[Factc] Communication agenda item

[Sally Sheedy]

Hi all,

I put down some ideas I had in response to a suggestion that we change up some of the communication tools we use.  Here they are in advance of our meeting next week and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts when it's up for discussion. Maybe we could come up with something that is easy to access and more appealing, perhaps :)

What sort of content would be useful to push out via email (such as the listserv provides) and what content should be readily accessible on the website (or a blog/wiki)?  I envision us managing online our own content as well as "curating" lists of links to others' content, in addition to facilitating conversations and exchanges.

The range of ideas I can imagine ...

·         News: FACTC / Campus / SBCTC (& councils' business and meeting dates) / Legislative / Union / Education research / Conferences, including upcoming ones and highlights of those attended.

·         Queries about how other schools do things (or seeking advice for specific circumstances)

·         Informal faculty surveys of the different campuses.

·         Articles about "how we do it 'good'" at our school

·         Recurring columns for certain topics
(For this idea, we could ID topics that we'd want covered every quarter (or issue) (e.g. retention, advocacy, diversity, professional development). Then with each new cycle we pass the baton to volunteers or appointees (there's little chance anything gets written without tagging folks). Maybe someone will prod people (and to do light editing or moderation of content).

I want to mention a few features of the FACTC listserv we currently use. I manage a similar list but Terry may know some aspects of the FACTC one that I do not (or catch me if I'm wrong about anything):

o   The list is not private

o   Only subscribed users can post

o   Posts are disseminated to all subscribers via email. Posts can be anything but tend to be announcements or queries. (As with any received email, posts can be organized by subject line or date.)

o   The posts go into a searchable online archive

§   Anyone can search the archive and messages from archive for can come up in Google searches by anyone.

o   Users can opt-in or -out of certain features.

o   Some issues with listservs:

§  the product we're using is not as robust as others (and not at all aesthetically pleasing)

§  can result in too many emails. Due to settings in our instance, the digest option doesn't prevent multiple emails in a day

§  viewing attachments is wonky (also due to our settings?)

§  it can be complicated to keep track of threads when an email gets multiple responses

§  there is no controlled vocabulary so chosen search terms are hit or miss when searching the archives or email

(I have info on the listserv here: http://factc.org/wp/documents/news)

Regarding blogs, as they are generally used:

o   just a few people post, but any reader can comment (comments possibly moderated)

o   blogs are organized by date

o   categories can be assigned to posts which allows for some organization of content beyond browsing by date or searching by keyword

I am not sure if I have mentioned to anyone the idea of using Canvas. While it is available to all faculty at the WA CCs, I gather not everyone uses it. It does include a little bit of everything we'd want. But I've seen shared spaces in Canvas (and elsewhere) that end up disorganized with everyone doing things in their own fashion. The administration of such a shared space could be tricky. I was involved in a big project with the WA state's CC libraries and there was no unifying rationale for putting content in particular places in the shared Canvas space.

If what we develop is to be closed, we'd need to decide what the audience is and be clear if shares/forwards would be discouraged. I know the SBCTC has some web content that is only accessible to those on a WA CC campus... maybe we could tap into that functionality.

Anyway, for what it's worth.

-Sally



Sally Sheedy
Systems Librarian
Whatcom Community College Library
237 West Kellogg Road
Bellingham, WA 98226
360-383-3287  (library 3300, college 3000)
ssheedy at whatcom.edu
library.whatcom.edu

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