Slides from today’s social networking seminar at USF’s Center for Instruction and Technology are available here.

Do social networking sites like Facebook have any ‘real’ academic uses? It’s a controversy we tried to engage. The seminar gave some background on social networking and Facebook, how students use social networking, and case studies of how University faculty and staff are using Facebook. The seminar also dealt with two scenarios:

1. A student wants to be my ‘friend’ online. What should I do?
2. There’s a Facebook group about me (or my colleague)? What should I do?

A few takeaways for me from the discussion:

• There was very healthy staff interest in Facebook, probably more so than from the faculty.
• Groups about faculty, staff, and other students are already happening at USF. University Life does investigate Facebook groups as possible violations of our harassment policy, if brought to their attention.
• No matter how much data indicates that students are using privacy controls and ‘limited profiles’, staff and faculty are still very concerned that employers and others will see inappropriate photos and comments.
• There’s already a fair amount of online community education going on in University Life, and Career Services. As we educate the students, I hope we take the time to teach students about their total online presence (not just Facebook), and how to use their online presence as a positive as well as a negative–to showcase student skills and professional expertise. If the online search is becoming the new resume, we need to get students ready.

Thanks to John Bansavich at CIT for organizing the seminar, and thanks to Xeno (Xi Zhang), a master’s student in Computer Science, for contributing a student perspective to the seminar.