By integrating these fields within the interdisciplinary studies, the information has become more advanced and any missing gaps of information have started to closed in due to the overlap of information
If we continue to do this for all gaps in knowledge we would be able to make significant improvements to the world as we know it
The concept of childhood ethics has a lot of gaps in knowledge. That is where the interdisciplinary parts come in to take the information from different disciplines to create a better understanding of the concept.
I feel like across the board there are a lot of gaps in all different types of knowledge, I agree that this is where IDS can become beneficial and can be used to fill in those gaps.
Engaging in Interdisciplinary studies has broadened my understanding of entrepreneurship, abstract thinking, metacognition, and love of learning.
I agree, IDS has completely changed my perspective and expanded my understanding of my education
unlike many other majors where it is easy to feel trapped or to feel stuck in this routine that everyone who has graduated with your degree has gone through
When strictly studying one discipline it is definitely easy to feel trapped in that specific study, especially when the curriculum does not leave much wiggle room to express yourself as an individual or do things the way that you want.
If you end the semester with some assignments not being greenlighted, take an Incomplete rather than an NP and keep working.
As a student, I absolutely love this concept. I failed out of the Nursing program by 0.3 of a point. I needed an 80 in order to "pass" and I got a 79.7 - when I first tried to actually discuss the issue and get some help I was literally turned away because they were too busy. I sat down with one of the professors and the feedback that I got was completely negative and I was basically told that I wouldn't make it through the program anyways even if I did manage to get the 0.3 from somewhere. They made me feel like a failure and like there was no hope for me in Nursing - but by using the pass/no pass rule instead of letter grades it puts more confidence in the student. It basically says that you didn't get it but there is still hope to complete what you need too in order to be successful.
Empowers learners to contribute to– not just consume– knowledge
This is probably the most important aspect to me as a Plymouth IDS student. I came to Plymouth as a Nursing student and the teaching style was not resonating with me at all. I was thrown information that I was required to remember under short notice - it was all about just consuming and spitting back out knowledge and not much about contributing or asking why. The IDS program allows me to take ownership of my education, I can control my own future, explore and make connections, and essentially find relevance and feel truly inspired by the path that I am on.
This drop-in ethos has been hugely helpful to keeping our retention levels high, since it’s harder to slip through the cracks when there is near-constant support available.
There have been multiple times where I have stopped by the IDS office either to get help or just to work on some assignments. The support that I have received from this program is unbelievable and better than anything I got from my previous major. I have talked about the support that I have received from this program to other students here at PSU and a lot of the time the reaction I get is: "I wish my program was like that." I am truly lucky to be apart of such a welcoming and supportive program.
Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies
This course is full of information that has given me a better understanding of what interdisciplinary studies is all about. Not only has it helped expand my knowledge about the type of education I am receiving but it has given me the assistance needed to build my major. In addition, it has helped launch me into my career by helping me build a PLN where I am able to connect with others in the profession that I am pursuing which is really important to do. Overall, this course is definitely an essential component to the Plymouth IDS program and I have loved taking it.
In fact, in our last two years of exit surveys, between 60% and 70% of graduating #PlymouthIDS majors claimed that they would have left PSU if they hadn’t enrolled in the IDS program.
I definitely would have left PSU if I didn't get into the IDS program, I would have had to transfer to a different school and I may have even entered a new Nursing program despite no longer feeling fully passionate about it. The Plymouth IDS program is giving me the opportunity to explore this new passion that I have and redirect my education where I choose.
students who find new passions late in the game who lament having to use their precious final semesters to finish a major they now would prefer to leave in the past.
I fall under the third category of Plymouth IDS students. I came into the program my senior year after failing out of the Nursing curriculum. I was completely lost and had no idea what to do at first, especially because I no longer felt the same passion that I had for Nursing compared to when I first started. I developed a new passion aimed more towards the social work aspect of healthcare and the interdisciplinary program here at PSU gave me the opportunity to pursue that passion while still graduating on time.
Even if a student enters college with a clear idea of what she wants to do, she will probably change her mind along the way. That’s the nature of growing up.
This is what happened to me, but things are definitely a lot clearer.
