Also in the Ann Arbor News yesterday was this widely published AP story, “Student blogs offer view of campus life,” this version published on Gainsville.com A couple of quotes I found interesting:
Colleges seeking a competitive edge are increasingly enlisting and sometimes paying student bloggers to chronicle their lives online.
The results run the gamut from insightful to boring, but the goal is the same: to find a new way to win the attention of the MySpace generation.
“We found it a much freer, less constricting, far more believable way of letting prospective students glimpse what was going on on campus,” said Seth Allen, dean of admissions at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.
Universities balance giving the bloggers the freedom to speak their mind while maintaining some control over content.
And then this passage:
Allowing outside comments was a priority at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because it allows prospective students to ask questions anonymously they might not otherwise bring up, said Ben Jones, communications director for MIT’s admissions’ office.
He estimates 50 inappropriate comments have been deleted from more than 28,000 postings.
MIT has expanded its blogging program from three students three years ago to about 15 today. MIT didn’t pay its bloggers at first, then relented when Jones saw how much work the students put in. He also worried about the credibility of paying bloggers until he saw that students were posting the good and the bad. They earn up to $40 a week.
Surveys by Noel-Levitz have found that student blogs were among the top things prospective students wanted from college Web sites.
I have two basic reactions here: first, I have a very VERY difficult time imagining the control-oriented forces at EMU who would have to allow for EMU-sanctioned blogs– namely, the folks in ICT and in PR– ever allowing anything this innovative, let alone paying some group of students to blog for the institution, even if that blogging was basically happy-sunshine stuff about EMU. To be fair, there are many colleges and universities with the same tight control philosophy that’s at EMU, but it’s interesting to read in this article about the schools which are more open.
Second, as alert EMUtalk.org readers and/or followers of EMU politics may recall, the very firm mentioned in this article was retained by EMU to address the mysterious drops in enrollments at EMU, as I wrote about way back on November 1, 2006. So who knows? Maybe Noel-Levitz will recommend that those fine folks at EMUtalk.org ought be be paid at least $40 a week.
Blogging is important in our society because people need to get their thoughts out in the public for a variety of reasons.
Personally, I like this best as a means of learning about what’s going on at EMU and to inform others of my own personal experiences or of my own questions/concerns about EMU that I have.
Eastern Michigan University has one of the best education programs in the State of the Michigan for many departments, but I can’t find one thing I agree with on the Administrative end of things.
For example, you call up someone whose not the Business and Finance Director and pose a few questions regarding the EMU Budget Decision process and Private Donations and you get NO ANSWERS.
I was told by a Vicki that she would contact the Business and Finance Director with my questions/concerns and then get back to me. I have not heard back from Vicki or anyone on this matter last Friday. I probably could have called Vicki last Friday, but I will call soon this afternoon.
I am hearing from many that EMU’s Pray Harrold may not get any Taxpayer Funding for Renovations this year.
In an act of continued defiance, it appears both the EMU Student Government and EMU Administration are still unwilling to allow me (or anyone else) to start a Private Donations Campaign or to even donate money of their own.
I am personally willing to put down my own money to start a Pray Harrold Private Donations Account and perhaps we could get (some funding) for this Building this year rather than none at all.
I believe that Blogging like EMUTALK.ORG at least allows one to let others know of what they want to do in hopes someone can point me in the right direction.
I have my hands up in the air defeated right now. There doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of this long tunnel.
Correct to the above: Vicki may not be the Business and Finance Director, but she’s from the same Businss/Finance office. One would think you wouldn’t have to jump through hoops just to get information about how a Private Donations Campaign can be conducted with any assurances that the money will be spent appropriately by way of a Contractual agreeement.
I think the only way this could work is at a University where the administration is willing to be relatively hands off. The blogosphere in general has a pretty strict, even if it’s unwritten, code of ethics, and at the top of that list is HONESTY. When high profile computer bloggers received free laptops loaded with Vista from Microsoft, the general feeling was the Microsoft was hoping for some free, positive press. However the bloggers turned it around, told everyone what Microsoft was trying to do, and in a lot of cases gave the laptops away to charities/schools. No one wanted to be tainted by accepting gifts from Microsoft.
The same thing could happen on a school-sponsored blog. On the surface everything seems happy and shiny: look! We’ve got REAL STUDENTs using the INTERNET! They’re telling you everything that’s wonderful about our school! I think a lot of people would be turned off by that approach because it wouldn’t be honest, or at least it wouldn’t be perceived to be honest by internet-savvy prospective students. Now, MIT managed to avoid that problem by allowing students to post the good and the bad – and that’s what’s going to make for a popular, successful blog.
On the other (perhaps contradictory, but I think it still stands) hand, school-sponsored blogs could be much better than student-sponsored personal blogs/communities. Take the EMU Livejournal community for example. It’s a great place to get information from other students, like the quality of a certain program, re-selling textbooks, or where is a good place to hang out on a Friday night. However, like many places on the Internet, the community is beset by a couple of trolls, which means that if you ask a question that isn’t up to their high quality standards, you are going to be met with a rude response (which is a shame because I’ve had classes with at least one of these trolls and he isn’t a complete jerk in real life. Makes me pity his future students, as he is an ed major). On a school-sponsored blog, while preferably they wouldn’t be monitoring/censoring content too much, the administrator could at least control who is writing up the main posts, and maybe even delete malicious comments (or set up moderated posting, as we’ve had to do here occasionally).
In the meantime, I think EMUTalk is a great online presence for EMU. A variety of opinions come from a variety of view points (students, alums, faculty, parents, etc), and we have a caring sitedad who cleans up after the trolls
Blogging is a nice little symbiosis. Bloggers like other people to read what they have to say. Readers, apparently, like to read what bloggers have to say.
But, I think we need more disagreement on emutalk to keep things interesting. Maintaining a balance between the zing of controversy and the distasteful troll phenomenon (both the trolls themselves and the stomping on trolls) is tough.
There is that whole worrisome megalomania thing though. Napoleon would have made a faithful blogger I’m sure. Is emutalk enabling a cohort of mini-Napoleons? (just kidding!)
Interestingly enough seren, I am writing a conference presentation that I will be giving this Sunday in Detroit– I’ll make a version available online at my own blog some time soon, possibly before Sunday, probably shortly after Sunday. In any event, I’m kind of thinking the same thing.
The tricky things I’m wondering about, mostly in my role as “sitedad”/moderator here, is how to keep “zing,” how to encourage different voices, how to encourage different topics, and how not to close down discussion. I don’t have any answers, just some questions, but maybe folks here have some ideas.