{"id":5265,"date":"2014-11-19T15:44:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T15:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/?p=5265"},"modified":"2015-05-11T11:37:28","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T11:37:28","slug":"snakes-and-ladders-of-social-media-the-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/?p=5265","title":{"rendered":"Snakes and ladders of social media : the tour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Dr Ann Grand, The Open University<\/p><\/div>\n

This week the snakes-and-ladders-of social-media\u00a0went on tour (if Milton Keynes to London can be counted as touring). I ran a social media workshop at London South Bank University<\/a>\u00a0as part of their Global Entrepreneurship Week<\/a>. The session was aimed at\u00a0researchers but included\u00a0a small number of students and entrepreneurs, which enriched\u00a0the discussion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An\u00a0earlier post<\/a>\u00a0described how\u00a0Helen Donelan<\/a>,\u00a0Clem Herman<\/a>, and I developed a workshop for\u00a0the\u00a0<\/span>3rd eSTEeM conference<\/a>\u00a0that used\u00a0a game of snakes and ladders to help researchers discuss how they use, or don’t use, or occasionally dabble in, social media. The tool\u00a0<\/span>was then\u00a0adapted <\/a>by Nazlin Bhimani<\/span>\u00a0(@NazlinBhimani) and her colleagues at the IoE Library to discuss ways they could use Twitter to promote their services and collections to their users.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"How

How many does that move me up?<\/p><\/div>\n

There’s something special about a board game that encourages conversation. Perhaps it’s because the space is intimate; just four or five people around a table. Perhaps it’s because we all understand the etiquette\u00a0of a board game: taking turns, moving forward. Perhaps because there’s no technology to get in the way of discussion!<\/p>\n

The groups varied in how far up the board the players travelled\u00a0– one person reached the mid-80s, while another group\u00a0got so involved in discussing just a few\u00a0questions that they all languished along the bottom rows. One person managed to shoot up a ladder, which pleased him greatly. But that’s all perfectly OK – it’s not a game that has to be “won”.<\/p>\n

\"Barriers

Barriers and motivators<\/p><\/div>\n

Then I asked the participants to\u00a0think about the barriers and about the motivations they perceived about using social media and to share them as ‘snakes’ and ‘ladders’. (You’ll notice my drawing hasn’t\u00a0improved since that first workshop!)<\/p>\n

Some interesting barriers emerged: the problem of lack of time and skills, the fear of having nothing interesting to say, the fear of putting mistakes or raw information on show. Likewise some interesting motivators: access to new audiences, interaction with different people, the liberation of being able to discuss work-in-progress in a relaxed way.<\/p>\n

The challenge for us, as this tool goes out into the wild, is how to develop a meaningful end-point or outcome for the game. When we used it at\u00a0eSTEeM<\/a>, we were able to invite the Open University’s Academic Reputation Manager<\/a> along to hear what the participants were discussing but how can we build in an output that works in different institutions and contexts?<\/p>\n

\n

Thank you to Martha Crawford and Mark Smith @LSBU_Enterprise for inviting me to be part of their GEW activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week the snakes-and-ladders-of social-media\u00a0went on tour (if Milton Keynes to London can be counted as touring). I ran a social media workshop at London South Bank University\u00a0as part of their Global Entrepreneurship Week. The session was aimed at\u00a0researchers but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,35,8],"tags":[29,53,45,31,78],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-resources","category-training","tag-an-open-research-university","tag-catalyst-project","tag-digital-engagement","tag-per-catalyst","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5265"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5748,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions\/5748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/per\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}