Every department has the programs, faculty, staff, and organization it needs to advance learning within its given field
This can definitely be a challenge for IDS, it can be difficult to find funding when IDS doesn't focus on just one study - but at least at PSU the faculty recognizes us and are willing to help in any way so that we are successful
Jargon poses a threat to cross-disciplinary collaboration because people can’t communicate with each other if they can’t understand each other.
This makes sense, it may be difficult to understand the points others are trying to make if they use terminology that is unfamiliar to you
In the case of interdisciplinary studies, an attitudinal barrier would be a scholar or researcher who has no interest in collaborating with other disciplines or people.
I think attitude is the biggest barrier out of the five - if people are refusing to work with others outside of their field then it would be impossible to bring an interdisciplinary approach into any situation/problem.
As important as it is for there to be highly specialized scholars in every discipline, it’s just as important to have interdisciplinary students building bridges between ideas, creating cohesive, universal collaboration.
Exactly, we need a mixture of both in our world.
Without these scholars, deep, investigative discoveries would be impossible. Society needs people to be masters in specific areas because they contribute to the understanding of the world at large.
I agree, we still need people to become masters - but we also need people who study several disciplines and can bridge the gap between them.
If she goes to college and studies a single discipline—like biology—and doesn’t take any classes except ones that pertain to her major, she will graduate as a near-master in her field.
With how the current education system is set up I feel like this is an impossible and unrealistic scenario considering general education courses and electives that majority of colleges require. Nobody ever just strictly studies one discipline during their college education.
Due to the responsibility associated with interdisciplinarity, students must learn how to make concrete decisions, how to effectively combine multiple disciplines into a cohesive major, and how to know what they want. Suddenly, education is relevant again.
How I felt transitioning from nursing where we had a set curriculum to interdisciplinary.
Interdisciplinary studies is a disruptive ideology that takes control away from educators and puts it where it belongs: in the hands of students. “Work now, play later” sends the message to students that now is never good enough; that education will be relevant later. The goal of interdisciplinarity is to be relevant now.
Considering I am paying 30k a year for my education, I want to be able to choose every aspect of it and I want the material to expand my knowledge or be relevant to my career goals.
The answer is never. If students aren’t free to be curious, engaged, and invested in what they’re learning, then they may never be curious, engaged, or invested in their lives
This concept is scary to think about but it is very true.
If students are not engaged with a subject because they believe it’s irrelevant, no amount of force will change their minds, or if they do change their minds, the decision comes from outside, not from within.
I have felt this way about a lot of courses that I have taken and I wish more teachers/professors would understand this, if you have a student that is uninterested they should try to find a way to spark their interest. There have been many courses where I went in uninterested but then the professor completely changes my perspective through their style of teaching.
By challenging themselves with a variety of educational experiences, interdisciplinary students become better critical thinkers, gain more self-awareness, and grow more confident in the way their brains work and who they are as people.
I just got introduced to the world of interdisciplinary studies this semester and it is so much different than any other educational experience that I have had and I absolutely love how challenging and thought provoking it is.
It’s such a transformative experience for so many people that it seems almost irrational to expect students to know what they want from it before they arrive
Yesss, we shouldn't expect people to know what they want to do with their lives at such a young age but we also should allow them to take charge and follow whatever path feels right to them. I agree with the concept of students entering college undeclared.
that eighteen-year-old students had reached the age of autonomy and should be trusted to make their own educational choices
I agree with this, it should be up to us to choose the career path that we want, the courses that we want, and take charge of our own education without others telling us what we can and cannot do.
demonstrating that graduates need more than one kind of skill if they want to compete in today’s job market.
Many employers nowadays want individuals who have a wide range of knowledge or are masters of several specializations which if you aren't IDS or brave enough to tackle a double major it is very difficult to do
one of his most influential reforms was advocacy for a curriculum based on students’ interests rather than a pre-established curriculum.
I wish more professors and people in powerful positions would advocate more for this, our education system would be so much different.
Knowledge transformed from an experience to a product.
Love this sentence
education was dominated by religion and classical texts, exploring questions of morality and a higher truth
This is interesting, education in the past was not always about preparing individuals for a career, in modern times our education system is so different.
In order to break apart and reorganize a system, a preliminary system must already exist. In the case of education, the modern disciplines—science, art, social science, humanities, and applied science—are considered the prologue to interdisciplinarity. Without these pre-established academic fields, interdisciplinary studies would not be possible.
