On Thursday, Rob Pongsajapan and I will be leading a panel at the SNCR fall event in Boston. The panel will feature representatives from three institutions who’ve implemented successful blogging programs at their institutions, and who we’ve interviewed in-depth within the last few months. Here are the topics and questions we’ve asked the panelists to be prepared to address. The emphasis of the study is on generating best practice recommendations for the higher ed community, so the questions here will be oriented towards perceived outcomes for selected approaches. The full questionnaire we’ve been using in the study is much lengthier, but we’re limited here to 60 minutes and had to make choices. I’m expecting that one of us will be blogging the session.

Control

How do you strike the balance between providing a “true representation” and maintaining control of the blog? Is this an issue? What are your thoughts on official versus unofficial blogging?

Interaction
How would you characterize the level of interaction on the blog? What steps have you taken to increase interaction?

Platform

Do you use open source, paid, or home grown blogging software? Why did you select your particular type of blogging software?

Institutional presence/authority

Does the institution have a presence on the blog? How do you balance authority with authenticity?

Management, measurement, and evaluation

How can you tell whether blogging is right for your institution? Which tools/methods do you use to assess your blogging efforts? Quantitative/qualitative feedback?