CGT581 Case study leaders

If you look at the syllabus, you’ll see 6 sessions in need of case study leaders:

Feb. 16 – Social media for communication

Feb 23 – Social media for cooperation

March 2 – Social media for collaboration 1

March 30 – Social media for connection

April 6 – Leadership 2.0

April 13 – Privacy, security, information assurance

You need to post a comment below and pick one topic for which you want to be case study leader.

Here’s what’s expected of a case study leader:

• Bring to class, present, and help the class discuss, about 3-4 case studies that illustrate the actual use of social media by a real organization. The case studies should fit the topic, and they should emphasize the use of various social media tools. It is possible for a case study to focus on the use of one tool: i.e. wikis.
• The case studies should help students understand the use and application of specific tools to solve certain kinds of organizational problems (the kinds are determined by the topic of the day).

I’ve got some useful links saved up in my delicious account, which you may use, or you can find your own.

CGT581 Final Project

It’s time to start thinking about your final project for this class. In fact, by next Tuesday, I’d like you to propose a topic for your final project.

I see a few options for final projects in this class – but if you have other ideas, please bring them on!

Option 1: Improve a work process

Identify a work process that could be improved with the use of social media. Describe the process, the participants, the types of tasks they perform, the type of organization, work culture, etc. Then, write a proposal for social media implementation. Explain what social media tools this group should use in their work, and how. Support your recommendations with arguments and citations. Create a plan for how to evaluate if social media is working well for this group, so in the future, you can fine tune the implementation based on the feedback you would get. Write in APA style, but format like a business report.

Option 2: Research project proposal (and pilot)

Write a proposal for an original research project you would conduct, on a topic related to social media and productivity and/or social media in organizations. The proposal should be complete, just like a proposal for a thesis or dissertation. It should include an introduction, review of literature, research question(s), methodology & instruments, and timeline for execution. If at all possible, pilot the study by collecting a few data points. Write in APA style, format like APA manuscript.

Option 3: In-depth review of literature

If you’re not yet sure what interests you, or would like to gain in-depth knowledge in one narrow area, write an extensive review of existing literature and research in an area of your choice. Please ask for help choosing or narrowing down the topic. Your review of existing literature should be extensive, and include relevant theoretical perspectives, academic research, business reports & research, as well as sources about the preferred research methods used to investigate the topic.

Off the top of my head, here are some examples of broad areas you may choose to investigate:

• the relationship between organizational culture and social media adoption; the impact of social media adoption on organizational culture and/or organizational structure;
• new modes of organizing facilitated by social media (Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody is an excellent starting point in this direction)
• informal patterns of collaboration and cooperation facilitated by social media (i.e. using social media for productivity, outside the requirements of a formal institution – i.e. ad-hoc collaborative learning among students?)

How to submit your topic proposal:

Depending on how public or private you want to go with this (your choice) you can write a comment below, explaining your idea for your final project, or you can send me an email. Either way, if you have questions or need help, let me know and we’ll discuss. It would be nice to end up with a list of topics in the comments of this post, so you can see what everyone else is doing.

As always, let me know if you have questions.

Perspectives on organizations

I will use this post to collect all the links to your posts about major theoretical perspectives on organizations.

Let’s use the comments for each of the following blog posts to ask questions and clarifications, should we need them. I’m starting by writing a comment on each post that includes the most important concepts I’d like you to remember (for the exam) about each major theoretical perspective.

• Scientific management & bureaucracy
• Network theory
• Chaos theory see also Huijun’s notes about social media & complex systems
• Organizational culture – see slides embedded below.

• the definition of culture
• how organizational culture is created & maintained
• why organizational culture is important
• factors to consider regarding the intersection of organizational culture and social media adoption

If you need any clarifications, please ask in the comments section below.

View more presentations from prprof_mv.

Twitter & Blogging Expectations for CGT581

Now that your Twitter accounts and your blogs are set up, it’s time to spell out expectations for using them.

Some of you have used Twitter and blogs before, some of you haven’t. While that might impact how comfortable you are with the technology, in some ways, for this class, you may be starting afresh.

Here is my overall intention that should guide your use of these tools for class purposes:

In CGT581, I hope you will use Twitter and your blog to learn about using social media for productivity, to document your learning & reading, and to connect with people you can learn from.