This makes sense and I agree with it, the major that I created is a combination of disciplines that are already present - such as nursing, social work, communications, and psychology.
the psychologists, school social workers, case managers, occupational therapists, physical therapists and nurses who are present in developing and preserving a child’s mental well-being.
Issues in the healthcare field are definitely interdisciplinary problems and require specialists from a variety of backgrounds of knowledge to address the issue. I have seen so many errors arise from non-interdisciplinary approaches in the healthcare field. Teamwork is essential in this type of work.
The architects and accountants orchestrating the building of the dams could have considered the environmental impact, but it wasn’t their specialty, so they didn’t have the insight on potential impacts than an environmental scientist would have had.
In order to prevent environmental disasters and other errors it is definitely important to consider all aspects of a problem. Specialists from a variety of fields should be hired to identify potential consequences of an action, in this case, environmental scientists should have been brought in to examine the situation before building the dam.
The disciplines, where we find wealths of specific knowledge and, on occasion, narrow-minded specialists, are the very building blocks of interdisciplinary studies.
I wouldn't say that specialists are "narrow-minded". Also, it is true that disciplines are the building blocks of interdisciplinary. Without disciplines we would have nothing to mix together and no way to build a strong foundation for our majors.
It intrigues me to think that I will be able to belong to my own disciplinary community
I am excited for this opportunity as well. I already feel like I am apart of the Health field because of my experience and connections that I have made while practicing Nursing - I look forward to forming similar connections with the other disciplines that I integrated into my major, especially Social Work.
Looking back, it makes so much more sense that they were able to make lesson plans based off each other’s knowledge and experience.
This is really interesting, I had the same type of thinking back then. My high school was made up of clusters so all of the departments had their own area. I just assumed being so close together they would obviously become good friends, but it makes sense that this set up was so that they can have connections with others within their field and share knowledge/lesson plans.
No doubt too, and despite the hardships, a few creative individuals will continue to tread from one garden to another. We should see to it that their less-traveled paths are not overrun with thistles.
If more people took the untraveled path and treaded within the different disciplines we would end up with people that are more well-rounded, it is still good to have people who want to stay within a specific discipline because we do need masters of every study but I believe that the world would be a better place if more people took the untraveled path and made connections between disciplines
She may become jack of all trades, master of none.
The world definitely needs specialists and people who are "masters" of a certain study, but personally, I would rather be a jack of all trades and have knowledge about a lot of different things
To reach the pinnacle of their profession, they often end up exploring one interesting feature of a single atoll. Interdisciplinarians, by contrast, are forever treating themselves to the intellectual equivalent of exploring exotic lands.
Love this, I would much rather have the ability to explore everything and anything versus being stuck exploring the same thing over and over.
Future specialists will perhaps be able to see their field “as part of a wider context, to reflect on the impact of their discipline’s activities on society, and to enhance their ability to contribute to social developments”
This is one of the things that I want from my education as an IDS major, I want to be well-rounded so that I can better understand my impact on society as a whole and understand all of the aspects that connect with being a patient advocate
All too often, experts forget that “problems of society do not come in discipline-shaped blocks
Love this
A few years and a few bookshelves later, you might realize that most experts have failed to arrive at a self-contained portrait because they examined this subject from a single disciplinary perspective. An integrated approach, you might conclude, holds a greater promise of bringing you closer to a firm grasp of this complex subject than any important but one-sided study.
The reason why I love the concept of interdisciplinary so much
Disciplinary researchers seem capable of filling productive, yet unoccupied, niches, so that the opportunities for fruitful research in the gray areas among the disciplines are perhaps not missed for long.
There is so much to learn within the disciplines and we need people who are willing to expand their knowledge and explore the gray areas
In the non-existent world of pure disciplinarity, the people who commit such errors and their colleagues, being strict disciplinarians, would have not been in a position to catch them.
If we don't have people who are well-rounded and knowledgeable in a variety of connected disciplines then there will be nobody to catch errors
Insulated from related disciplines and lacking a clear notion of its bearings relative to what others have done, intensive study within a single [social science] discipline sooner or later leads to floundering into territories already explored by others.
