Proposal outline: survey of attitudes toward social media systems

About half-way through the semester I decided to switch tracks to a project that is small (but very challenging for me), relevant to my work, and may have an impact beyond the immediate project, here is an initial outline of my proposal for a survey of UVU educational community attitudes toward an institutionally controlled social media system vs. similar “public” system(s). The specific system project targeted here is a blogging platform, but I think that may be irrelevant, or at least may be one of many systems targeted by the survey.

Note: having never done real surveying before, I recognize that my proposal outline my be missing critical pieces:

1. Intro
   

   Prior to adopting a locally hosted social media platform for higher ed, the institution should weigh benefits of localized control against potential loss of authenticity and user appeal that may be inherent in institutional systems, and assess user attitudes towards competing institutional and public systems.

2. Question
   

   How do attitudes of prospective users in an educational community differ toward institutionally controlled learning and communication systems versus informal or independent learning and communication systems?

3. Description of survey instrument (type, size)
4. Survey questions
5. Data collection methods (electronic, database system used)
6. Disseminating the survey (e-mail to faculty, students, staff; hyperlinks from campus portal)
7. Timeline (December 2009 – February 2010)
8. Budget and resources (instrument development, staff time)