Group Studio

Guidelines:

The Group Studio is a functional set of tools available within BLink, Bethel University's portal system. Group Studio offers faculty, staff, and students at Bethel University the ability to create and manage group homepages for departments, workgroups, committees, or other institutional groups. Group Studio offers online tools for collaboration, communication or information sharing. There are three types of groups: public, restricted and hidden.

Public groups are open for anyone to join. Restricted groups are those where membership is subject to certain restrictions. For example, to access a group homepage for an academic department, an individual must first be accepted as a member of that department. Hidden groups are reserved for handling sensitive information and are not generally available.

Group Facilitators need to recognize that:

A group is a revocable privilege.
All student groups must have a faculty or staff sponsor.
Using the Bethel network to host groups means that the group represents Bethel.
Before requesting a group, determine if Group Studio is the best venue for
communicating with your audience. Some considerations:
- Portal Group tools offer “multi-way” communication. Members are expected to chat, upload links, files, news, photos, post messages, etc.
- Listservs may be more appropriate if email is the primary mode of communication for your group and you don’t need other tools. Listservs are set up independent of the portal and can be requested by faculty or staff through ITS (651-638-6500).

Network Ethics, Etiquette, and Legality

All individuals using Bethel's computing equipment and connections must abide by Bethel's policies regarding ethical and legal use of resources. This policy is presented in the document Computing Acceptable Use Policy.
Facilitators of groups are responsible for what they allow others to access on their pages or through a direct link from one of their pages.

Group Studio Content

In general groups represent both the individual's within the group and Bethel as an institution. Material needs to conform to the mission of the institution as well as the interests of the group.

Group Studio Content Guidelines

Direct links to illegal, socially harmful, or pornographic material are not allowed.
Text, images, or sounds which violate Bethel Lifestyle expectations or which are illegal according to local, state, national, or international laws are not allowed.
You may not create pages that contain material copyrighted by someone other than yourself unless permission has been obtained from the copyright holder. The original author and copyright holder should be clearly and fully acknowledged if permission is given. You should even be cautious about creating links to pages that contain unapproved copyrighted material.
You may not use Bethel's resources for commercial gain.

Group Studio Leader Guidelines

The group leader assumes responsibility for moderating and maintaining the group.

The group manager is responsible for:
- Creating and managing the group home page, including link, article, photo
  content, and the files and announcements available to the members.
- Setting up the group message board with topics and an overall description,
  and deleting topics, message, or replies as necessary.
- Setting up and maintaining the group online calendar.
- Activating and deactivating members as necessary.
- Assigning permissions to members so that responsibility for any of the
  above tasks can be delegated.
- Specifying which group tools are available to the group members.
- A group leader is expected to inactivate or delete group members for
  inappropriate use of group tools or refer an issue to the officials.

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