But social networks have never been and never will be a full replacement for offline interaction. Indeed, shortly after I started blogging five years ago, I started meeting up with my fellow bloggers. Online interactions are valuable, but they aren’t quite as much fun as getting out of the house and doing stuff with other people. Maybe Facebook is slowing down the process of students getting out and getting to know each other, but the flip side of that is that perhaps it also makes it less intimidating?

And if you are concerned that students are becoming too withdrawn, then perhaps focusing on drawing them out to offline events, and on face-to-face collaboration on their studies would go some way to redress the balance. Then use social software to perpetuate, solidify and enhance these new relationships.

I do want to say, though, that the experience of university you described isn’t necessarily the experience every student will have. My university years were three of the most lousy, unhappy and alienating years of my life, and I was glad to be shot of them. I’d have loved to have had some sort of way to keep in touch with friends from home, but those relationships atrophied quickly because I hardly ever saw them – even during holidays, because I was on compulsory field trips. For any student going through that sort of experience, Facebook would be a godsend.

We worked harder on relationships (work or educational) leveraging different dimensions of commonalities. Now, it is possible to develop deeper intellectual relationships (or whatever dimension of commonality preferred). We simply have more choices and therfore can leverage different possiblities. Our humanness has not lessened, it’s just applied in different ways.

As in the ‘legacy’ model there are likely both positive and less-than-positive elements to be found. Overall, I believe that the geographic boundaries contributed to more ‘closed’ cultures. We see the effect of the minimization of geographic boundaries in significant geopolitical transitions over the past few decades.

Indeed, in watching a recording today of a talk given to University students just last month, a member of NASA shared the significance of geopolitical changes in the space program. In talking about the International Space Station it was shared how, from the space station, they all point back to the same location to identify “where they’re from”.

As for what Dal, and other universities can do – how about appealing to groups of friends, instead of individuals? Bring Your Own Network, may be the new recruiting mantra.

Just musing …