Focusing strictly on one discipline means exploring ideas that have already been discussed or looked into, this doesn't necessarily mean that all ideas have been explored but originality will be difficult to find
The same goes for the history of ideas: outsiders are less prone to ignore anomalies and to resist new conceptual frameworks.
"Outsiders" or people who come from a varied background of knowledge are more likely to see things differently compared to someone who specializes which is why I think it is important to be well-rounded, sometimes individuals who specialize are so focused on what they know from their discipline that they cant understand things from any other point of view.
Creative Breakthroughs: The very act of creation often involves the bringing together of previously unrelated ideas
I love this, new ideas and solutions often come from thinking outside of the box
We need to reconceptualize our model of disciplinary growth and specialization, adopting a more organic model that accounts for the intricate links among the many specializations.
This would be great, developing a more integrated approach to the specializations and including courses that link together and make a connection to other branches, mixing together the material - basically, what interdisciplinary is all about.
No people in our own time could rationally proclaim that they knew everything about everything, or even everything about their own fields
There are definitely people in our time that think they know everything about everything but considering the amount of information out in the world it is literally impossible.
But content, methods, and epistemologies are the central building blocks of disciplines, and it is helpful to understand these as you get started in Interdisciplinary Studies.
Disciplines are made up of a variety of factors as listed in this article, I am interested in what some of the other components are.
instead want to see how something specific fits into a larger pattern or fabric
In some cases, it may be essential to look at the bigger picture for a situation to come up with an answer.
breaking a problem or concept down may help us see the different disciplines that are involved, which will then allow us to organize our research approach.
I believe that solutions to problems will be more long-term if people broke down the problems and recognized all of the disciplines that the problem impacts and then develop a solution that meets each disciplines demands.
The various fruits can be served side by side, they can be chopped up and served as a fruit salad, or they can be finely blended
It is up to us how we want to combine our disciplines. The difference between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary - multidisciplinary being the fruits side by side that do not mix much or change their shape, while interdisciplinary becoming more blended together, like a smoothie.
Note that the amalgamation quotient says nothing about quality: in some circumstances, a plain mango will surpass all the smoothies in the world; in others, only a fruit salad will do.
I love this, it doesn't put down disciplines, it is important for us to have people in the world that strictly want to study one thing and don't want to integrate it into anything else, while others want to make a mixture. Just because I am more interested in making a smoothie doesn't mean that the fruit alone isn't valuable.
Have you been part of a disciplinary community in high school or college so far? What did you do as part of that community?
In high school I was involved with a few clubs that had a specific purpose or common interest.
Are you more interested in INSTRUMENTAL or CRITICAL interdisciplinarity?
I think that both are important but I am more interested in instrumental interdisciplinarity - I want to take action and change things.
linking the academic world with the practical world, and scholars with non-academics who are working on similar problems or ideas.
Would this be like an internship, clinicals, or other scenarios where you move from the academic classroom to out in the field with other scholars and individuals?
Interdisciplinarity is like mixing paint. You can lay colors side-by-side to create beautiful paintings (multidisciplinarity), or you can mix them together to get totally new colors (interdisciplinarity).
Love this
Interdisciplinarity: Incorporates several fields of study to allow collaboration among diverse disciplines to either specify or broaden students’ education, to gain understanding, and/or to problem solve.
I wish more students took up IDS or even knew about it, integrating a variety of fields is super beneficial versus focusing on one academic field of study. I am really just learning about IDS myself but I am shocked that I didn't know about it sooner and how many of my friends are clueless as to what it even is.
On our campuses, we must create an intellectual climate that encourages faculty members and students to make connections among seemingly disparate disciplines, discoveries, events, and trends — and to build bridges among them that benefit the understanding of us all.
I think this needs to start a young age, throughout our entire education we should be taking classes that connect disciplines and start us off with a wide base of knowledge, maybe doing this will not only help students be more successful and create a better future but even help students more in not feeling so lost.
Colleges and universities must, once more, play a critical role in rediscovering that knowledge and that wisdom. Otherwise, they will resemble what Eliot described in a commentary on Dante’s Inferno, when he wrote to the effect that hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing.
It is important for our future that we start building a more integrated, interdisciplinary system. A curriculum that contains a wide range of knowledge that sets students up for success in whatever career path that they desire
We must also help students gain knowledge of multiple disciplines and their interconnectedness.
