At Western
my friend Elaine sent me this blog post about UWO (University of Western Ontario) soliciting comments about how to balance the need for green space versus parking on campus. While that's nothing new, what's really interesting is that the blog is an official UWO blog set up by the administration, called "At Western".
It seems (anecdotally anyways) Western has been more progressive towards using Internet technology and making it standard practice, at least when compared to Queen's. I don't recall, for example, Queen's admin setting up a blog to interact with students. Western's wireless network, from what I've heard, is also campus-wide, whereas Queen's is only available in certain areas (and even then, it's spotty at times). Although, some Queen's admin have Facebook accounts, but that's just weird.
While there've only been a moderate numbers of comments (20ish seems to be the max lately), I would be more interested in looking at the total number of hits for each post to see whether students are actually going to read this blog, how well-known this is and whether it's an effective strategy in communicating with students.
Either way, I find it impressive that the administration is striving to keep up with current technology.
3 comments:
I've read that Carleton also runs a couple of official blogs, written by current students mostly as a marketing attempt to attract future students. There was an article in the Star about it a year or so ago, around the peak of blog hype.
Hey Calvin, while somewhat off topic on your post, I can attest that the wireless coverage here is awesome....far superior than at queen's. but my heart still lives in kingston.
have a good one,
danna
Today I just found Queen's becoming a part of iTunesU, collaborating with Apple iTunes to podcast public lectures and athletic games in audio and video formats. Don't know if it'll take off, but maybe Queen's is finally getting into the game of using new technology.
Matt, I definitely haven't checked around other universities. I just went by what I knew Queen's to be using, or not as the case may be. I guess Ontario universities are slowly trying to update themselves on all this technology (which a lot of this may end up being just a fad)...
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