Let me break this down for you:

1. Use Twitter & blogs to connect with people you can learn from.
I’ve helped you identify some people who work and write about enterprise 2.0, and recommended you subscribe to their blogs, read them regularly, and follow them on Twitter. Connect with these people by commenting on their blogs, blogging about what they wrote, and engaging with them on Twitter. Extend your Twitter network to include these professional contacts, in addition to the people you are already following.

2. Learn and document your learning.
Use your blog to reflect on what you’ve learned from someone else’s blog post and to link to the original post. Use Twitter to disseminate links to blog posts relevant to class (whether your own or someone else’s). Use Twitter and commenting to discuss class-related issues with your classmates. Show me and each other what you’re reading and learning online, and help each other discover interesting resources. For example, if you discover a blog or a Twitter user we should all follow, write a post about it. Explain what the blog is about, or what the person does, and make a brief argument why we should follow them. Provide all necessary links.

At the end of the semester, when I evaluate your social media participation, this is what I’ll be looking for:

Blog – between 16-20 blog posts, spread out evenly throughout the semester. The blog posts may contain your original ideas, but they should be in response to something you read online – whether a professional blog post or a mass media article. Your post should include links to relevant resources. Remember, we’re not using blogs in this class for navel gazing. We’re using them to point to interesting resources, comment on them, help others find them. Your posts need not be lengthy. Anywhere between 250-400 words is fine.

Twitter – I’ll look for two things: posting relevant links and engaging professionally with people both inside, but especially outside, of class. So, your funny banter or comments about the football game won’t count (though you’re welcome to engage in them – they do help you build & maintain relationships), but comments about using social media in the workplace/for productivity and posting relevant links will count. I will also look at your list of people you follow, and make sure you are following professionals in the social media space. If you believe your current Twitter account is not suitable for networking professionally, feel free to create a new one, and let me know (I don’t think this is the case, but it’s entirely up to you).

Blog comments – I will need to see the comments you have posted on other (professional, not personal/entertainment) blogs about social media & productivity. You can use Backtype to collect your comments (be careful, make sure you give all the info it needs to pick up your comments & you let me know your username so I can follow you) or you can start a new page on your blog where you link to the comments you’ve posted. You can follow these instructions, posted by a fellow teacher. Ask me in class about how to write meaningful comments on blog posts.

Remember, social media engagement is a large portion of your course grade, so you need to take it seriously and invest the time it requires. I don’t expect you to know how to do all this – so please ask me questions.

I need to make sure you’ve read and understood these instructions, so please post a comment or ask a question in the comments below.

P.S. – thank you again, Kyle, for the nice image in the blog header!

CGT 581: Getting started

We got CGT 581 Social Media in the Workplace started last night with a good conversation about the core characteristics of social media. We agreed on the following:

• online tools/services
• ease of access, use, creating and distributing information
• complex, rapid, many-to-many information distribution
• multimedia comment
• social, conversational, interactive
• enables communication, many-to-many interconnection
• empowering, likely to alter traditional power structures – we were split on whether this is a core characteristic or an effect of social media.

One of the challenges for students this semester (this week?) is to put all these concepts we discusses in a sentence and write a definition – or, find a definition of social media they agree with and and post it on their blogs.

Speaking of which, there’s a list of action items, here are reminders and resources:

1. Set up your Twitter account and send me a tweet so I can put you on the CGT 581 Twitter list. Make sure your account has a photo and a bio, and a link to your blog.
2. Set up your RSS feed reader (i.e. Google reader) and subscribe to Mashable, Read/Write/Web as well as a few blogs about enterprise 2.0 – see this list for a good start. You will also want to follow these Enterprise 2.0 people on Twitter.
3. Set up your blog on wordpress.com or another platform of your choice. Write an About page and figure out how to write and publish a post. Send me a tweet with the URL of your blog.

If you need help with any of the above steps, please look at this collection of resources. You can find here all the information you need to get started, including an explanation of blogs, permalinks, RSS feeds, step-by-step instructions for Google Reader, tips for your Twitter account, etc.

For next class, you have to prepare a presentation about social media adoption. The information about this assignment is on Blackboard. Please take a look at the assignment instructions and grading form (click on Assignments to view them). Also, please remember you have a lot of sources to get you started in the Readings folder on Blackboard.

