Activity 3: Discussion - Project - AUP Reflection

Activity 3: Discussion - Project - AUP Reflection

This week’s activities were centered on learning about Acceptable User Policies. I thought this was a great topic to dive into since we are all working towards our Instructional Technology degree. We will need to be aware of this topic and utilize it often.

The first thing that really stood out to me was the structure of an AUP it has a structured format. There a six content areas that if followed will cover all the needed requirements to create a thorough AUP.

One of our tasks was to try, and get a copy of our schools AUP an compare the six areas of a successful AUP to the schools copy of the AUP that the we able to come up with. I am out of work on a temporary leave, and with your permission a download one from the internet for Wake County Public Schools to complete the exercise. The activity was filled with some key elements being used in the plan, and some missing that could have made their plan better. We also created a Wordle with key words from the AUP.

One of the interesting key things that I learned this week is the different types of AUP from education to business and the differences in them. The structure would remain the same, but the content would have to change to reflect the users.

My partner and I worked on a Business AUP, and worked diligently on the project. She worked hard on the project, and she is a great teammate.  We both come from the business world, and we were assigned to accomplish the business AUP.

One of the things that I learned from working in the IT department is that an AUP is only as good as the enforcement behind it. I worked for one company in healthcare and they took security very seriously due to hippa. We didn’t have any virus issues or inappropriate things happening on the network because if you were caught you would be disciplined. I worked for another company that was the complete opposite. The network was always crashing and users were abusing the network and nothing was ever done about it. An AUP is only as good as the enforcement behind it in my experience.

Chris Molhan