What LinkedIn User Think My Skills Are

Here is are the top 20 skills LinkedIn users think I have.I did not nominate this list, LinkedIn seems to extract words from my profile. and ask people I am connected to if I have those "skills":

1. Policy
2. Government
3. E-Learning
4. Analysis
5. Research
6. IT Strategy
7. Governance
8. Data Analysis
9. Moodle
10. Strategy
11. Sustainability
12. ICT
13. Higher Education
14. Information Technology
15. Adult Education
16. Management
17. Project Planning
18. Strategic Planning
19. Staff Development
20. Open Source

It is perhaps not so much that I know about these topics, more that these are things I talk and write about a lot and so people assume I must know something about them. ;-)

Spam Making LinkedIn Unusable

The level of spam postings in LinkedIn groups, particularly "get rich quick" postings and spam messages,  is reaching the point where it will make the service unusable. LinkedIn's advice to group administrators is to change the member’s posting permissions and block offending members, but just as with email, it is not practical to deal with spam manually. LinkedIn needs to install an automatic spam filter. It should be reasonably simple to adapt a spam filter, such as the free open source, SpamAssassin, to work on LinkedIn postings and messages. The rate of increase in the spam from LinkedIn is such that it may be unusable within a few weeks.

ps: While they are at it, LinkedIn might want to fix whatever in their Javascript causes "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. ...". I suspect the problem is that LinkedIn just is providing too much stuff. I like LinkedIn, but if it is slow and full of spam I will not be able to use it.

Classic Low Bandwidth Interfaces

Is there a "classic" interface option for LinkedIn? That is static web pages suitable for an older browser and slow link (like the classic option in FastMail.fm and Microsoft's ‘Outlook Web Access Light'). Linked-in works well when I am on a broadband Internet connections, but when travelling and using slower wireless link the interface becomes unusable.

The interface problem became farcical when I tried to report it to LinkedIn's help service. The link for help is on the bottom of the web pages, but when I tried to scroll down, the system kept adding more content to the page. There seemed to be no way to ever reach the bottom of the page. Eventually I found the help link elsewhere and requested a classic interface.

Why Was I Banned from LinkedIn?

A few days ago I LinkedIn.com blocked my access, due to complaints from members that I "... sent or posted unsolicited messages via groups that appear to be phishing, spam, or abusive in nature ...". However, in a Kafkaesque twist, the complainants, messages and groups were not identified. Instead I had to agree to "... adhere to the LinkedIn User Agreement and Privacy Policy from this day forward", thus admitting my guilt, without knowing what it was that I was supposed to have done.

As well as blocking access to sending positing to discussion groups and administering the groups I run, my LinkedIn profile was also blocked. As I was blocked, I could not appeal to other LinkedIn members for support, or even to ask what I had done wrong.

So I agreed to LinkedIn terms. I was admonished to "... make sure any links and comments you post are appropriate for the Group ...", still without saying what group or what had been inappropriate. My access and profile were then restored: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomworthington

As I still don't know what it was I said to cause offense, or in which group I said it, this has made me wary of posting anything to any LinkedIn group on any topic. I have resigned from most of the LinkedIn groups I was was a member of, to prevent accidentally posting something which may give offense and might get me banned. Also I found myself avoiding responding to, or even looking at, postings in non-LinkedIn groups, in case there was something I might do wrong there.

Previously I had reported some postings to LinkedIn, usually of the "Have your PHD Thesis Written for $10!" variety. I assumed there was a process where the poster would be told which posting was objected to and why. But this is not the case, instead you just find yourself banned.

It is worrying to think of the power which those administering such social media services have. A corporation, or government, could impose very effective social control by these means.

LinkedIn Admitting Minors Risk to Professional Service

LinkedIn, which was previously a business orientated social networking service has announced it will admit minors, down to the age of 13. This change is being characterized as being for "Smart, ambitious students are already thinking about their futures". At the same time LinkedIn launched "University Pages" on LinkedIn, for students and alumni to connect. However, having non-adults on LinkedIn will cause considerable problems for the existing professional adult users. I suggest LinkedIn provide a way to separate the student and professional users.

