The University will soon have to decide if it wishes to continue to support the Landing. There have already been a variety of interesting conversations on the topic and  the major concerns seems to be:

• lack of adoption by staff, faculty and students
• competing functionality most notably with Moodle, but also with Mahara and Drupal
• potential to confuse users with too many choices and options
• the challenges of getting comfortable and proficient with the elgg tool that the Landing is based on.

To these standard responses are

• adoption takes time and the Landing experience steady, but not exponential growth
• the Landing offers bottom up, user control, fine tuned privacy, persistence and "beyond the course" connectivity not offered by other AU supported tools
• The world is full of choices (and more added daily) so students and staff should get skilled at making choices and adopting to changes
• The Elgg interface and functionality improves regularly and will continue to do so, and users can grow with it as their need and expertise expands

All social media require critical mass of users to be effective and the Landing has achieved this (barely) in some communities, but  the whole University community has not adopted it for daily use. It is hard to say when (or if) critical mass will be achieved, but like Lacebook, Linked, and many others when enough people use it regularly, the services become very compelling. There is a growing interest in "niche nets" to allow different functions/voices in different contexts. The Landing is a special place for Athabasca community and certainly not Facebook, and that is one of its advantages.

A number of undergraduate students have commented on the lack of use by our largest student group- the undergrads. I think part of the reason is the challenges of getting "compelling but not compulsary' learning activities integrated into our courses - through the challenges of our course design and student support models. Another challenge is that the students association AUSA offers potentially competitive services under their own (external) networks. We have however been running three pilot course with not overwhelming, but generally positive responses.

I wanted to hare a comment from a Chemistry an undergraduate program student about the pilot project chemistry course in which she was enrolled:

            "The optional activities of my course Landing Site were of great assistance in the course.  I am completing the majority of my degree through Athabasca University and this was the first time I have had the opportunity to connect with another student and see what other students were discussing.  Even had I not found a study buddy, the Landing Site in itself reduced the isolation that I had felt in all my other courses.  It was comforting to see that other students had the same questions that I had and that there were answers posted.  In addition to those questions and answers being a benefit for me, it also reduced the number of times contact was needed with my tutor. 

            The greatest assistance the Landing Site provided for me was the ability to find a study buddy.  My study buddy, and I would meet 1-2 times per week to review and discuss the unit objectives and to compared our independent work on the assignments.  Unfortunately, the calendar function was not operational when we started, so we used our Google calendars to coordinate our work, study schedules and to plan our progress.  We did make contact with a couple of other people but they had different work schedules that were not conducive to us all meeting. 

            I found having a study buddy and the discussion boards motivating and my learning progressed faster and to a deeper level by having someone to dialogue with in person and to see the previous discussions.  I would love to see all courses with Athabasca University adopt the use of the Landing Site." 

I hope we can engage in an interesting and productive debate over the future of the Landing in the coming months. Obviously, the University faces financial challenges that make adoption of any new services challenging. In addition, many faculty, staff and students have shown by their lack of participation, that they are not (yet?) interested or convinced that the Landing is an important benefit to their learning and work lives.  

The Landing developers welcome your comments here - or elsewhere.

Terry