Engaging teachers with my research

One of the key challenges of my research is that in the course I'm performing my research on, my main role is not that of a teacher; it's that of a technologist. I'm a part of the team that develops the software that the students use, and that my social resource sharing tools are built into. This means that I don't have any direct influence of the students - I can't rock up to my lecture and say "hey you guys, post some resources, and interact through these tools". I can't make use of the tools a requirement for a pass mark in the course.

I've tried to turn this into a virtue - it makes my design research purer in a sense. If the students start using the tools, then it's the value of the tools themselves which is the reason, not other pressures on them to conform. But it would be nice to have some engagement with teachers, if some of them pointed students in the direction of these tools when asked by students how they could share curriculum materials. The staff running the course have decided that they'd rather not engage with these tools - they asked me specifically to ensure that the content in the social networking tools would be hidden from staff view, so that they wouldn't then get pressure to improve the curriculum based on the student resources. This was a bit disappointing, but understandable. What it means, though, is that staff who would have been interested in these tools, and would have encouraged students to use these tools, do not even know they exist. As a result they are probably suggesting the students set up their own wikis, Facebook pages, or other tools, to share learning resources. I've come across a few of these - one I found in the very nascent stage, and suggested the use of my sharing tool, but they have dropped off the radar; another went as far as finding project funding to build a wiki, but then I started working with them and added features to my system to meet their needs (they have also dropped off the radar, now interested in other projects).

I'm hoping I'm not rediscovering the well-understood model of teacher driven social learning - that's been done to death. It works, but its not new and interesting. I still want the students to spontaneously start using the tools built into their virtual learning environment, but I don't know if I'm barking up the wrong tree or if I just haven't yet found the right bits of interface design to lower the barriers to entry enough that they start flooding in.