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Community Engagement at NUS: New media shows promise |
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By Florence Tang
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Nov. 2 2011 |
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Page 2 of 2
For second-year sociology student Joanne Chung, the engagement was more of a forced attempt to use new media, rather than a useful one.
“I go to their NUS website and they tell me, “Download the slides at our blog!” Just give me the slides, why must you make me access your blog she said.
Even with the introduction of the Provost’s blog, some still saw no point in following the Provost’s blog as it did not interest them.
“I just deleted the email,” second-year life sciences student Jocelyn Teo said. “It just doesn’t concern me.”
August 2011: A breakthrough for NUS
Another concern was that that the administration would not treat feedback offered on new media platforms seriously.
Cheryl Ang, organizer of a Facebook petition held in August against revisions in NUS shuttle bus routes, said that she was unsure of the administration’s stand on Facebook petitions.
“The school admins might not take Facebook seriously, and that’s always a possibility, which is probably why NUSSU is asking us to go to Google Docs to submit our comments,” the second-year political science student said Aug. 16, referring to the online form created by the NUS Students Union to gather feedback.
The petition, which drew more than 3,000 signatories, was a breakthrough – both for students and the administration.
Barely a day after the petition began, NUS responded. Sulaiman bin Salim, senior manager at the Office of Estate and Development wrote on the Facebook wall for the event using the official NUS account. He thanked students for their feedback, saying that OED was looking into the issue.
“We responded because we felt that it was important for NUS to let the campus community know that we are mindful of their feedback, and that we are working as fast as we can to improve the situation,” he said in a separate interview.
This is likely the first time a social media platform has been acknowledged as a valid source of student feedback in NUS.
Provost: New media is powerful
The provost’s new blog is another powerful statement that upper NUS management is considering new media as a serious tool for community engagement.
“My job is to implement academic policies. But before I implement them or even while I am implementing the policies, I have to have an idea of how effective it has been to my students,” Tan said.
He acknowledged the impossible nature of meeting all 25,000 NUS undergraduates face-to-face and believes a blog will help him reach more students, which he describes as his “first channel of feedback”.
“New media is powerful, I’m just trying to use it as a medium,” he said.
Quality discussions, “in-depth” replies
According to blog moderator Rachel Tan, the blog’s four maiden entries have received close to 150 comments Oct. 19, with page hits peaking at more than 3,000 views per day.
“I think what’s significant is not the sheer number of comments, but the quality of the discussions. We’re pleasantly surprised,” she said.
They were not the only ones. A contributor, going by the username Jack, also wrote that he was “pleasantly surprised” to read the Provost’s in-depth replies to comments left on his blog.
“Initially I thought that this blog was just a channel for you to dispense your views (much of which will be ‘official views’) for students to read in the guise of dialogue,” Jack said in his comment.
“I am pleasantly surprised to have been proven wrong by your in-depth responses to many of the students’ comments over the past few posts,” he added.
Another contributor, known only as Calvin, applauded Professor Tan’s motivation to engage students through the blog.
“The fact that senior administrators like you are actually staying up late to actively engage and reply to our students’s [sic] queries is something that really makes me proud to be in NUS,” he wrote.
Students: top priority
With the developments in the new media scene at NUS this semester, the future of new media as a tool for student engagement appears promising.
For Professor Tan, it means more work and less time for his favourite comics and movies. But he is okay with it.
“Students are the university’s lifeblood,” he said, “and they are very important.”
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