
Although it cannot be called some kind of brilliant site, but your self-propelled gun is 99% likely to be a bad, unviable share with ill-conceived usability, clunky interface and terrible design. And, on the other hand, it will be some Ruby on Rails fashionable among young people with a bunch of plugins and three javascript frameworks. Yes, it's certainly cooler than PHP and pure Javascript.
If you are not ready to make a site at least at the VKontakte level, it’s better to leave this idea right away and make a simple informational site, without sociality, but with lectures, materials, schedules and other information. And make an automatic repost of all this goodness in the VKontakte group. This will be the best solution.

Gerente_Capaz, 2012-07-31
@Gerente_Capaz

We use TeamLab for these purposes.
Based on your request:
- you can create groups (teachers, applicants, students, etc.) with additional information and contacts
- conduct discussions (including private ones), conduct voting
- create, edit and store documents
- work with the event calendar
Well, and a lot more.
The system is free and in terms of security, perhaps, what you need, as it can be used not only as a SaaS, but also as a server solution.

Sild, 2012-07-30
@Sild

which an ordinary developer usually does not have enough time or energy.
Umm… what about magic? The developer is the developer, organizational issues are the lot of the project manager

igrishaev, 2012-07-31
@igrishaev

Maybe Moodle? This is a CMS for educational institutions, there are many plugins for it, incl. and social.

fenst, 2012-07-31
@fenst

As it depends on what goals the rector's office sets. If the question is like “Let’s just make a social network for the university,” then it’s a disaster. If “And let's make a social network of the university, TO ..” then dance from this.

Sergey Eremin, 2012-07-31
@Sergei_Erjemin

Why not make closed groups in existing networks? Does everyone still hang out there?

gorlov, 2012-08-04
@gorlov

Graduation group, only if you do it as a keepsake?