UMW Blogs trusts and loves you!

Sarah Cunnane, writer for the Times Higher Education blog, recently featured UMW Blogs as one of the rare scholarly publishing platforms for a university community that actually cultivates, encourages, and allows for open publishing by anyone in the UMW community. We are proud of this public display of trust, and rather than resulting in a black eye for the institution it has become a mechanism for highlighting the amazing work of faculty and students alike, as well as bringing attention to the great work we do at UMW on a regular basis.

The discussion around trust and academic blogging platforms was ignited by a post by Mark Smithers on “Blogging and tust in Universities”. He highlighted UMW as a rare example of trust in Higher Education:

Now the question is why aren’t universities doing the same thing? To be fair, there are some very good examples of university blogging environments where numerous members of the university run a blog. One of the best known is the University of Mary Washington blogs site but even this runs from its own domain and not from the UMW main site. These sites, though, are the exception rather than the rule.

Fact is, this is just the beginning of UMW’s experiment with openly sharing the work we do with the world. over the coming academic year our main website, http://umw.edu, which is now running on WordPress will feature more department bogs/sites (see here, here, and here for examples), individual sites/blogs, and cross-fertilize content from specific departments and class sites into the umw.edu space. This open, fishbowl approach to teaching and learning on a university’s website brings a new idea of open engagement to a university’s web presence. UMW’s website is not just a brochure anymore—it is an open educational experience and a resource all at once!

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3 Responses to UMW Blogs trusts and loves you!

  1. That’s great news Jim. As I replied to you comment on my own post, I am glad that you have been able to use umw.edu even though I think umwblogs.org was fine as well.

    I really like the last line of your post: “UMW’s website is not just a brochure anymore—it is an open educational experience and a resource all at once!”

    This is what university web sites should be all about. There is no excuse for universities not to be using their web sites to engage in ongoing open conversation with students, staff, the community, other researchers, in fact pretty much anyone.

  2. Rohn Grow says:

    Agree with Sarah and Mark. UMW is actually the best platfom for blogging in edu-niche, it does the great work. It’s TRUSTED, and it’s the main idea, i think.

    Best regards,
    Rohn Grow

  3. Tom says:

    Trust and love. Such lovely concepts. You give me hope.

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