Web 2.0 Communication Tools MERLOT Managing Director MERLOT VOICES MERLOT Introduces Web 2.0 Communication Tools Dr. Sorel Reisman MERLOT Managing Director

MERLOT’s Vision MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.

Shared Learning Materials * *August 3, 2008

Shared Comments

MERLOT Mid-Year Meeting Report Experimenting with Management Wiki Abandoned single, threaded discussion effort Prototype in test To test alternative communications tools Chat/discussion/wiki/blog/etc To explore utility of tools To investigate deployment of all or selective tools – overall MERLOT, in portals, other

MERLOT Voices Field Test of collaboration tools Explore & understand MERLOT community communication needs “Uncontrolled” communication environment Low startup resource investment Understand required maintenance/operating resource requirements Understand “terms of agreement” requirements

Conditions Totally independent application Not integrated with the MERLOT application Hosted on commercial server site Terms of Service usage are a supplement to MERLOT Acceptable Use Agreement (AUP) All forum posts fall under Creative Commons License described in MERLOT AUP – non commercial, attribution, non derivative, share-alike Joining Voices requires separate “join” Not required to be MERLOT registered member

Three Collaboration Environments General For all registered participants MERLOT Created Communities Parallel to MERLOT portal communities Personal Voices Page Create personal Voices collaboration page

1. General Environment For all registered Voices members Participate in MERLOT-initiated discussion forums – e.g. - FAQ Initiate new general interest forums Post videos Visit select MERLOT-created communities Create “personal” Voices page Invite others

2. MERLOT-Created Communities Optional participation by Voices’ members Discussion forums for MERLOT portal-like communities Includes a few volunteer MERLOT discipline communities Includes MERLOT-created “test” communities

3. Personal Voices Page Automatically created by registering for Voices Create personal discussion forums Create personal blogs Invite friends and colleagues

http://voices.merlot.org

Supplemental “Terms of Service” Separate “Join” and Supplemental “Terms of Service”

Content co-managed by Participants and Webmaster “Main” Page Content co-managed by Participants and Webmaster

Displays Shortcuts to: Most recent Voices member photos MERLOT-Defined Community Forums MERLOT-Defined Community Conversations All Posted videos Navigation links to other parts of Voices

http://voices.merlot.org

http://voices.merlot.org

Personal Page

VISIT http://voices.merlot.org Invite 3 friends NOW