The story here is one about a very early adoption of social networks (pre-Facebook) that students found extremely valuable.
Memorable notes:
“Dad, I don’t use email”. Changing modes of communication in that students really (really!) don’t check email. Of course, if that is the case then would we expect to see Universities stop offering email as a service for students? In other words do we still need to roll out Google Apps or Exchange to our student population. Maybe that misses the point and maybe it isn’t even a constructive point since the purpose of this session
Learnlink, the wildly successful homegrown Emory solution and the commercial solution that is its successor are private academic social networks that allow students to connect with others,find experts, discover and share and find recommendations
The exciting thing for me was to think about the parallels we have with http://web.unc.edu. While this is a WordPress MultiSite instance and it less of a social network relative to a web hosting platform it does have, I believe, the potential to grow into an offering akin to LearnLink. Perhaps looking at adding in BuddyPress would move it in that direction.
In 2009 students started to go to Facebook in addition to LearnLink. There was a clear boundary between the social and academic communities and the students were showing that they wanted those boundaries.
Into the stack of things I did not know I can now place this: Laws in over 5 states that make it illegal for faculty to “friend” their students on Facebook. That said, I’m only able to find two laws in Missouri and it pertains to K-12 and appears to have been modified to now not disallow online social interactions, but does require local systems to come up with policies. The other is the NYC Department of Education. I suspect it is likely that there are others at the county and city level. The point, of course, is that it may be considered “safer” to have University-specific online social networks.
