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Social Applications and Content (SAC)

SAC1: We Don’t Make the Rules: Developing Student-Centered Online Instruction in Academic Integrity for First-Year Students

PRESENTERS: Rob Withers, Miami University
Jen-chien Yu, Miami University
Kwabena Sekyere, Miami University
Eric Resnis, Miami University

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 9:45 AM to 10:45 AM.

While development of online instruction resolves some logistical issues surrounding classroom space and meeting times, it raises other issues: • What kinds of information will be included? What media will be used to communicate it? • How will layout, graphics, and navigation help to attract and retain interest? • How will student work be assessed? • How will the performance of the online tutorial be assessed? While many guidelines and standards developed by and for Web developers seek to answer such questions, development of an effective tutorial depends on its reception by faculty, and particularly students. This session will share the experiences of a team charged with responding to academic integrity infractions at other institutions by creating an online instructional effort that targets first-year students and plays by their rules in communicating information about academic integrity and research competencies.

SAC2: Game Changer: The Facebook Platform

PRESENTERS: Mike Richwalsky, Allegheny College
Josh Tysiachney, Allegheny College

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM.

With more than 24 million users, Facebook has evolved into far more than a place for students to complain about residence life staff or post photos from their latest party. It’s on the path to becoming what the Associated Press calls an “an all-purpose destination on the Web”—a destination that holds tremendous potential for institutions of higher education. This summer, Facebook released their new Facebook Platform, allowing developers to build applications and interfaces directly inside the social-networking site. This platform opens up a wealth of opportunities for colleges and universities and has the potential to impact campus offices ranging from admissions to academic departments to fundraising. In addition to sharing promotional information—such as events, news releases, photographs and video, institutions can also begin to explore avenues for education, collaboration and interaction with students, alumni, faculty, staff, and other constituents. This session will explore the Facebook Platform, show sample applications, share code snippets and discuss possible benefits and drawbacks to capitalizing on the site's popularity, especially in reaching users more likely to gravitate to Facebook than a traditional college or university-run site.

SAC3:Supporting a Central Web Presence with a True Communications/IT Partnership

PRESENTERS: Diane Kubarek, Cornell University
Al Gonzalez, Integrated Web Services, Cornell Information Technologies

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 1:30 PM to 2:00 PM.

The Office of Web Communications (OWC) and Integrated Web Services (IWS), part of Cornell Information Technologies, collaborate under a strong partnership model to support Cornell's central Web presence. The collaboration, which has evolved from a client-vendor model to a true partnership, takes best advantage of the specialized expertise of both organizations and makes efficient use of existing University resources in support of Cornell's strategic goals. Through the collaboration, we not only support the main website, but also many senior administration communication needs, and several key pieces of Web infrastructure, such as the University-wide events calendar and the Google Search Appliance. The two organizations together reach out to the larger Cornell communications and Web communities to promote consistent university branding, higher quality, and better cohesion (but not homogeneity) throughout Cornell's Web space. Through our experience building this partnership, we have learned the advantages and reaped the benefits of collaborating across organizational boundaries. We believe this model is applicable at any institution that has centralized communications and IT functions, and can bring better efficiency in use of resources, higher quality websites, and significant cost savings to any institution that adopts the model.

SAC4: Streamlining Publications: Unifying Print and Web Production Processes

PRESENTERS: Sara Clark, Missouri State University
Stacey Funderburk, Missouri State University
Amy Schuldt, Missouri State University

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 2:15 PM to 3:15 PM.

Ever had a cumbersome production process where you needed to produce both a print and Web publication? This session will show how we transformed one production process from bottlenecked chaos to a unified system that reduced cost, saved time, and allowed the client to make rapid changes.

SAC5: Skim the Bloat: Use Wordpress as a Mini-CMS in Your Next Project

PRESENTERS: Drew Geraets, Concordia University, St. Paul
Thomas Knoll, Concordia University, St. Paul

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 3:45 PM to 4:45 PM.

Learn how to take your next great concept to completion in under a week with the nimble power of Wordpress. We will walk through the design and development of our University Magazine (http://magazine.csp.edu/) and a blog project called "Freshly Squeezed" (http://freshlysqueezed.csp.edu/) where we used Wordpress as a mini-CMS. Specifically, we will discuss:

SAC6: Lessons Learned from a Web Redesign and CMS Introduction

PRESENTER: Newton Smith, Western Carolina University

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM.

In October 2006, Western Carolina University went live with a newly designed website and introduced a content management system. We had worked with a consultant to develop the top tier pages. Since that time the three-person staff has been migrating content for the remaining pages. The presenter will discuss staffing needs, strategic decisions, university politics, policy issues, design debates, content development, training, and other issues to consider when embarking on a redesign and CMS process.

SAC7: Opening Up: A Showcase of Open Source at Carleton College

PRESENTER: Nathan White, Carleton College

This session is scheduled for Mon, Oct 15, from 5:45 PM to 6:15 PM.

