About This Blog

This is a place for me (Leslie Dare) to document and share activities, resources, research and ideas related to my work in the Division of Student Affairs at NC State University. I serve as the Director of Distance Education & Technology Services (DETS) for Student Affairs. I’ve been in this position since 2001and with the university since 1989.

This is also my own experiment with blogging. My job is to help units in Student Affairs understand different technologies, how students use them, how they impact students, and how we might use them to deliver student services, developmental programming and academic courses. It helps for me to immerse myself in using the tool so that I can truly explain this to my colleagues and help them sort through the various tools that might serve their needs.

Study: Student/Faculty Relationships on Facebook

Here is an study on student/faculty relationships on Facebook. It is authored by Hewitt and Forte at Georgie Tech, and outlines a project that is currently at the half-way mark. The first part of the project involved a survey of students regarding their attitudes about faculty participation in Facebook. It included a set of questions designed to rate the their interactions with faculty through Facebook, and also the specific question, “Should faculty be on the Facebook?”

Looking for an Online Social Networking Product

In response to a request from Campus Activities here at NC State, I am  currently researching different products that could be used for university-sponsored online social networks.  I had hoped that the Libraries here at State were developing something on this front (as they have for wikis and blogs) but no such luck. (I can see where this actually is outside the realm of the Libraries, but it never hurts to hope!) Nothing like this going on out of ITD, and I still need to check with DELTA.

I’ve played around with Ning, and there are certainly others, and I’ve found one review (so far) of several products. However, providing such a tool is fraught with all sorts of problems: accessibility, privacy, and so on. Some colleagues at the University of Minnesota are engaged in a similar project so I hope to get some good ideas from them.