Accudemia Social Wall FAQ

Why did you add a Social Wall to Accudemia?

We believe that communication is paramount to students’ success - not only at college but also beyond. The Social Wall provides a convenient communication medium that was designed from the ground up for students in an academic environment.

It is well known that students who engage with other students and staff tend to do better at college and have a better retention rate than those who do not. The Accudemia Social Wall allows students to engage with other students and college staff in a safe, convenient, and easy manner.

Here are some of the benefits that can be realized by utilizing the Accudemia Social Wall:

      • Students can easily communicate with academic center staff via the Center Channel.
      • Students can easily communicate with other students in the same classroom via the Class Channel. This would be a great medium for embedded tutoring. Also, a student who misses a class can ask other students about what they missed.
      • Students can easily communicate with study group members, class project members, graduation capstone members, etc. via the Groups Channel.
      • Students can view center or college announcements on the Social Wall via special read-only channels.
      • Students can Interact with staff members and other students.
      • Accudemia users can reach other users in other colleges via Global Channels. For example, there is a global channel for Accudemia Administrators that you can utilize to reach other center admins to exchange expertise and information about using Accudemia.

How do you protect the privacy of the users?

The Accudemia Social Wall was designed with privacy in mind. Here is what we do to ensure the user’s privacy:

      1. Users will only appear to other users on the Social Wall if they engage in an activity (e.g. create a post). There is no User List to browse, and they cannot be looked up by name.
      2. Each user has a Public Profile that they control. The Public Profile is what appears as the user’s info on the social wall. Users can create their own social name and optionally upload an image and enter some other info about themselves.
      3. Users can change their public name and profile anytime. 
      4. By default, the Public Profile of all users only has their First Name and Last Initial. No other info exists. The user can change the name and can add other info if they like.
      5. Users are notified when they join a channel. The notification has a link to leave the channel.
      6. Users have full control over notifications and can mute notifications from any channel.
      7. Users can also leave any subscribed channel anytime.
      8. Users can choose to “Opt Out” of the social wall anytime.  

What if a user makes an inappropriate post?

Any user can report any post. Flagged posts appear in a moderator queue. The moderator can clear the flag, delete the post, or ban the poster from the Social Wall. You can make any user a Moderator by giving them that role.

Also, you can make one or more users a Super Moderator. The Super Moderator can view all channels on the Social Wall, and can even read all posts on all the channels. This includes Group Channels and Class Channels. The Super Moderator can also delete any post and ban users.  

We are concerned that our students would use the Social Wall to cheat by passing information!

The Accudemia Social Wall is a communication tool. If it does not exist and someone wants to cheat by passing homework files for example, they can still do that using other methods like Email, SMS, and other communication applications. Not using the Accudemia Social Wall will not stop someone from sharing files if that’s what they choose to do. However, you will be able to view posts on the Accudemia Social Wall and track who made them, and users can report inappropriate posts to you. This will give you control and access you probably do not have with other communication methods. 

We already have something similar. We are concerned it might be confusing to students to have more than one Social Wall!

Today’s students grew up having multiple social networks like Fakebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. The Accudemia Social Wall integrates with Accudemia. This means you can use it to answer the Student’s questions as they use Accudemia to schedule their next appointments, answer a survey, or check their visits reports. The Accudemia Social Wall is unique in that it was designed to work for academic institutions, protect students’ privacy, and give the admin control. 

Can we configure the system so only our staff can create channels?

Yes. By default, all users including students, tutors, and instructors can create channels. You can however limit the ability to create channels to one or more groups of users via the Control Panel. For example, you can use the following configuration to prevent students from creating channels:

What other Social Wall options can I control?

As an Accudemia admin, you can have control over the Social Wall including:

      • Enable / disable tagging users in posts
      • Enable / disable Global Channels
      • Enable / disable email notifications for all users:
        - Tagged notification
        - Added to Channel notification
        - Joined Channel notification
        - Comment on your Post notification
        - Like on your Post notification
        - Class Channel Created notification
      • Enable / disable web notifications for all users:
        - Tagged notification
        - Added to Channel notification
        - Joined Channel notification
        - Comment on your Post notification
        - Like on your Post notification
        - Class Channel Created notification
      • Enable / disable showing the Social Network activity in the Dashboard
      • You can also decide which user or users can moderate posts “Moderator role” and which user or users can view all channels and moderate them “Super Moderator” role.
      • You can prevent students from creating channels and keep this functionality to staff as mentioned above.