What do we want from our careers websites?

I discovered today that my area of work is in fact ‘a science’! Yes, the BBC’s technology blog reported today on the birth of a new so-called science – ‘web science’.

Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and one of the directors at the Web Science Research Initiative, said:

“The web is the elephant in the room – it has transformed our lives, but we never see it. We feel the time has come to study it – to see its benefits and understand its possible dis-benefits.”

“Dis-benefits…?”

On the one hand, I feel slightly uneasy about the word ’science’ being used to describe the study of what the WSRI describe as “the largest human information construct in history” – the internet. However, as someone who sometimes feels like she’s on an accelerating treadmill with no ‘off’ or ‘pause’ buttons, desperately trying to keep up with new technology, I do welcome any attempt to make it appear less scary and more manageable. I’ll be watching these developments with interest…!

So what is the purpose of a careers website in 2008? What do we want it to do? What do students and graduates want it to do? What are the possible pitfalls? A few thoughts and questions…

• How many of our websites are still mainly about providing information or ‘content’? [cont...]

Off campus careers guidance via Skype, anyone?

An recent Guardian article about medical consultations via live videolink (telediagnostics?) got me thinking… For a doctor (especially a specialist) to conduct a proper consultation with a patient remotely, the latter still has to get to some kind of “patient’s booth” with all the appropriate equipment – perhaps not quite as revolutionary as it may have first sounded?

To conduct a careers guidance interview remotely, however, all that is really needed is some form of video or teleconferencing technology (such as Skype) installed on your PC, a webcam, and some speakers or headphones, and hey presto, our students (assuming they have the same technology) can interact with us from the comfort of their [cont...]

Is reading dead?

I recently came across this article, Dawn of the Digital Natives (in the Technology section of the Guardian website), about changes in reading habits which have resulted from the rapid burgeoning of the internet. The author, Steven Johnson, argues that reading is not dying, contrary to the beliefs of an bunch of apparent scaremongers at the American organisation ‘National Endowment for the Arts’ who published a study on the issue, To Read or Not To Read, in November 2007. The author of the NEA study makes the somewhat bold claim that:

“Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.”

Wow! Does he mean that any reading we do on a screen as opposed to on the printed page somehow does not count? The point is, [cont...]