Pulse survey on social computing
Penn State Student Affairs, working with ITS (John Harwood and myself), developed a Pulse Survey on Net Behaviors. Much of the data confirms notions I think we already carry around with us, but there was a small handful of data that is making me think a little differently or at least forcing me to challenge my current personal models.
Approximately 11% of students report having an unwanted contact with someone they met on a social networking site.
I think that's a high number, when you consider 11% of our total student population. "Unwanted" can constitute a number of kinds of contacts, I know, but it is still a high number for me.
Approximately 34% of Penn State students report having been offended by a group on a social networking site.
I wonder if this is a general rule that applies to relatively uncontrolled social marketplaces. Will that percentage change in the face of editorial control, or will the total number of participants simply drop? It would be interesting to know, but maybe impossible to know, what facebook groups offended everybody and where are the gray areas.
2/3s of Penn State students have exercised privacy settings on social computing sites.
This suggests we need to the same (and in some cases better) with our services - and we do, but are we presenting that capability in a way that is familiar with students?
I think it's great that this many students are thinking about managing privacy. I wonder what the percentage would have been 4 years ago.
Less than 10% of Penn State students use relatively well known knowledge-based tools of connectedness, contrasted with over 80% who do use these tools for social reasons.
Can we leverage the skills learned at and attractiveness of sites like facebook in the presentation of academic workflows (ANGEL, LIAS, ePortfolio, etc.) and business workflows (advising, grade reporting, etc.) to improve the service to students?
If you saw other interesting data in this survey, please share.
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It is interesting and good that students appear to have an awareness of how their use of the available technologies should be moderated by some privacy needs. There is a short but interesting article in Chronicle of Higher Ed, items number 4 and 5 show even more compelling reasons to help students become aware of their need for remain vigilant ...perhaps this is a need for us to address as we spend time trying to educate our clients about the need to keep their passwords safe...
Ref: Chronicle of Higher Ed 1/5/2007 "10 Trends to Watch in Campus Technology" available through LIAS on http://chronicle.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/weekly/v53/i18/18b00701.htm.
This is probably a question for the upcoming seminar talk John will be giving on this topic, but would you consider this survey to be something like a subset of the kinds of questions addressed in the Educause study? I have not read through the details of the study you've referenced here nor this longer long-term funded study, only the summaries, but I think having a perspective from both would be helpful. [http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers0607/ERS0607w.pdf]