Influential Voices - Developing a blogging service based on trust and openness
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Karen Howie and Lorna M. Campbell developed an academic blogging service at the University of Edinburgh to give staff and students tools to publish online, develop digital identities, and make authentic voices more visible. They built on existing resources by creating a new WordPress service with university branding, single sign-on, and custom plugins. Over 500 blogs were created covering a wide range of topics. The service was very successful but also presented challenges regarding security, compliance, and risks some bloggers may face from online hostility.
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Influential Voices - Developing a blogging service based on trust and openness
- 1. Influential Voices Developing a blogging service based on trust and openness Karen Howie & Lorna M. Campbell Information Services Group Photo by Jess Watters on Unsplash
- 2. Introductions Karen Howie, Academic Blogging Service Learning, Teaching and Web Services Lorna M. Campbell OER Service Learning, Teaching and Web Services
- 3. Over the next 15 mins •What we did and why we did it •What the result was •Openness Image by Buenosia Carol on pexels
- 4. Web Strategy: Influential Voices •Visibility •Partnerships •Collaboration •Enabling •Freedom •Empowerment
- 5. Academic Blogging Vision • Gives staff and students tools and support to easily publish online. • Platform to develop digital identities. • Removes barriers and makes authentic voices from across our academic community more visible. • Identifiably connected to our institution. • Complements our corporate website.
- 6. OER Vision • OER Vision builds on: • The history of the Edinburgh Settlement. • Excellent education and research collections. • Traditions of the Enlightenment and civic mission. • OER Policy • Encourages staff and students to use, create and publish OERs to enhance the quality of the student experience. • OER Service • https://open.ed.ac.uk/
- 7. Academic Blogging Service • Built on what existed already but filling the gaps. • New WordPress service: blogs.ed.ac.uk. • Events, training and blogging (about blogging). • Policies. • Not just for academic staff!!
- 8. blogs.ed.ac.uk • Centrally supported WordPress multisite. • Set up a blog easily • Standalone service for staff/PGR students. • University branded theme. • Single sign on. • Bespoke plugins. • Integration with our VLEs.
- 9. Policies • Terms and conditions, privacy statement and take down policy. • Policies respect academic freedom. • Establish processes to deal with any contravention of University’s computing regulations, or other inappropriate use of the platform. Image by Arek Stoker on Pixabay
- 10. Digital Skills Support Benefits of Academic Blogging: • Develops your writing skills. • Explore different writing voices. • Develop reflective practice. • Curate your professional identity. • Connect with your peers. • Build community. • Disseminate your research. • Bring your research to new audience. • Engage with the public. • Increase exposure and impact. • Boost citation. Image by 8212733 on Pixabay
- 11. Digital Skills Support • Online self help training resources from Lynda.com. • http://edin.ac/2r089bu • Digital skills workshops on Blogging to Build Your Professional Profile & Using Blogs in Teaching & Learning. • https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/prof essional-blogging/
- 12. Digital Skills Support • Teaching Matters Mini Series. • http://www.teaching-matters- blog.ed.ac.uk/tag/mini-series-academic- blogging/ • Podcasts! • http://www.teaching-matters- blog.ed.ac.uk/tag/podcast/
- 13. Digital Skills Support • Seminar series. • http://edin.ac/2TLHwXX
- 14. Success! • 500+ blogs to date. • Many open licensed & available to the public. • Covering huge range of topics. • Reflective blogs, group blogs, project blogs, event blogs, school blogs, service blogs.
- 22. Benefits and challenges • Blogs migrating into blogs.ed. • Security • Complying with regulations. • The service has been a huge success, but… • There are risks associated with open scholarship. • Some colleagues may be more vulnerable to hostility, harassment and discrimination. • Blog openness is a choice.
- 23. Open for all In keeping with the University's commitment to openness, following outputs are open licensed and freely available to all: • Blogging to Build Your Professional Profile course materials. • https://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/professional-blogging/ • GitHub code • https://github.com/uoe-dlam • Policies • https://edin.ac/30QrKv6 • Podcasts • https://edin.ac/30JJmZE • Blogs! • https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/public-blogs/ Image by StockSnap on Pixabay
- 24. Karen Howie karen.howie@ed.ac.uk @karenhowie2008 Academic Blogging Service https://edin.ac/2pvMCXP Lorna M. Campbell lorna.m.campbell@ed.ac.uk @lornamcampbell OER Service http://open.ed.ac.uk/ @OpenEdEdinburgh CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell & Karen Howie, University of Edinburgh, unless otherwise indicated.
Editor's Notes
- KH
- University web strategy that covers all external facing web spaces. Various strands : vision for blogging underpins a strand called ‘Influential Voices’ which aims to give our people a space to publish and promote their work, and exchange ideas with organisations and communities globally. The strategy uses words like the one’s shown on the slide. Up until the publication of this strategy, I don’t think it was unfair to say that it could seem to local business units, to our Schools and Centres that the priorities– the standardising of processes by central, corporate services could seem like a contradiction to the goals of local business units and be seen to stifle innovation.
- We had our big picture vision and then we started working out how we were going to meet that vision. People were already blogging but the tools and support we provided didn’t always fit their needs. For example, there are blogs built into our VLEs – which are great for very structured, assessed blogs but not great when you want students to show a bit of creative flair. There was no easy way for a researcher to have their own blog – there were options but they required some technical knowledge and time (and we know that most university staff are very time poor these days!) This service isn’t our corporate website, it’s about removing barriers to improve the visibility of authentic voices and the work we are doing, creating communities and partnerships but in an environment which is supported – such as making sure it’s secure and meets regulations.
- LC
- KH What did we do? New WordPress Service Events and blogging about blogging Policies
- KH Staff and PGRs can create blogs standalone. Single sign on LTI integration with both of our VLEs - UG/PGT students use it via this (can do individual student blogs for all students on a course, group blogs, or a single course blog) Bespoke plugins to help manage the WP site but also versions of plugins that behave better in terms of setting cookies from a GDPR perspective. One of our aims for our bespoke work is to make as much of it as possible available as open source code. Branded bespoke theme which uses our university branding so people can choose for their blog to be branded or quite different
- KH We are starting from a position of openness and trust (most people behave well!) but we need to make sure we know what to do if an issue occurs. Doing that through development of policies which don’t restrict innovation or academic freedom but help guide us if there are any issues.
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- KH Supporting staff to move blogs from WordPress.com and other web space around the university (which they were maintaining themselves, and worried about it) into blogs.ed and have a number more to help move. Worry of maintaining their own sites (in terms of security) Changes in regulations for Data Protection last year caused a bit of a ripple of worry about making sure blogs met the regulations and people moved into blog.ed because we were taking care of that – it saves re-inventing the wheel multiple times around the same institution. HOWEVER… There is always an element of risk if using the open web And some people more vulnerable than others. It’s a choice about how widely available you promote your work and yourself, and we have built options in as part of the service – i.e lock down to institutional users rather than public, or keep entirely private to the blog users.
- LC