Hi everyone.
I asked some teachers and others I know to join the collaborative and they did but then when they got a message asking them to introduce themselves they (well so far three of them) got turned off and chose not to post anything.
This surprised me and I asked for more info and was told:
That the message does not sound like legitimate collaboration, that a mass message is not collaboration and the process seems inauthentic, a gut feeling after reading the message was not good.
I am wondering if anyone else has seen such a reaction to the first message (that asks people to tell about themselves).
Thanks,
Merry
Replies
Hi Merry -
I'm the founder of this space, and your post has me intrigued. I'm wondering what this intro message is that you are referring to. I created a test account to see if I could see what was so problematic for your friends. Attached is a screenshot of what they see when they first log in (this box can be closed by them by the way; see the X in the corner) and another screenshot of their welcoming email.
These features are standard welcoming features in the Ning platform on which this community is built. The intention is to help people get started by when they join our community. Social networks are participatory in nature, so it's logical for suggestions to be made to help people get started.
For teachers who might not be tech savvy, I'm sure all of this must be puzzling. However, read the messages carefully... they are simply suggestions for getting started. Nothing is mandatory. People can just take these messages under advisement.
As the administrator of this network, I wish I could customize this a bit, but unfortunately, that is not one of the options. The only thing I can customize is the last sentence of the welcoming email that is sent once you've confirmed your email address.
Also, I don't see anything that specifically asks or requires people to tell about themselves other than the profile questions asked when first joining? Could you provide me with more specific information on this complaint? Are you talking about the Introductions section of the Discussion Forum? Again, this is only for people who want to share their information in hopes of connecting to other teachers. People are more than welcome to participate at a level that they are comfortable with. That Introductions category in the Discussion Forum exists so that members can tell about their work and interest in global education and so that others can easily find these stories.
When signing up for the community, there are questions that people can fill out for their profile. Some of the fields are mandatory; most are are not. Members must provide their title, location, and email address for spam reasons and so that other members can find them if they are looking for project partners in other countries. Email addresses are kept private; only administrators of the ning can see them. This profile information goes on your My Page. This is how other members learn about each other. Contrary to what George says below, I believe people DO browse the profile pages of members and they use the advanced search box on the membership page. For instance, there was one member looking to do an Islands Around the World project, and so she searched this profile information for teachers from island countries such as Iceland. All of this information is important for the specific needs of our membership.
Just so you are aware, I've spent basically that last four years volunteering my time and efforts to build this space. There is no official organization behind this, and I work to improve its features as time allows. Perhaps if I ever seek out sponsorship to a larger degree, I'll be able to spend more time and resources on making this space even better. Until then, I can only so so much and I definitely appreciate your comments in terms making the GEC more user friendly.
I also think that your comments speak volumes about teachers' comfort levels with technology. The National Educational Technology Plan calls for "highly connected teachers"... connected to colleagues, to resources, to data etc. I think that there is still a significant population of educators who have not embraced technology fully and that it will be difficult to achieve this highly connected ideal until something changes in this area.
Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns and again, thank you for your post!
Lucy Gray
Hi Lucy,
I was surprised at the reaction too ,and we have started a threaded discussion about it in desire2learn (in an online course I am teaching on global ed and technology).
One woman thought the message was phishing; another thought the message was weird as it had no punctuation.
Even though I suggested your site, some people are not willing to become engaged in it. I really do not understand this fear, distrust or reluctance (not sure what to call it), but I need to of course.
I asked them to join your Collaborative along with a couple of other global ed e-newsletters and never assumed anything would be controversial.
I do appreciate your work!
Merry Merryfield
merryfield.1@osu.edu
http://people.ehe.ohio-state.edu/mmerryfield/
Merry -
I still do not understand what you are referring to that was objectionable. Can you please tell me the specific thing that bothered people? I can't do anything to change it if I don't know!
