It’s taken a few days to sink in but we are very excited to release some details on our newly funded ALTC project that was announced last week.  It is entitled “Professional staff as leaders in enhancing student engagement: building capacity in emerging technologies through cascade and viral leadership” and aims to:

1. develop an on-going, WA-based network of professional-staff leaders who foster student engagement through emerging technologies;
2. design, implement and evaluate web-based resources to support this network and to ensure its continuity; and
3. create a new model of leadership for application in the tertiary sector based on applying the cascade/viral model to building leadership capacity.

The project is a collaboration between The University of Western Australia, Murdoch University and Edith Cowan University, although our project team has a wider scope and includes:

• Dr Lisa Cluett (me) – project leader, UWA
• Dr Mark Pegrum – project team, UWA
• Dr Judy Skene – project team, UWA
• Dr Meg Poore – expert evaluator, ANU
• Sue Waters – project mentor, Challenger TAFE and Edublogger
• Dr Stephen Bax – project mentor, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

Prof, Jane Long (PVC-UWA), Prof. Jan Thomas (DVC-Murdoch) and Prof. Ron Oliver (PVC-ECU) provided encouragement, feedback and endorsement which is essential when puttign together such a huge endeavour.  The project doesn’t kick-off until a little way into 2010 so we have some time to get ourselves set-up so we can hit the ground running on day 1!

It has been a long process with the initial expression of interest submitted in April 2009, an invitation to submit a full proposal in May which we then wrote by the July deadline.  We were asked to provide a small clarification in August and then the final news came just a day after we resubmitted the final version on September 24th.

We plan on running an open, interactive and widely communicative project which will have a blog, a twitter feed, a newsletter, a webpage, a Second Life presence and lots and lots of face-to-face networking and community building.  Stay tuned for more in the coming months…

Something to read – This article (Top 25 ways to tell if your Social Media Expert is a carpetbagger) starts off pretty well but then gets all nerdy and self-indulgent.  The article is obviously a reflection of social media ‘talk’ making its way into companies and the rise of the of social media expert (which should sound suspicious to everyone).

* carpetbagger?  looter, in it for a quick buck, profitteer.  That sort of thing.  Basically in it for themselves – pretty much against the constructionist concept!

Training staff in ICT and Web2.0 is an interesting excercise.  Interest and skill levels vary hugely but enthusiasm can conquer all (wonder if I’ll feel the same 6 months down the track..).  Anyway my meeting with Helen Morell from the UWA Careers team today has kicked off a new idea for a wiki, discussion board and maybe some vokis for the Global Student project.  Helen is going to now consider the “trinity of concepts” for Web 2.0 in this context – technology (what tools to use), culture (how she wants participation to work) and content (what material she wants to have).  In the mean time I’m going get some purpose made training materials underway.