PSU is starting to make this turn on education and make all of the disciplines more integrated, encouraging students to take courses from a variety of fields.
We must rid it of unnecessary and wasteful duplication, and create coherence and integrity in our curricula.
Yes! Throughout the years I feel like there was so much repeated information, which its great to review things, but I feel like some courses have just been a waste of time.
Unfortunately, many of those student workers say that holding a job hurts their grades, as well as limits their choice of courses
I am lucky enough to not have to work during the semesters, I am completely paying for my own college education but my job back home pays enough that if I work 40+ hour weeks on breaks I make enough to support me during the semester, I am also great at saving.
Because many high schools don’t do their jobs, 53 percent of college students, including those who attend community colleges, require remedial courses.
Is it because high schools aren't doing their jobs or because high school students aren't taking their classes seriously?
I do not underestimate the challenge of reunifying knowledge in higher education, especially in the context of the information revolution that we’ve been experiencing
I agree that it will be a challenge but at the same time there are so many courses that I have taken within the last three years of my college education that I felt were pointless and did not teach me anything, some courses I felt were just not challenging and I was doing things that weren't exactly college level. I don't pay 30k a year to do arts and crafts, I want to actually learn something that will be beneficial to my future.
Higher education must raise the important issues and guide students in synthesizing responses, if not answers.
I agree and disagree at the same time, yes higher education should talk about the important issues and guide students but at this point in my life I am looking for an integration of knowledge that will help me be successful in my career, not for someone to tell me how to think.
we find ourselves facing not a problem, but a cluster of problems … and none of these problems can be tackled using linear or sequential methods.”
The more we know the more we will be able to thoroughly solve problems without ignoring or creating other ones.
the complexity of the world requires us to have a better understanding of the relationships and connections between all fields that intersect and overlap
Overlapping and integrating different disciplines is essential to have a wide base of knowledge, knowing a little bit of everything can go a long way.
Instead of helping students learn and grow as individuals, find meaning in their lives, or understand their role in society, college has become a chaotic maze where students try to pick up something useful as they search for the exit: the degree needed to obtain decent employment.
This is so true! I feel like professors are so focused on just handing out the information, and students are so focused on keeping their GPA up that students don't actually grow as individuals or really learn anything. There are so many courses that I have taken that I have felt were completely pointless. Sometimes I feel like I am here just to get handed my degree in the end, I feel like its scary how many people graduate without feeling like they learned anything useful.
For most students, college is a time for self-discovery, for developing passionate interests, and for trying to weave them into a meaningful career.
This is definitely true for me and I am sure for many other college students
I’m not arguing against putting class assignments online, but the assignments must be framed by a conversation about audience and the way the ‘domain’ represents the author to that audience
Assignments need to reflect who the student is as a person and encourage them to be creative, traditional assignments could pull their usual audience away
The domains project isn’t revolutionary to the traditional classroom, but it is revolutionary to a classroom reimagined around public scholarship, student agency and experimentation.
If domains are used just to post traditional assignments too then it is not necessarily a revolutionary movement
How often do traditional ‘assignments’ misrepresent student interests, passion, and rigor? Giving a student ownership over data means nothing if it doesn’t allow them to determine that data.
This is why I think it is important for teachers to assign a mixture of things that every student can benefit from, be vague with assignments that have to be posted on their domains so that they can write posts that they are passionate about and enjoy writing.
The web is a network for conversations, and if students still see their audience as a teacher with a red pen, then nothing changes.
When a student completes assignments I think it is important to keep in mind that yes your work will be looked at by a teacher but when it is posted in public then students and other people on the web can view it as well if you link them. Building up a following is important and would be a great motivator when you are completing assignments and publishing your work!
The first type of ‘Domain’ took audience into account, considering the implications of public scholarship, representation, and student agency. The second, in many ways, mirrored the traditional pedagogical structure by assigning papers or short answer assignments to be posted online through blogs. This is not necessarily bad, but also doesn’t necessarily empower.
I think it is important for teachers to use student domain assignments in a mixed fashion, it is okay to assign a student to make a post or reflection on articles or other pieces of work but its important for the student to have control over what they post as well, maybe more vague assignments
but until students see this domain as a space that rewards rigor and experimentation, it will not promote student agency. Traditional assignments don’t necessarily empower students when they have to post them in a public space.
