Social networking and Web 2.0 are popular buzzwords in the industry these days, but there are real, immediate benefits to implementing social networking on your website. In this series, I will explore what it can mean to some of our clients (and, hopefully, for my dear readers).
Company "X" is one of the first Charter Schools of its kind in the country. Established in 2003, the school’s mission is to close the economic gap in inner cities by addressing the achievement gap in schools. Their methods have proven astonishingly successful and they want to spread their methodologies to other cities and school systems nationwide. They came to Acsys with an idea for automating some of the time-consuming manual processes that weigh administrators and teachers down.
We helped our clients re-think their approach to create a robust, multi-faceted application that automates a wide array of tasks associated with tracking, testing and measuring the progress of their students—from creating tests to generating progress reports. An additional benefit of the initiative was to reinforce the pride and commitment that the organization shares with its teachers. The design includes photos of students in conjunction with inspiring messages that tangibly remind teachers and administrators of the ultimate goals of the organization.
So how can social networking improve their site?
One of our client's goals is to put instructional tools online as part of their web application. Basically, teachers would connect to the page to download sample problems, instructional videos, podcasts, and the like from within the browser. There's a strong concept of a subject-matter expert focused around various educational standards, so if someone had trouble teaching, say, fractions to her student, she could reach out to an expert on teaching that subject.
The inital goal was a simple file upload page -- administrators would identify and upload whatever resources they found appropriate for the given subject. First they would gather videos, podcasts, documents, and the like, then enter them in a WYSIWYG editor and link them to the chosen standard. That puts a lot of work on the administrators, and would add to a lot of overhead and inject a bit of bias into the selection.
A social networking site could add a much more rich and interactive pool of teaching tools, and allow users to contribute content on their own. This would free up the administration and allow the entire community to work together to bring education to the kids.
A description of the solution I envision:
Each user logs in and creates a profile , which gives them their own individual home page with a message board, blog, friends list, document workspace, and the like. They choose taxonomy keywords to describe their interests, and search for colleagues to network with. They start or join community groups to discuss various topics and collaborate on material. In short, Facebook for the enterprise.
How can this help our client?
Teachers tend to share information pretty readily. However, you can't share with people you don't know. Company X is a large organization, Even with annual conferences it's pretty hard to share information across 13 schools scattered over several hundred square miles. However, with an easily-searchable social networking site people could link up pretty easily.
Imagine Mrs. Linnetz, a fifth-grade math teacher who's having trouble getting her kids to understand dividing fractions. She's a member of the "math teachers" group on the site, and posts a question about how to proceed. Mr. Mahler, a teacher at one of their NYC schools, posts a set of example problems on their shared workspace. The community has a lively discussion about the joys of reciprocals, and much education ensues.
Because all posts can be rated, and Mr. Mahler's content was excellent, he develops a bit of social equity in the site. This leads to him being recognized as a subject-matter expert on the topic, and he gets involved in curriculum development.
A social networking site wouldn't need to stop at the school system's borders, either. Why limit the site to just Company X personnel? Casting the net more widely, and allowing teachers and administrators across the country to join the site, could provide a lot of value to everyone. Not only would teachers be able to share knowlege more easily, but Company X would be able to expand their mindshare in the education community. It would make it easier to identify and recruit skilled teachers, as well as market their products and services much more easily.
That's just one example of how social networking can provide value to the client. I haven't even dipped in to the value of student-based networks, or linking teachers with the students' parents. The possibilities are endless!
The best thing? All of this would be pretty cheap. The basic solution I described is available out of the box with the Ektron CMS, and would need minimal customization and skinning to be immediately useful.