I believe these are all the reminders I promised you. Please let me know if you have any questions. You can email me, tweet, or post a comment below.

Let’s have a great semester!

Dr. V

How do you learn social media social norms?

[cross-posted from PR Connections]

Most of our social interactions are governed by scripts and rules that we internalize and apply when appropriate. For example, we all have the scripts of “first date,” “job interview,” and, possibly, “the talk.”

How do we pick up the social norms for these scripts? How do we learn what type of communicative behavior is appropriate in certain situations? By observing, from movies and TV, from stories people tell, maybe even from etiquette books and columns.

Usually, it takes time for these scripts to emerge, and it takes time to learn them.

In social media, it seems to me, these social norms for appropriate communicative behavior emerge much faster, and are picked up much faster. Twitter lists have barely launched, and we already have some norms, and “best practices” about using them.

Twitter and LinkedIn just announced their integration, which means we’ll soon have social norms for appropriate behavior there, too. In fact, barely 24 hours later, there are articles with Do’s and Don’ts about it.

So, I have two questions for you:

1. How are social media social norms created? Do they emerge organically, as we communicate with social media? Are they spelled out so quickly by “opinion leaders” that behavior is shaped by them so quickly that we don’t have time to experiment and figure them out?
   …
2. How do you learn social media norms? From blog posts/articles? By seeing behavior be reprimanded? By watching others and doing what they do? By being exposed to rants about unacceptable behaviors?

Wikinomics, Crowd Sourcing, Wisdom of Crowds

The readings for week 8 were about how new groups form, and what types of structures they acquire. Next week ’s readings delve deeper into how these large groups work. As you read, any of the three books, try to understand:

1) What is the phenomenon we’re looking at? What is: mass
collaboration, peer production, crowd sourcing? Be able to define, describe, explain it to others.

2) How does this phenomenon work? What are its guiding principles?

3) In what aspect of society does this phenomenon occur, where (else) can it
be used?

4) What is one illustrative example? (don’t be predictable & use the
one from ch 1; search a bit deeper in the book)

Read chapter 1, the last chapter & two other chapters of choice from the book you pick. Please read these parts closely, and try to grasp specific ideas. Browse as much as you can from the rest of the book.

In class, be prepared to explain to the people who didn’t read your book, what your book was about. As you read, think about how you will teach the main ideas from your book to others in the class.

As always, blog your takeaways, and write 2 other blog posts on other topic relevant to class. If you have never done a new tool review, try one. Sidewiki from Google might be a good one to look at.

How to be a successful grad student

Head over to PR Connections for a post & discussion re: How to be a successful grad. student.

Born Digital

Remember, in this class we set out to understand 3 things:

1. What are the principles of social media culture?
2. What are the effects of social media on various aspects of society, work, life, etc.?
3. How is social media used in specific contexts? How should it be used?

The book Born Digital focuses on effects. What are the effects of these new technologies on a generation of Americans (digital natives)?

As you read the book, try to identify how digital technologies (broader than social media) have changed this generation, digital natives.

Select 3-5 characteristics of digital natives, as described in the book, and write a blog post to comment on them. Do they ring true to you? (are you a digital native?) Is it good or bad? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this effect for society, and for the specific individual?

Please read the Introduction, 3 chapters of your choice, and ch 13, Synthesis, very carefully. Skim the other chapters, which means, read:

• the first 2 pages of the chapter;
• the first sentence of the following paragraphs in the chapter;
• the last 2-3 paragraphs of the chapter, or the chapter conclusion section, if there is one.

See also: How to read a book in 2 hours.

Tech621 mentors

And the social media mentoring is a go! Below are the mentor-mentee pairs.

So, what do you do as a mentor?

It would be wonderful if you:

• comment on the student’s blog posts now and again
• provide advice about blogging & twittering
• be there for the student, so he/she knows it’s OK to ask questions.

What do you do as a student?

• ask questions
• engage your mentor in conversation, and through that, meet new people

Thank you so much to the kind people who are helping students out!

@RuudHein – @Zheng_Zhou

@xybrewer – @Scott_SC

@laurelhart – @spwoodall

@mindofandre – @smockstweets

@sradick – @a_branum

A big thank you to @horovice, who also volunteered to mentor a student.