Welcome to EDUCAUSE Connect, the EDUCAUSE community platform.
The following participation guidelines were originally developed to support the appropriate use of our community group (CG) lists and were most recently updated in April 2021 with the assistance of our community group leaders. Since the guidelines reflect the wishes of the primary subscriber base—EDUCAUSE members—we are modifying and expanding on them for application to EDUCAUSE Connect. They are intended to maintain the professional focus and educational value of community engagement and interactions on the platform and your observance of them will enhance the quality of the experience for all.
EDUCAUSE is committed to the value of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) and urges all posts and interactions on EDUCAUSE Connect to be sensitive to DEIB dynamics. Likewise, we ask that when sharing resources, to please provide streaming media captions/transcripts and descriptive image ALT text for users with visual impairments and consider IT accessibility best practices.
EDUCAUSE’s Privacy Notice describes how we use and protect your personal data.
Discussion Forum Etiquette
Queries and dialogue should be focused on leadership, managerial, and/or technical issues and community group topics and conducted in a courteous, professional tone.
- State concisely and clearly the topic of your message in the subject line of your post. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for members to search the archives by subject.
- All postings should be signed with the subscriber's name, institutional/organizational/corporate affiliation, and email address.
- Send messages such as "thanks for the information" or "me, too" to individuals, not to the entire list.
- Postings should not be written in all-capital letters or classified as "Important."
- Personal messages should be sent directly to an individual's email address, not to the entire list.
- Do not send administrative messages such as “unsubscribe” to the group. Instead, use the EDUCAUSE Connect platform to change your settings or to remove yourself from a community or group.
- Postings should not contain material that is illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, infringing on intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy, or otherwise injurious or objectionable.
- Use caution when discussing products. Information posted on the discussion forums and in the libraries is available for all to see, and comments are subject to libel, slander, and antitrust laws.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in forum discussions are those of individual subscribers and are not necessarily those of their institutions or companies. EDUCAUSE as an association neither expresses an opinion about nor endorses products or services and is not responsible for the opinions expressed on any of the discussion lists it supports.
Unacceptable Use
Please note that the following actions are considered unacceptable and will result in a warning or termination of use.
- Use of the platform for marketing or product sales, mass mailings of commercial materials, and contacting individuals regarding a posting off-list, or as a means to gather email addresses for these purposes.
- Use of the platform to conduct or forward contests, pyramid schemes, or chain letters.
If you as an EDUCAUSE Connect user are concerned that any of the above have occurred, we encourage you to direct a complaint or protest directly to the offending subscriber, to the relevant community group leaders, and/or to EDUCAUSE staff for appropriate action. Please attempt to resolve the issue through private correspondence, rather than aggravating the situation by focusing group discussion on it. EDUCAUSE reserves the right to suspend, remove content, or terminate participation on EDUCAUSE Connect for any reason.
Promotional Messages and Advertising
EDUCAUSE Community Groups (CGs) are educational in nature and not intended for promotional announcements, advertising, product-related press releases, or other commercial use. Please note that unsolicited commercial communications to community group participants as a result of postings to a CG violate the promotional messages and advertising provisions of these guidelines and may result in the loss of access to the CG in question.
Announcements
Members may occasionally use the platform for announcements of noncommercial conferences, publications, and other resources of general interest to other subscribers. The subject line should clearly identify the topic of the message; the message body should be kept short and should contain contact information for more details.
Events
Events in EDUCAUSE Connect must abide by the rules and etiquette outlined in these Terms and Conditions.
All posted events should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Be an information sharing or collaborative session that can support higher education professionals
- Be highlighted only in the communities that will most benefit from the content
- Not be commercial or promotional in nature, with the exception of events posted in corporate community spaces.
EDUCAUSE reserves the right to remove events or moderate promotion of events that do not follow the terms and conditions outlined in this agreement.
Endorsements
Endorsements are acceptable if made in the context of a request for information or sharing of an experience. When the endorsement comes from a representative of a corporate member, non-member corporate representative, or consultant, any mention of company products or services should be in the context of a reasonable answer to a question posed by another user and should not be blatantly commercial; such postings should include the identifying signature of the person posting the message.
Intellectual Property Protections
Do not post any information or other material protected by copyright without the permission of the copyright owner. By posting material, the posting party warrants and represents that he or she owns the copyright with respect to such material or has received permission from the copyright owner.
Job Postings
We encourage those who are looking for broad reach and visibility to post and browse the EDUCAUSE Career Center; list participants who have specific postings of relevance are allowed to post individual positions of interest to the community.
Surveys
Informal professional opinion or use surveys are acceptable but should be brief and should encourage off-line responses. In keeping with the educational spirit of the platform and communities, you are encouraged to note how the responses will be used and share a synopsis of any information you gather.
News Media
Media professionals are welcome to subscribe to community groups to stay informed of the latest campus IT issues. Interaction on the list should be in the spirit of the educational nature of the groups, with these media-specific guidelines:
- Media representatives are welcome to pose questions and to participate in discussions intended for the community groups subscriber community. They may NOT, however, ask questions or invite separate follow-up to the full list expressly for the purpose of soliciting contributors to pending articles or other editorial content. Out of respect for the purpose of community groups, we ask that media or corporate representatives do not solicit input to develop content or quotes for its own publications via the CGs. NOTE: This guideline does not preclude media or corporate representatives from following up directly with individual subscribers who post to a list.
- All postings to a discussion forum by a media representative should clearly identify the representative's media status and affiliation, i.e., not just through a signature block.
- No posting to a discussion forum may be quoted without the explicit consent of the poster. Such consent should be requested privately and may be established with an email to that effect from the author. If a posting is quoted without the author's express consent, the person in error will be asked to refrain from repeating that mistake in the future. Any subsequent failure to follow these provisions will result in termination of the individual’s access for a period of time to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
When group content is quoted or referred to in an article, or when a story is based in whole or in part on group discussions, media representatives are requested to note that the source was an EDUCAUSE Community Group.