2014 news licencetobesocial

Licence to be social

27 May 2014

The article at a glance

Cambridge Judge Business School is launching an eight week social media course for staff this week – the first workshop takes place …

Category: Misc news News

Cambridge Judge Business School is launching an eight week social media course for staff this week – the first workshop takes place on 28 May

Social Media Driving LicenceThe Social Media Driving Licence (SMDL) is a new course for School staff who want to learn more about social media, which will be delivered in the classroom and online. The course was designed through the collaboration of five experts in the School and boasts multimedia components throughout such as YouTube video summaries of classes and podcast interviews.

In this fast evolving world social media plays important role not only in personal lives but also in organisations. It’s not only a powerful means of promoting our values and activities, but also for connecting with others, and building new relationships. The new SMDL course will offer participants a solid grounding in social media, and help them to understand the professional application, value, scope, and limits of these tools.

Andy Priestner, Information & Library Services Manager who came up with the idea is one of the team members behind the licence. He said:

This course is about really making people understand what potential there is in various social media channels. We anticipate that the course will help staff with their professional and personal development.

The course will be underpinned by extensive use of Twitter and the WordPress blogging platform, and will also explore Google’s range of services, SlideShare and Flickr. The first cohort of 30 people will be required to engage with social media channels throughout the course by completing practical tasks and activities each week. Additional support will be available between classes, but participants will also be encouraged to support each throughout via the Yammer platform.

The SMDL course is released under Creative Commons licence and will be adopted as a toolkit in other higher education organisations in UK.