SQA and social media

Qualifications Development staff within SQA take a day out each year to look at best practice, internally and externally, to ensure that each of the qualification teams are aware of these practices and consider applying them to their own work.

I was invited to describe my team's use of social media to communicate with centres. As many of you will know, we've been using these tools since 2004 and, over time, I think this blog and some of the other tools (particularly our use of e-groups) have been successful. I pointed out the downsides too -- the time it can take to maintain something like this blog; the double work involved since you still have to send letters to centres; and the fact that not every teacher likes to use social media. I described my team's use of social media as "a qualified success".

Like most organisations, SQA is looking at ways of using social media to be more transparent and work more closely with stakeholders. I think some of the other teams liked Twitter since this takes much less time to maintain than a full blown blog and can send out short messages very qucikly so look out for some new Twitter accounts from other qualification teams in the near future. And don't forget to follow this team on Twitter if you don't already.