OU Facebook App Competition

What OU Facebook App would you like to see? Here’s a chance to get it made…

Two and half years ago, as part of an informally convened skunkworks team, we released a couple of Open University related Facebook apps inspired, in part, by observing student behaviour in online course forums.

Current privacy fears aside (?!;-), the apps are getting another push as part of an announcement about a “Design an OU Facebook App” Competition (Share your Facebook app ideas for chance to win OU vouchers):

The rules are simple: tell us what new app you’d like to see us build on Facebook.

And in return? For the winner of our competition, which runs until June 8, 2010, there’s £100 course vouchers, and, even more exciting perhaps, the chance to see your app built, with your name on the developer credits.

Although there are only a handful ideas posted so far it’s interesting to see how some of them already tally with ideas we had for additional apps at the time Course Profiles and My OU Story were built. (Liam, maybe we should dig out the old email exchanges we had bouncing round new app ideas, and submit them to the current competition?! Heh heh;-)

The competition is being managed through an online suggestion-and-voting system that appeared on the OU Platform site earlier this year and which is being used to solicit ideas for new courses from any one who registers on the site (Platform is open to all, not just OU students, staff, and alumni).

The Platform team seem to have really got into the idea of competitions, so presumably it works as a marketing exercise. Just out of interest, are there any other HEIs out there that run competitions in a similar way?