Blogs at Sydney Uni take off

Found an interesting article from the Australian's Higher Education supplement about Sydney University's embrace of blogging. It's bizarre that the most traditional of universities would be the first university in Australia to set up a campus wide blogging project. In May the university set up a system open to all university staff.

“I don't know of any other Australian universities who have set up a staff blog system like this,” says Charlie Forsyth, manager of Sydney's web services. He says the idea is to make it easy for staff to blog, to collaborate with one another, to reach out to industry and the wider public, to share knowledge and engage in debate.

“The blogs will not be centrally moderated,” Forsyth says. But the standard university policy on computers applies; this forbids uses that are “illegal, unethical or inappropriate” or anything that would cause “embarrassment or loss of reputation” to the university.

The marketing arm of the university is also embracing blogging with a site called Sydney Life. Here they have employed a series of students to post on their experiences of life at the university

Like most blogs it has regular, journal-like entries with a comment thread. But the home page banner carries the university shield and Cohen, Sydney's marketing information manager, vets every post before it's uploaded.

Can big institutions tame the free-spirited blog format?

“I think it's working because I don't domesticate it too much,” says Cohen, who was fascinated by blogs before she came up with this official use for them.

At Sydney Life she doesn't see a lot of room for posts about dating or wild nights. She says subjects more suited to the readers include how to make friends in first year, insider tips for enrolment day, study and procrastination, as well as immersion in campus clubs and societies.

Spencer, president of the Sydney University Dramatic Society, doesn't regard Cohen's editorial control as heavy-handed; in fact, he's reassured she's there. “Obviously we're writing for a fairly specific audience and it is under the university name,” he says.

He's found it fun, a totally different way of writing, and an inspiration to look into blogging more closely.

Technorati Tags: blogs and higher education

Technorati Tags: blogs and higher education

Comments

[Dissertation Writing]

The embrace of the University is a superb one,and i must say about the University that the The University of Sydney is a university located in Sydney, Australia. It is the oldest university in Australia, having been established in 1850,having great peace of the features and giving some extraordinary facility like this one that you told.