Blogging

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Introduction
This page provides some assistance and resources on project blogging for the JISC Relationship Management Programme Phase 2: 2011-2012.

JISC has introduced a lightweight approach to reporting for this Programme, which includes blogging and an online progress report. All projects are expected to blog at least once a month either using a dedicated project blog or the shared ones set up by the RMSAS team. If you have set up your own blog, please ensure that we have the URL and that it has an Atom or RSS feed, so that we can aggregate it to the front page of the RMSAS website (scroll down for the aggregated blogs).

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Content
This is probably the hardest part! You may have plenty to say but don't know how to say it or may be concerned that you may be showing your institution in a bad light.

The key is to think about the one or two key elements that you want to get across to your audience (more on the audience below). So think about what you've achieved/learned over the past month. Things you could talk about in your blog could include:


 * Successes - and how you achieved them, e.g. a 75% response to your student questionnaire.
 * Failures - and possible reasons/solutions, e.g. the student focus group was poorly attended, because it was held during exams. Some of you may be uncomfortable about talking in too much detail about this side of things, so try and keep it general and woolly if that helps.  For example, if the Head of Student Services isn't interested in providing important information to your project, you don't need to name names, but emphasise the positive.  You could say "although it has been challenging to get some key stakeholders onboard, we have had a good response from the students themselves", etc.
 * Learning - perhaps something you didn't know. For example, that it's important to find out if other departments are surveying students at the same time as you, so that you can then stagger your project survey to avoid "survey-fatigue".
 * Progress - did you meet your milestones/targets this month? If not, why not?  Or did you exceed them?
 * Issues - either with or without proposed solutions. For example, it may not have been possible to use the proposed third party software client as part of your technical implementation, because it has been taken over by another company and the licence costs are now too expensive.  You could use the blog post to detail any possible alternatives.
 * Warnings - to help anyone else attempting similar work. For example, it is important to use service design to identify the failpoints from a student perspective to avoid focussing resources on unnecessary changes to a particular process.
 * Anything else!

Don't forget that you can embed images, quotations, links and videos in your blog post, as this will make it more visually interesting (e.g. Technologies Update from the Curriculum Design Programme - although you probably shouldn't embed anything that needs additional plug-ins).

Audience
Remember that the point of these blog posts is to inform the community, to help people avoid making the same mistakes and to help JISC and RMSAS have a greater understanding of the projects so that we can see any emerging patterns/issues etc. The audience will be varied - from senior management to students and researchers. The blog is a great opportunity to get your project noticed and to help inform others.

Tone
Blog posts are usually fairly informal and conversational, but don't be afraid to play with language. Use clichés, inject a bit of humour (c.f "Going round the table to sort the soporific cloudy sheep from the exciting, disputed, in-house goats..." from The Cloud is for the Boring but make sure you get your point across. Blog titles themselves are often quite pithy and the last sentence may also fall into this category (e.g. the final statement of "I like that" in W3C Opens UK & Ireland Office.

If you're not sure how to begin, write down the key points you want to get across and imagine how you would chat to someone about it and then start to flesh it out. So start off by saying it in a phrase, then a sentence, then a paragraph. You may find it easier to write it in a text editor, such as Word, before using the blogging software.

Length
How long is a piece of string? If you're only making one post every month, you should aim for something more than a couple of lines. A blog post shouldn't be too long but it should be informative. Half a dozen paragraphs should be about right and if you blog more regularly, then try and aim for a couple of good, chunky paragraphs.

Examples
There's no right or wrong way to blog. People have different approaches and styles but if you would like to see some examples:
 * JISC CETIS staff posts;
 * Martin Hamilton's blog (was involved in the last Relationship Management Programme);

Resources
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 * JISC InfoNet Blogs page - gives an overview to blogs, although many of the example links no longer work.
 * Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive - Chapter 5 gives an overview to blogging.
 * Straight to the Point: The Miniskirt Theory of Writing - describes why the first 62 words are important.
 * George Orwell's Six Rules - from his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language".
 * SMOG (Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook) Calculator - calculates the reading age of any text.

Using the WordPress Shared Blogs
Three shared blogs (one per strand) have been set up using WordPress which allows multiple authors to post to the same blog. If you would like to use the shared blogs, you do not need to download any software, although you will need to register a username and password. You will also need to be invited by Sharon to take part in the blog.

Setting up a Log-in
An invitation to join your Strand's shared blog has been sent to the primary contact for your project. If you would like other members of your project team to also add to the shared blog, please send their e-mail details to Sharon.

Click on WordPress link in invitation e-mail and it will take you to the registration screen. Click on the Sign up for just a user name link, which will take you to a new registration page. Enter a user name of your choice of more than 4 characters (Note: many user names, such as "tomjones" will already have been taken, so you may need to be creative).

You will then need to enter a password. If you use numbers as well as alphabetic characters, the password will show as being "strong".

Then enter your e-mail address and click on the Sign Up button.

An e-mail will be sent to you and you will need to click on the link to activate the account, which will take you to the confirmation of activation webpage at WordPress. You will receive a confirmation e-mail from WordPress.

You can access the shared blog by clicking on the relevant link for your strand:


 * CRM Handbook blog;
 * Student Progression, Retetention and Non-completion blog;
 * Alumni Engagement blog.

Scroll down to the Log-in link at the bottom left. Enter your user name and password and click on the Log-in button.

You should be taken to the dashboard for the shared blog. If not, then if may take a little while until the system catches up with you. I'll try and ensure that you're all given author rights as soon as you sign up, but if I'm a bit slow, drop me a line or give me a call.

Posting to the Shared Blog
Logging-in will take you to the rather complicated looking Dashboard for the blog. You have been given author rights which means that you can edit, publish and delete your posts, as well as upload files/images.

There is a basic introduction to using WordPress - From Zero to Hero, which you can also access from the yellow "Welcome to WordPress.com" box.

The first thing you might want to do is edit your personal profile. You can access this from the bottom of the left hand navbar. Click on Profile, My Profile. You might also want to play with some of the Personal Settings.

To make a post, click on Posts, Add New in the left hand navbar, which will take you to the "Add New Post" screen. You can start typing your text in the box. The Visual tab allows you see what you write as you format it, whilst the HTML tab allows you to add HTML tags and links. There is a formatting ribbon on the Visual tab and an HTML tag ribbon on the HTML tab. If you need to add a link, you will need to use the ribbon on the HTML tab. The "Kitchen Sink" button on the Visual tab shows all the available formatting. Don’t forget to add a title.

Posts can be made as:
 * Standard
 * Aside - a brief snippet of text that isn't quite a whole blog post, which is useful for quick thoughts and anecdotes.
 * Gallery - for images, which shows a thumbnail from the blog post, as well as an excerpt of what the gallery is about.

You don’t have to complete your post in one go. You can save a draft (click on Save Draft on the right hand side), while you go and make a coffee and come back to it later. The Preview button will allow you to see what your post looks like without publishing it. When you’re ready to publish, just click on the big blue Publish button.

Posts can also be tagged. Feel free to add more tags if you need them.

The theme for all the shared blogs is Twenty Ten and you can also see an example of it in use.

If you get stuck, either click on the tiny Help link at the top right of the screen or get in touch with Sharon.

Happy blogging!

Image by svilen001.

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