London workshop

web2.0 challenges and opportunities

The 3rd SCASEO workshop took place at the JISC London offices on 27-28 July. Once again, we had a full house (32) of attendees from diverse roles including academics, web designers, web editors and management.

George Munroe and Steve Boneham kicked off the session by outlining the fundamentals of web site search engine optimisation - including content and site structure, accessibility, integrity and metadata. Brian Kelly of UKOLN then led the ‘Promotion of content’ session, talking about how social media can allow you to engage with people and bring them back to your website.

This theme was expanded on by our guest speaker, Mike Richwalsky from Allegheny College, Pennsylvania. Mike talked about how the college has been using services including Facebook and Twitter to connect with past, present and potential students. This has led to a change of working practice where staff now monitor the college twitter accounts and engage with students.

Mike admits that support time is an issue, but getting help from students to provide content such as such as videos for the Allegheny college channel on youtube and to respond to other students has been a real plus. He also made the point that just as much time has traditionally been spent supporting students via email.

These talks were followed by a series of practicals where attendees discussed what the main opportunities and challenges of using the social web to improve access to their resources and services. The key points are summarised below.

Opportunties

Challenges

Lessons for improving your online presence

August 13, 2009 | Filed Under scaseo, events | Author Steve Boneham 

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