The Virtual Campus is now on Twitter

We have been talking about a Twitter presence for the Virtual Campus for over a year now. Having a “Professional Twitter” presents a number of challenges, and even after a year of discussions, we are not sure we covered all that needs to be covered. So please bear with us as we embark on this journey.

What is @uOttawaVC?

For starters, @uOttawaVC stands for “university of Ottawa, Virtual Campus”. This is the English version of our Twitter presence, Tweets coming from this account will be exclusively in English. For the French version, follow @uOttawaCV.

We are using this logo as our Virtual Campus and Twitter logo. The English logo uses the uOttawa official Gray color (Hexadecimal 72634D) and the French version uses the uOttawa official Garnet color (Hexadecimal 8F0001A). The logo represents the inter-connections between our different systems, between students and Professors and between technologies. Also, it’s a pretty cool logo.

Who is @uOttawaVC?

To help you quickly identify Tweets from the Virtual Campus in your timeline, we are not using a picture of a person as the avatar of the @uOttawaVC account. That does not mean that we are not taking responsibility for Tweets sent through our accounts. There is one real person managing both our English and French Twitter accounts. That person is me:

Michel Marcheterre
Coordinator of On Line Teaching and Learning Activities
Centre for Mediated Teaching and Learning
Michel.Marcheterre@uOttawa.ca

You can also follow my professional Twitter account, @Marcheterre. However, I use my professional account mainly to exchange with other LMS managers, so it may not be of interest to you. ;-) I Tweet mainly in English, with the occasional French Tweet here and there. Tweets sent through the @Marcheterre account are personal in nature and do not represent the university of Ottawa official statement on anything. If you want to get official news about the University of Ottawa in general, follow @uOttawaNow (@uOttawaEnDirect for the French news).

What isn’t @uOttawaVC?

@uOttawaVC is not the way to contact technical support. Requests for help with the Virtual Campus and/or Blackboard Vista sent through Twitter will most likely be ignored. If time permits, you may get a reply asking you to contact support through our official support channels (http://www.ccs.uottawa.ca/cybersos/).

@uOttawaVC is not replacing the information found on our Maestro Website (http://maestro.uottaw.ca/indexEN.asp). In fact, we’ll add even more information for you in the upcoming weeks and months, so make sure to bookmark that site and visit it often!

@uOttawaVC is not a “Personality Twitter Account”. It’s our way of getting information about the Virtual Campus and Blackboard Vista to you as quickly as possible.

@uOttawaVC is not the official voice of the University of Ottawa on Twitter. Tweets sent through the @uOttawaVC and @uOttawaCV are strictly about the Virtual Campus and our LMS, are informational in nature and do not represent the university of Ottawa official statement on anything. If you want to get official news about the University of Ottawa in general, follow @uOttawaNow (@uOttawaEnDirect for the French news).

What to expect from @uOttawaVC?

The main goal of our Twitter presence is to keep you informed about what is going on with the Virtual Campus and by extension our LMS Blackboard Vista.

Secondary goals include: Informing you about technology changes, new versions of supported browsers, dates of upcoming workshops, dates of planned outages, reports on unplanned outages, etc. We will also listen to what you have to tell us through Twitter, but in a limited fashion.

Keeping these goals in mind:

@uOttawaVC may not reply to your Tweet. As mentioned previously, there is one person managing both French and English accounts so with a potential 45,000+ followers, you should not expect a reply if you write to @uOttawaVC. You will have a better chance of getting a reply within 24 hours if you write directly @Marcheterre, but your best bet for communication with me is still the good old email.

@uOttawaVC may not follow you back, but I will try to follow other accounts that may help you get pertinent information about our service or the University of Ottawa other services.

See you on Twitter!

Michel Marcheterre
Coordinator of on line teaching and learning activities.

Twitter Accounts mentioned on this page

	@uOttawaVC Ottawa, Canada This is the official Twitter account for the Virtual Campus of the university of Ottawa. French version of this account is @uOttawaCV. https://maestro.uottawa.ca/indexEN.asp
	@uOttawaCV Ottawa, Canada Twitter officiel du Campus Virtuel de l'université d'Ottawa. La version anglaise se retrouve @uOttawaVC. https://maestro.uottawa.ca/indexFR.asp
	@Marcheterre Ottawa, Canada I work at the university of Ottawa in Canada and manage the Virtual Campus and Blackboard Vista. I am not the official uOttawa voice on Twitter. https://maestro.uottawa.ca/
	@uOttawaNow Ottawa, Ontario News from @uOttawa. Tweets by Vincent Lamontagne, Adrian Ebsary & Maria Scopelliti. Pour les nouvelles en français, suivez @uOttawaEnDirect. http://www.uottawa.ca/welcome.html
	@uOttawaEnDirect Ottawa, Ontario Nouvelles de @uOttawa. Tweets par Vincent Lamontagne, Karine Proulx & Adrian Ebsary. For news in English, follow @uOttawaNow. http://www.uottawa.ca/bienvenue.html
	@uOttawa Ottawa, Ontario, Canada The largest bilingual university in the world. \| La plus grande université bilingue au monde. \| Aussi:@uOttawaEnDirect – Also: @uOttawaNow http://uottawa.ca