Summary Post for Topic 5 #uosm2008

Summary!

A common theme amongst the articles I’ve read seems to be that at least at some point during university people have been unable to access the journal/article that they require. This is worrying partly due to the fee’s that we pay as students (where does this money go?!), and secondly because if you are not a student at a university what chance have you got at accessing these high level materials?!

The summary section of most students posts encouraged the idea of open access (who wouldn’t!), but stressed that it’s going to be a bumpy ride along the way. I thought to myself after reading this, is there a half-way point that can be achieved in order to make the transaction to open access easier?

A potential idea that I thought of after reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/apr/29/paywalls-open-access-button-scientific-research

Is that individuals could be granted access to articles if they had a need for them. The danger is if everything is made open, the vast majority of people will only read articles that interest them.

For example I might read up about the latest developments in cloud computing, but not on the latest techniques being used to find oil. By having access to individual parts at a time it might make the open access financial structure more plausible in the future. So for example if the a person is told to take a certain drug by the doctor the patient should have the right to read up on the drug in question.

Many peers mentioned that with open access there is a lack of quality control and therefore a lack of quality. Even if this is the case in the industry, hopefully the push from students will help overcome these preconceptions and that high quality articles will be made available to everyone.

To conclude if we go off the beaten track a bit, and individuals are unable to be inquisitive through reading up on subjects of interest, there is a danger that our natural urge for learning and innovation will be subdued by simply accepting that we do not deserve this level of knowledge due to our financial wellbeing.

#UOSM2008 - Topic 4 Summary

http://shifthr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/business-ethics.jpg

This week topics of ethical issues raised by social media with regards to educational and business use has been extremely interesting.

For me the most exciting part was trying to distinguish between these two lines. Business often want to educate their customers in a business environment too try and encourage users to buy their products. In some cases they need to educate the user in order to increase the chance of a purchase of a product or service.

For the first time in this module I struggled to think of an ethical issue of social media within education. Thank you for the comments which kindly gave me some guidance of the sort of examples required.

As always, different members of the module each took a different approach on the title. The general feel that I got from reading others blog posts. Is that it is becoming increasingly apparent that some sort of guidelines/laws need to be put in place for both business and educational communities with regards to social media. By having these it will hopefully reduce the number of ethically unacceptable incidences. For example it is not acceptable, as discussed in depth, for a head of PR to tweet racist comments, but nor is it acceptable to tweet savage unnecessary abuse in response. As discussed in a previous blog post just because you’re on twitter doesn’t mean you can say what you want.

On the other hand many people discussed whether a one size fits all policy will work or not, the chances are that it will not, mainly due to the variety of users/points of views on social networks.

In my opinion there is always going to be a divide on what is considered a joke and what is abuse. This is more or less dependent on who is involved, any negative feedback I receive is always taken with a pinch of salt, and I never take it personally. But other people/organisations have global reputations to maintain and so taking abusive comments on the chin isn’t always an option.

#UOSM2008 - Topic 3 - Discuss the ways in which an authentic online professional profile can be developed.

Discuss the ways in which an authentic online professional profile can be developed.

There are various ways that an authentic profile can be developed. In my opinion the most effective way to build an authentic worthwhile profile is on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a great resource as the majority of services on it are there to help you build an identity that looks the part for employers, as well as highlighting key skills through the use of endorsements e.g. communication skills.

For example it encourages users to upload CV’s to their profile, and read relevant news articles about your desired industry. This directed further reading that you can do around your profile will definitely help when it comes to interviews and assessment centres, as the articles are relevant and up to date.

http://blog.linkedin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/linkedinsuit.gif

However building an online authentic online profile cannot be done with a single service. In order to build a complete profile you need to use a variety of services with a consistent set of goals to portray the image you want.

A twitter account can be very useful to enhance a professional profile; it can even be linked with LinkedIn by using the #in. You can use them in harmony to post about useful links, or articles online that interest you. Employers find this appealing, as it shows a real interest in the industry.

An interesting statistic that I found relevant to this topic is that 75% of HR departments are now required to screen job requirements online. [2] I thought this figure would be high, but not this high. Employers are also reported to be more worried if they don’t find anything about you on the web.

Did you have any online presence 10 years ago?

The importance of the profile being the best is can be, is due to the fact that competition for jobs is now on a global scale. [3]

15 years ago a job application would have involved posting your CV to your employer’s physical location. Now application forms are done online, often before a CV is required. After these stage is when online profiles will be scanned.

The research completed by JISC also mentioned the blurring between “’real’ and ‘virtual’, public and private”.[3]

This is a danger that we have to look out for, as more and more people are blurring these lines, especially public and private. Users posting all 500 of their holiday photos on Facebook is fine, but you have to remember that everyone can see these, and that maybe certain photos would be better kept private.

Personal View

If like me you’ve already got LinkedIn and Twitter accounts the current issue is maintaining these profiles in a professional manner, and at the same time not blurring the private and public lines.

This YouTube video highlights how in years to come this could be the undoing of our future career paths. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2bniFJigI0\

Personally I let my Facebook profile go a little as the privacy settings are set so that only friends can see my information. As I primarily use this service for social interaction.

Conclusion

In conclusion building an authentic online professional profile is a constant process. It is not possible to complete it, and in order to benefit from having one (job prospects) new content must be professionally written and updated at regular intervals.

References

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2bniFJigI0

[2] Cross tab Marketing Services Survey – In Lisa Harris PowerPoint

[3] http://www.jisc.ac.uk

LinkedIn Pic -  http://blog.linkedin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/linkedinsuit.gif

#UOSM2008 - Topic 2 - Summary

This topic has been extremely interesting to research and even more interesting to read about other people’s experiences with managing online identities.

From what I have read the concept of having multiple online identities is a very common occurrence amongst the student population. Everyone seems to have at least one type of profile or another. Key topics of conversation included the idea of managing your online identity as a whole by having a variety of services that reflect your personality online. By using a consistent name and (pp) profile picture you can establish a presence on the web relatively quickly, and almost brand yourself from there. The benefits of having this might be professional in the form of getting a job from a well-managed LinkedIn profile, or gaining something as simple as a 50+ likes status!

Discussions also leaned towards privacy concerns, in particular company’s gathering/mining information about online users, and then selling this information to other companies. The data protection act and online fraud springs to mind, however legally there is nothing technically wrong with this, only ethical concerns. I believe that ethical concerns as opposed to legal ones will start to play a bigger roles in the coming years with regards to online identifies.

Security concerns for the individual were also raised; having multiple accounts all connected to the Internet with similar passwords is a huge risk and can result in many of your online identities being compromised at once. This is more and more common, as services such as Google have the option of signing in onto multiple services. For example my Google account is linked to my Flickr and Sound Cloud accounts, as well as G-mail, Google drive and Google calendar. So theoretically if someone guessed my Google password they would have access to all these services at once.

Fortunately for me Google provides a two-step verification process, which involves texting the me when there account is being used on a new computer. This helps prevent the issues I mentioned above. For anyone who’s interested this link can help

http://www.google.com/landing/2step/?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-sk&utm_medium=ha

In conclusion I think there is plenty more discussion to have on this topic, the lack of knowledge that users have on privacy issues is discouraging and I’m sure the line between legality and being ethical will continue to blur.