It is important for students to want to have the domain and see it as a useful source for posting their work, most students see traditional assignments as either busy work or even as a chore to do, especially if they aren't interested in the topic.
Those of us who work with students must guide them to build their own personal cyberinfrastructures, to embark on their own web odysseys. And yes, we must be ready to receive their guidance as well.
It is important for teachers to be good leaders for students, but it is also important for teachers to listen to the students and make changes based off of what each individual desires!
But if what the professor truly wants is for students to discover and craft their own desires and dreams, a personal cyberinfrastructure provides the opportunity.
This is why I love the idea of IDS so much, getting to be in charge of my own future, choosing my own courses and directing my own path
Without such fluency, students cannot compete economically or intellectually, and the astonishing promise of the digital medium will never be fully realized.
The digital world is such a huge aspect of the world today, nearly every company uses digital systems, we shouldn't be teaching students to be scared of the web but how to use it efficiently
Templates and training wheels may be necessary for a while, but by the time students get to college, those aids all too regularly turn into hindrances.
The earlier that we incorporate the domains into the educational system the better it will be, by the time that students reach college they will have a domain that is nearly perfect and a great resource
In building that personal cyberinfrastructure, students not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking.
These are all such positive reasons for students to have their own domain, technology is such an important aspect of today's world and I think we should start to incorporate it into our education
Yet higher education largely failed to empower the strong and effective imaginations that students need for creative citizenship in this new medium.
I feel like most educational facilities have yet to adapt the web into their system, most places are still stuck up on Moodle or Black Board which are simple systems that don't allow you to carry your work on between schools and some courses even close viewing once completed.
And few people understood how to bring students into this world, aside from assigning them e-mail addresses during orientation.
Throughout my education so far I have never been to a school or had a class that really used technology, my high school didn't use computers other than one class I took and we didn't even get e-mails. College was the first time I was assigned an e-mail and really started using an online system (Moodle), and to be honest I absolutely hate Moodle!
Sometimes, however, progress means looping back to earlier ideas whose vitality and importance were unrecognized or underexplored at the time, and bringing those ideas back into play in a new context.
I am hoping that having a domain to store my work will allow me to do exactly this, be able to reference back to my earlier work and re-explore my ideas to help me with my current work
And if a student owns their own domain, as she moves from grade to grade and from school to school, all that information – their learning portfolio – can travel with them.
This is awesome, there has been so many times that I have had to dig through so many USB drives and folders to find an assignment to reference to that I did years ago. There should be a place where we can access all of our work from previous courses and grades.
These debates do not recognize the ways in which students have already developed rich social lives online and could use help, not punishment or paternalism, in understanding how to think through the data trails they’re leaving behind.
People are constantly lecturing youth about how the internet can be such a bad place but most people nowadays already have a social media presence, we shouldn't be talking down the internet but teaching people how to use it correctly and in a beneficial way
, and in turn they begin to have an understanding of the technologies that underpin the Web, including how their work and their data circulate there.
It is important for students to understand how the web works and to make wise choices in what they post for the public to see, it is also important that they learn how to use the web as a tool because it will be beneficial for their career
Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium.
I love this, I feel like it reflects a portion of what IDS is all about.
and it hosts the site until graduation when domain ownership is transferred to the student.
This means that the student will be able to officially own and take the domain with them when they graduate versus starting all over again on a different domain if they wanted to continue to have a website for educational purposes. This is great compared to a lot of schools that will let you make one but it gets taken away when you graduate!
UMW and a growing number of other schools believe that students need a proprietary online space in order to be intellectually productive.
There are so many different websites and places on the web for us to be socially productive, Facebook for example, I think it is important for there to be a space that we can be intellectually productive as well
much like they have little agency in education itself.
It is crazy how students have such a small voice when it comes to their own education, we can choose our career path/majors but we don't have much of a say when it comes to everything else!
But almost all arguments about student privacy, whether those calling for more restrictions or fewer, fail to give students themselves a voice, let alone some assistance in deciding what to share online
There should definitely be some guidelines for students to follow in regards to what they should and shouldn't share online, but I think it is important to remember that in the end it should ultimately be up to the student what they post for the public to see and what they don't want to post, after all it is "student" privacy.