Croud-sourced Skills Assesment

Linkedin has a system where people you know can endorse your Skills and Expertise. Here for example are my top ten skills, along with the number of people endorsing each:

• 43 Policy
• 33 Government
• 24 E-Learning
• 22 Research
• 15 Analysis
• 13 IT Strategy
• 12 Sustainability
• 10 Moodle
•  9 ICT
•  9 Governance

Perhaps that is the list of skills I should promote, as it what people think I know about.Might be interesting to work them all into a sentence. ;-)

LinkedIn Redirection Loop Problem Fixed

For several weeks I have been unable to used LinkedIn Groups. The Firefox 17.0 browser would go into some sort of redirection loop and just keep displaying "Redirecting". I had not realised how much the daily discussions on ICT, environment and education had become part of my daily routine, until I was unable to access them. What was more frustrating was LinkedIn would email me a list of topics, but I could not go in and reply.

I emailed a fault report to LinkedIn and got a very reply a few days later suggesting I clear the cache and cookies. Just clearing the cookies was sufficient. Apparently this is a problem where you use both the desktop and mobile versions of the website on the one browser. It now works fine.

But I wish that more web sites would provide a "Classic" option with static web pages and less JavaScript, like FastMail.com do.

Peer Endorsement of Skills and Expertise

While using the LinkedIn professional social networking system recently, a box popped up asking me "Does XXXX Have the skill YYYY?". There were four people from my list of colleagues, each with a skill next to their name, such as "Governance", or "Leadership". I had a choice to confirm they had the skill or dismiss the item. Most of of these I dismissed, but a couple I clicked on, confirming I knew they had the skill.

It was fascinating to see what skills people had against their names. Some did not seem to match what I knew of the person.

LinkedIn goes through what people wrote in their profile and automatically extracts keywords describing skills. You can add or amend these manually. Look for "Skills & Expertise" in your profile.

To confirm others skills, look for a link labeled "Endorse Connections" about half way down the LinkedIn home page on the right. The system displays four people-skills combinations at once. As you endorse or dismiss them it adds more.

There seems to be no systematic ordering to what people or skill is show. It would make more sense if LinkedIn showed you one person at a time and all their skills, or all the people claiming the skills. I have several hundred people in my LinkedIn connections and so I must have clicked on thousands of these people/skill pairs.

This may not seem a very rigorous way to have someone's skills rated, with anyone being able to sign up and endorse anyone for any skill. But if the endorsements are weighted based on the ratings of other people, it would produce a result similar to that used for ranking academic papers, which is in turn used to determine the appointment and promotion of academics.

Reflections of an Online Student, Part 6: Past and Future

Reflecting on what my online tutor had to say, perhaps teaching a class of 200 students online needs different techniques and tools. My past experience as an online facilitator has mostly in developing public policy on IT, starting in the the mid 1990s. Internet based forums were used for this and part of the process was to try to develop a consensus view on difficult issues, such as Internet censorship.

My experience of acting as a educational tutor online is confined to one course "Green ICT Strategies", designed for mentored and collaborative e-learning. Having not been impressed tutors who talked too much in class, I decided to take a low key role by first setting some readings and questions, then leaving it to the students to discuss. Only if there is a problem do I take part in the discussion. During a 12 week course, I would typically need to take part in the discussion only two or three times. Instead I would provide individual mentoring of students.

The greatest challenge I see in the future is to have enough resources to be able to carry out the facilitation role in courses. In small courses of up to 25 students, which I have been tutoring, it is relatively easy to get to know the students and they each other. Peer pressure and individual mentoring can then keep the discussion on track. But if there are 200 students (because the educational institution wants to lower costs), can normal group dynamics work and can there be time for the tutor to provide individual mentoring?

It may be possible to have larger groups by using social networking techniques, as applied to business by services such as LinkedIn. As Franklin and van Harmelen point out:

"LinkedIn acts, at a professional level, as a model of educational use in the way in which it can be used to disseminate questions across the community for users seeking particular information."

From: Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen, JICS Repository, 2007

Such systems automate some of the work the tutor normally has to do manually. This then makes it possible to create and maintain a sense of group purpose in a much larger group. Some of those tools are already built into e-portfolio tools such as Mahara.

However, I suspect the larger part of the challenge will be to educate university administrators on why there is still a need for tutors to have the time for interaction with students, even when that interaction is online.