Walled Garden + Walled Garden = A Third Walled Garden

Update: According to the recent TechCrunch post, Inigral will be charging institutions for the Facebook App. This will hinder the adoption (especially at large schools since they charge by the student).

A start-up company called Inigral has recently launched a beta product that connects Oracle's Campus Solutions Student Information System to Facebook. The product, called Schools on Facebook, brings student data (allegedly through secure methods) to a student's Facebook profile. This allows for social interactions based on class registrations, events, etc.. The tool will match classmates and professors together through their Facebook accounts.

In higher ed, we are notorious for the walled gardens and multiple silos of data. SIS, course management, CRM, portals, and multitudes of other data sources exist with little to no integration. This makes for a cumbersome interactive student experience. In attempts to leverage the latest trends, we have setup Facebook Pages and Groups -- creating another silo inside a walled garden.

Now, a start-up is building a way to "connect" two walled gardens. Unfortunately, this will create yet another silo of information that will cause inconsistent user experiences dependant on the ever-changing regulations of Facebook (think data based on the Facebook application usage, interactions, effectiveness).

Nonetheless I'm intrigued by this new development. I think it takes the focus away from the inadequates of many higher ed interactive experiences and instead focuses the institution on yet another bright and shiny object. It leverages the stability of Facebook and creates another tool to implement and maintain. Yet it does test the water for the effectiveness of social applications integrated with academics. I don't believe this how tool stands now will be the future; instead I see a more deeply integrated social application built into personalized experiences shared between the student and the institution.

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