News

Southern Polytechnic Rumbles with Jive Collaboration Platform

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/11/09

To get a new social networking initiative off the ground, Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, GA has implemented Jive Software's collaboration platform, Clearspace. The 4,800-student university wanted to provide students, faculty, and staff with a new way to work together, connect, and collaborate on educational and administrative topics.

The application provides users with a configurable, personalized homepage; content filtering; people filtering; plugs for rich media, such as YouTube and Facebook; dynamic search; interfaces with other university business applications, a document repository and wiki; discussion forums; blogs; group definition; and networking functionality.

The deployment is part of a First Year Experience effort designed to foster communication and a sense of belonging among new students. This new environment will serve as the primary place where students and faculty will interact. Faculty and administrators will be able to blog about recent news and changes within the university, and students will be able to form their own groups based on common interests such as athletics, courses, and community activities.

"We are extremely excited about this new initiative," said Ron Skopitz, director of IT operations. "Students can connect and stay in touch with their classmates while various committees and faculty groups can interact and collaborate with each other in an organized and enduring manner that is far more usable and coordinated than simply e-mailing a group list."