Open source software is a critical part of Web Services at Carleton. Reason, the College's open source home-grown content management system, was developed in 2002, and makes it simple for departments and offices to manage Web content. Web statistics are powered by AWStats. Moodle was adopted as our Learning Management System in 2006. In 2007 the College chose Zimbra Collaboration Suite to provide campus e-mail and shared calendar services. Since many of the solutions we use are open source, we have been able to achieve a level of integration between these systems that would be difficult with a multi-vendor product solution. In this session, we'll demonstrate the software we use, highlight examples of integration, and discuss the benefits and potential pitfalls of choosing open source.

SAC8: Social Networking Software: Meeting the Expectations of the MySpace Generation

PRESENTER: Mark Heiman, Carleton College

This session is scheduled for Tue, Oct 16, from 8:15 AM to 9:15 AM.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are popular destinations for today's prospects, students, and alumni, and those populations are beginning to look to their higher-ed institutions for similar online experiences, where they can connect with friends, network for career-building, discuss topics of shared interest, and stake out an online identity. Carleton College recently conducted a survey of the social networking market, evaluating a variety of options — including open source, licensed, hosted, and turn-key solutions — each product addressing different aspects of the social networking experience. This presentation will discuss the key attributes of social networking software, the criteria we developed for our evaluation, the current state of and possible futures for this rapidly evolving market, some significant philosophical differences between competing classes of products, and the status of our selection and implementation process.

SAC9: Second Life, First Opportunities

PRESENTER: Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel, University of Sao Paulo

This session is scheduled for Tue, Oct 16, from 9:45 AM to 10:45 AM.

Second Life has become a fever among people and although it is not a complete novelty the truth is that SL provides a really interesting new media for interacting, for broadcasting live events and classes (live or not), and also for allowing other educational experiences. This presentation will contextualize some main concepts and processes of the SL world and then discuss how to take advantage of it. We will also see how to set up broadcasts to SL. A real case will be used as example, since the author broadcasts a monthly live art event to SL.

SAC10: Monitoring Your Web Identity

PRESENTER: Jay Collier, Bates College

This session is scheduled for Tue, Oct 16, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM.

Your school's Web identity consists of the official Web experiences you produce — as well as everything that's being published about you out on the wild, wild Web: articles, news reports, images, blog entries, podcasts, videos, and much more. With new content being published every day, how do you keep track of it all? In this presentation, we'll show you: where to find these sources; how to monitor them using free Web services; how to share those sources with your colleagues; and how to create your own feed reporting the most important links to your colleagues. Why should you take the time to do this? With experience, your monitoring program can identify influential external sources, so you'll be ready to participate strategically, if needed, during a crisis situation. We'll also discuss the benefits of having faculty, staff, and students report on important developments in their own fields of interest, so you can keep up to date with Web intelligence!

SAC11: The Illusionist: Pulling Web Content out of Thin Air

PRESENTER: Suzanne Wayne, Penn State College of Education

This session is scheduled for Tue, Oct 16, from 2:15 PM to 2:45 PM.

“I need this site up within the week.” We have all heard it. A request for a new website, and the only forthcoming information is the deadline. In this session, we will discuss how you can generate the content for a site when you are not a content owner, the dangers of plagiarism and how to avoid it, and how to encourage input from those in the know. This session is for all Web programmers, writers, staff assistants, and any one else who is asked to produce a website with no content immediately available.

SAC12: Web site, website, or WWW site? An Editorial Guide to the Galaxy

PRESENTERS: Sarah Stanek, Santa Clara University
Karyne Levy, Santa Clara University

This session is scheduled for Tue, Oct 16, from 3:00 PM to 3:30 PM.

When you are “collaborating” and “participating” on your “innovative” Web site, chances are you will find yourself working with participants who are not so proficient with Web terminology, technology, and best practices. Doing everything yourself is not the way to handle the challenges of truly collaborative Web development; you need to teach effectively and provide tools that allow your less experienced peers to catch up, follow along, and do successful work independently. For Web content, this is even more of an issue. Writing gives people hives, maybe even you. But you can’t keep your pages blank for long — so how do you fill them with something other than “lorem ipsum”? The truth about Web users is that they don’t read much on the way to their destination: that’s why we call them “Web users” and not “Web readers.” So 90 percent of writing for the Web is organization and navigation. This workshop offers tips for writers and non-writers on managing Web content pages of all kinds, from home pages to detailed articles. We’ll also help you plan your teaching strategies to include more than just technical “how-to”s, and ways to keep content in mind from the beginning. Santa Clara uses a decentralized content management system that relies on dozens of site administrators to keep content fresh and updated, so the university has established a strong and comprehensive Web style guide to help users write consistently and clearly. If your site doesn’t have a style guide, or has one that could use improvement, we’ll go over what the best style guides include. We will discuss:

SAC13: Single Source Website for Full Spectrum Access

PRESENTER: Richard Ells, University of Washington

This session is scheduled for Tue, Oct 16, from 3:45 PM to 4:15 PM.

Is it possible to build a website with a single set of content pages (including rich media) that will work with the full spectrum of devices that want to access it, including adaptive technology, graphical browsers, PDAs, and mobile devices? Building on standards, separation of content (XHTML) and presentation (CSS), and structured semantic markup, you can go a long way toward that goal, but there are big potholes along the way. Describing experiences from a project with that goal at the University of Washington, this presentation will map the methods, glitches, and coming technologies to know about.

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