Lucy
Hi Lucy,
My name is Zack Canfield, a new member here and a student of Prof. Merryfield. To help clear up the confusion, here is the content of the email that some of us received a few days after joining (I have excluded the sender's contact information, in case they may not want it listed here):
Greeting from Anne
How are you today?
i hope you are fine
,well to me i am Ok
,my name is Miss Anne
i saw your lovely profile today
on (globaleducation.ning.com) and i really love it
please can you kindly write
and tell me more about yourself,
here is my email id
(email not included here)
as soon as i receive from you
i will be happy to reply back
with my picture,
My special hobbies
includes reading literature
,swimming,watching movies
and hanging out with good friends.
Take care am happy to be your friend.
Miss Anne
When I received this message, I did not respond. I was uncomfortable sending that information to the email account of someone that I didn't know and had not previously interacted with. I would be comfortable with posting information about my interest in global ed and questions/issues I may have, wishing to receive feedback from other global educators. This message, on the other hand, was not the type of collaboration I was looking for from this site.
I know that others that received this message did not respond either. Although I can't speak for them, I think they had the same feelings about this message.
I think it is also important to note that I could not locate this particular user by the full name that they provided in the email by searching the member list (I also have not included the user's full name here).
I hope this helps in clearing things up!
Zack
Hi Zack -
Thanks for taking time to provide me with the specifics. I know now exactly what you are talking about. Unfortunately, you received a message from a spammer that infiltrated the community.
I manually approve each member, and certain information is required when creating a profile to hopefully determine their legitimacy. If a profile looks odd to me for any reason, I'll usually not approve the membership at the very least. The moderation features of Ning allow me to also mark people as spammers, ban them from the community and delete any content that they posted. See this link for the features and guidelines recommended by Ning to keep things pleasant for everyone. Since 2007, I've banned nearly 400 people who've met this criteria!
In this particular case, "Anne" somehow slipped by me. Perhaps her profile wasn't as typically obvious as I get spammers applying for membership a few times every week. At any rate, I must have approved her membership and she started sending those messages and posting on people's personal pages. I received a report of spam (there's a way for members to report problems to me, but I can't find where this report link is at the moment) and within an hour or so of receiving this notification, I banned Anne and her content was deleted. If she sent you a messge within the ning, obviously that couldn't be deleted as it was already sent. She does not have access to your email address, by the way as members aren't allowed to see each other's addresses. The Ning messaging system is the only way to privately communicate with members. The reason you can't find "Anne" in the membership directory is because she's been banned and all of her information has been deleted.
I'm sorry that her message didn't stand out as being out of the ordinary and that your classmates thought this kind of message was indicative of the communication that goes on here. I can assure that it's not, and while people experienced with Nings have seen this happen from time to time and have learned to delete and ignore it, I can see how confusing it might be to people new to the world of social networking. I hope it won't deter you from dipping your toes in the water here again! There is a lot of good stuff going on and a lot of good, well intentioned people that are part of this network!
Hope this helps,
Lucy
Hey Merry,
I recently joined, and while I didn't feel turned off by the automated message, in reading through the Introduction section of the discussion board, I saw that no one uses it to introduce themselves anymore. I've chosen to let my member page do the introducing for me. Of course, I doubt any of us are browsing though the member pages of anyone.
So ... perhaps Lucy could create a new section for questions to the group and encourage the Introduction section for actual introductions and for curious questions of its members. In this way, our members might get to know each other a little, and people might take more advantage of these rather empty discussion boards.
We have a lot of members in this collaborative; I hope that we can share more!
G
Thanks George, that helps.
Wonder if there is any research out there on ways in which people and organizations are more/less effective in getting people engaged on their webpages?
Also the question of personalization seems significant too. If you have hundreds of people coming to a website how do you make it special (meeting the needs) for each of them.
My concern if that the people I suggested join the Collaborative may not find a connection if they were turned off by the Intro message. Of course they are education professionals and can make their own decisions and work to find a connection if they want.
There are so many possibilities with all the global ed related stuff on the web. Maybe I have to work on what I can suggest (and how).
Merry