The use of open platforms in higher education has rapidly expanded to include (but not limited to): building an entire course website; allowing group authoring; and providing a personal portfolio. University of British Columbia widely uses WordPress as an open platform. The popularity of Blogs is ascribed to its flexibility - with the owner having fine-grained control and management over the visibility of the content. Unlike closed-course systems (e.g. Blackboard), contents in Blogs is not - by default - locked behind a registration system. This public-facing content can be improved and iterated upon while students can publish their own content which can be kept beyond a single term. As the popularity of Blogs increases, so do concerns and issues relating to information security and personal privacy. Without providing clear guidelines to bring users’ attention to privacy setting at the beginning of blog-based courses, instructors and students alike are often unaware of the potential risks until a concern is raised. We, a team of instructional designers and technical staff, have worked to prevent and resolve privacy issues and set clear guidelines for course instructors and students.
University of British Columbia Blogs. (n.d.). In University of British Columbia’s e-Learning website. Retrieved from http://elearning.University of British Columbia.ca/blogs/
Schroeder, A., Minocha, S., & Schneider, C. (2010). The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of using social software in higher and further education teaching and learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(3), 159-174. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00347.x
