Slides from a talk on social media for academic purposes, held at an Open University event for MCT staff tutors on 25 June 2014 at Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.

1. Social media
for academic purposes
#oumct
www.slideshare.net/dougclow
Doug Clow, IET
MCT Staff Tutors event, 25 June 2014

2. If you can, Tweet now
using #oumct hashtag

3. (cc) gareth1953 http://www.flickr.com/photos/gareth1953/5477477947/
• Quick intro to Twitter
• Quick intro to blogs
• Why use social media for
academic purposes?
• Why not?

4. open.ac.uk/smt

5. Quick quiz: Twitter
a) I’ve heard of it
b) I have an idea about what it does
c) I have a Twitter account
d) I have Tweeted a fair bit
e) I am Stephen Fry

6. Quick intro to Twitter

7. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Cris: http://flickr.com/photos/chrismatos/6917786197/
• You can see the Tweets from people you follow,
gathered in to your timeline
• Following isn’t mutual: You (can) get a message
when someone follows you but you don’t have to
follow back
• Short Tweets – 140 characters
• Often what you’re doing, or links
• Not (just) what you had for breakfast
• Usernames start with @ e.g. @dougclow

8. • Hashtags start with a #
• Collect together Tweets about a topic or
event, e.g. #oumct, #bbcqt
• And/Or indicate e.g. #sarcasm, #silly
(cc) Jefferyw http://www.flickr.com/photos/7927684@N03/7789223820/
• @replies are Tweets that are replies to a specific
Tweet (start with @username)
• You can easily see your replies and mentions
(when someone uses your @username in a Tweet)

9. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by LASZLO ILYES: http://flickr.com/photos/laszlo-photo/4093575863/
• Retweeting passes on a
tweet to your followers
–Starts ‘RT @username …’
or little double-arrow icon
• URLs are often shortened
t.co bit.ly owl.ly goo.gl
–Twitter will do this for you
• Best way to learn is to start using it
• Look at other people’s ‘following’ to
find people to follow
• You don’t have to follow back
• It’s Ok not to read it all

10. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Vince Alongi: http://flickr.com/photos/vincealongi/2537227873/
A bit further:
•Upload a photo &
profile image
•Favourite = Like
•Use lists
•Use photos, video

11. • OU Academics
https://twitter.com/luboxon/lists/ou-academics
• OU professionals
https://twitter.com/luboxon/lists/ou-professionals
• Wojtek Lubowiecki
• @luboxon
• Academic reputation manager

12. live demo
Photo CC (BY) by neeel https://www.flickr.com/photos/abulic_monkey/130888778

13. Blogging

14. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Mike Baird: http://flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/398077070/
• Blogging: keeping an online blog
– a log, or diary: originally ‘weblog’
• Short-ish blog posts (ca. 50-2,000 words)
• Bloggers update rarely to many times a day
• Often links to interesting websites
• Complements Twitter

15. Places to set up a blog
• OU VLE if directly teaching-related
• OU official blogging platform
–Intranet > A-Z > Blog directory
> Request blog (top right)
• www.wordpress.com
• Blogger (Google)
• edublogs.org
• Your ISP
• Many others

16. Why? Why not?

17. Social
media
for
academic
purposes
Figure CC (BY-SA) by Xhienne http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWOT_en.svg

18. Doug Clow
@dougclow
dougclow.org
doug.clow@open.ac.uk
#oumct
open.ac.uk/smt
slideshare.net/dougclow
This work by Doug Clow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

19. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by David Goehring: http://flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/33413040/

20. Why
•Keep up to date / resource discovery
•Extend audience for other outputs – impact, showcase
–research, teaching, practice
•Conversation, connection, community
Why not
•Time
•Trivialising
•Not going to get you promoted
–at least, not directly, yet