You Have Options for Your Online Presence.
Posted by David Dial Wed, November 23, 2011 4:21 pm EDT
Pick one flavor or create your own gourmet assortment.
Public profiles, faculty/staff websites and blogs are three great resources that the tech team has made available for your online communications. You can use just one or all three, if you’d like.
Public Profile
A public profile is a quick, easy way for you to share information about yourself and the courses you are teaching. If you don’t do anything to your public profile, it will automatically display your title, contact information, degrees on file with HR and courses in which you are encoded. However, you have the ability to share much more, including a self-portrait, video, biography, curriculum vitae and links to other online resources.
A nice benefit of your public profile is that you don’t have to make any tough choices about its design, and you don’t need to know anything about web development. You can simply add the content you want and leave the rest up to us.
Your public profile can be reached in the People Finder, so it is the most forward facing web presence option you have. Once you’ve set up your friendly name, your public profile will also be found at your personal College web address (web.fscj.edu/Your.FriendlyName). That means you can share it as your website until and unless you choose to create a custom site.
Faculty/Staff Website
If the public profile doesn’t fit your needs in reaching your audiences, you can choose to publish your own faculty/staff website. Custom websites offer you the freedom to express yourself with design and robust content. You can use a website to make information and resources available on a continual basis. Everything you publish stays there until you change it.
Developing a website requires more effort than fleshing out a public profile, though. If you aren’t web development savvy, it can be easy to get lost. Luckily, your campus Faculty Resource Center is available to help you find your way.
Blog
A blog is a place to broadcast what’s new. Unlike a website that displays content exactly where you put it and keeps it there, a blog displays entries in reverse chronological order; each time you post a new story, it appears at the top of the pile. If you choose, people who visit your blog can post comments on stories, so you can begin developing online conversations.
A blogging best practice is to post regularly, meeting your audience’s expectation for new content. In this way, blogs tend to be more dynamic than websites. Though you do have the option of adding static pages, a blog may not be the best option if you primarily want to keep the same information and resources readily available from one term to the next.
Over winter break, we’re switching our blog platform to WordPress, which comes equipped with an online interface for customizing your blog’s design and managing content. This resource is an easy-to-learn middle ground between public profiles and the flexibility of faculty/staff websites. If you’ve got questions, multimedia specialists are available to help you.
The Choice is Yours
Public profiles, faculty/staff websites and blogs are three of the options you can choose for your online presence. We encourage you to start by filling out your profile because it is always available in the People Finder. Then, whether you start a blog, build a website, or do both depends on your preferences and needs. If you'd like help determining what is right for you, Learning Innovations is here for you. You can contact us at li@fscj.edu or (904) 997-2939.