Merry Christmas Terry!

Season's greetings, Terry! I once composed a canticle based on Psalm 116--could not get the choir to sing it.

Merry Christmas Terry - I trust you and your family will have a pleasant break

Hi Terry,

What is missing from The Landing is any realtime forms of communication. When I enter The Landing I 'feel' alone. I can't see who is online, there is no ability to chat with one of my connections (again) in realtime. Jeff mentions it above when he says: Does "the site feels current, intuitive and fun"?

The Wire has the potential of Twitter, but because it is just one thread, rather than individual pages for each member, it tends to work more like a bulletin board because if I want to reply to a post I know it's going out to the entire Landing membership, rather than to my followers. This takes the 'fun' factor away immediately and makes The Wire feel more austentatious/formal than it should be.

Jeff knows more about design than I, but one example of ease of use is the fact that when I enter The Landing I see no notices. I have to click on 'You' to see messages etc. Sometimes I forget. I want The Landing to show me immediately when I enter, any messages, or communiques I have (like Facebook does with the red notices top right of page).

When I go to my own profile on The Landing it 'feels' dead. I followed a large number of people when I first joined, but what is next? When I enter my profile it would be 'fun and interactive' for example if I could scroll through the people I follow and if they had posted, or messaged me, or commented on my post, there would be a blue circle on their avatar.

Bottom line: Members need to be able to communicate with each other - one-to-one, in groups, in real time not in asynchronous forum style. You and Jon have done an amazing job with The Landing, but now we need to breath air into it to help it come 'alive'.

Hi Terry,

Another factor of making a social networking tool popular is to mobilize it. Many people don't use desktop computer to connect. Mobile devices provide the opportunities for texting thoughts or sharing ideas on the go.

Thanks for your comments Hongzin, Susan and Jeff.

It is very inetresting to observe the type of colonization that takes place in this medium.  Actually at Athabasca, most faculty have "gone digital" to the extend of email, WP, Powerpoint - but all contained within individual digital machines.  The shared spaces built on the Landing COULD act as Third Places (as you suggested) but are not really mirrored in real life by our distributed staff and students.   But the useability issues are legion!.  We just have had no money, energy or high skill levels to put into the Landing Interface yet.  Waiting for more builders!

Susan, We have tested text and audio chats. Notification issues always arise, and seems a host of other issues related to browsers, etc.  Jon could talk more. We have a text chat installed for our next test version, but support from CS is VERY slow at this time.  But you note useability issues as well.

Hongzin, we did spend time and energy making the Landing reasonably accessible on mobile devises. Have you checked it out?  But I don't think that is the real issue for the Landing, E-Portfolio and even Moodle.   I think most students use larger displays for a great of thier word processing, graphics and other applications and most access the Landing that way - even if they own smart phones. Hongzin, what type of interaction would you be looking for from a mobile? Everything?

Jeff perhas you could do something on the Landing for a Thesis or independent study.

Thanks for sharing! I have two communities which I am sheparding (similar to the landing, but for specific MA programs) and the adoption among students has been rather low (or they create an account initially and rarely come back).  I have often hypothesized that faculty non-participation in the platform (and ambivalent attitude toward the platform) made it a place of little value for students (at least as fr as startup costs go)

The qualitative results from my thesis indicate that staff (administrative, tutors & faculty) lack information on the Landing. Themes include: either limited or no discussion about Landing in dept/faculty, not encouraged to use, not needed for job, and no approval to use. A few other interesting comments from staff: want their contributions accepted & appreciated; faculty/academics using so others “don’t feel they can come in and start their own unimportant discussions”; more people using it they would use it more.

This information is very useful..i have to learned to lot of information....Thanks for that....

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