Col and I have just put the finishing touches to a paper on research we did into a safe/fail experiment utilising RSS, and web 2.0 technology. While there are some shortcomings, the aim of the original site was to provide a space for student, staff and industry peers to come together and have career information, current practice, news feeds, stories, and BProfComm news fed out to interested parties. The original intention was to facilitate a wholeness of communication practice that was not built into BlackBoard 6.3, and therefore we felt that we should build a system that would see RSS used as the channel for greater engagement.
One of the first things we realised was that it did not work. The basic premise that we understood at that time was that students were tech savvy, and therefore, they would use RSS feeds and integrate them into their life. Alas, such is not the case. “Build it and they will come”, or “Gen Y is tech savvy’ is not quite true. One or two students used it, but the majority did not as they saw no use for such technology, as they use technology for play. As one student said to me, “I use a mobile phone, an IPod, and Facebook; other things [by this I think she meant technology] do not interest me.”
The idea is still good though, and I am exploring ways that staff and industry peers can use this site to facilitate some form of engagement with each other. Perhaps there is some way to utilise the feeds in Facebook? Will have to explore this option.
