News

In and Out of the Classroom: Using Social Media in Ways that Matter

Because so many students use social media tools – and because so many faculty use the same tools in their personal or professional lives – it can be tempting to bring social media into the classroom almost by default, on the assumption either that social media technologies are needed to engage students or that they will boost student engagement simply by their use. But social media technologies aren’t silver bullets – they are tools that can support efforts to address common pedagogical challenges. Here’s an example. CASE STUDY: TWITTER IN AN ITALIAN CLASS Perennial challenges in traditional (non-immersive) foreign language courses include a) how to best encourage student practice outside the classroom, where students have limited access to conversation in the new language, and b) how to aid students in moving beyond language “exercises” toward conversational fluency while within a classroom environment. In an intermediate Italian course at Montclair State University, Enza Antenos-Conforti had her students tweet to each other, in and out of the classroom, in 140-character strings of Italian. Antenos-Conforti then invited native Italian speakers she knows to join the tweeting, in effect adding an element of immersion to the language course. In her paper on the subject, […]

Providing Central Guidelines and Support for Social Media

It’s crucial that social media communications across your institution support your institution’s brand and mission. Aligning multiple channels (both social and traditional) to tell the same story about your institution in varied voices is powerful; multiple and uncoordinated channels telling different stories about your institution is problematic. It’s also a missed opportunity. Yet studies over the past year (such as CASE’s April 2011 survey and an .eduGuru study entitled The State of Higher Ed Media 2011)  found that aside from guidelines around branding and graphics, most units do not have policies or guidelines related to content management, privacy issues, response to negative postings, or legal and ethical issues; and only 16 percent of professionals said a coordinating group exists within their institution to guide social media use. To align those social media communications already happening, at varied points throughout your institution, take these critical steps: Treat your institution’s key contributors of social media content as “brand ambassadors” for your institution, educating them with best practices and guidelines for representing the institution Establish and communicate a clear, campus-wide social media policy to address legal and privacy issues Develop guidelines for faculty syllabi for courses using social media Educating Your Brand Ambassadors […]

Social Media and Alumni/Donor Engagement

CASE STUDY: COMMENCEMENT “Spring 2011. We wanted to find ways to increase engagement around commencement. We have a thriving community of students and alumni on Facebook, but rather than jamming that channel with content, we asked one simple question about memorable professors. 200 responses came back sharing memories. We asked one question, started a conversation, and received a rich body of content plus a list of names of rock-star faculty to feature. That was the only thing we posted during commencement. We looked for the best opportunity to leverage our users, our content, and the time of year.” Tim Jones, North Carolina State University The findings from an April 2011 CASE survey suggest that the majority of institutions use social media channels as “megaphones” for broadcasting content, rather than as tools for enhancing engagement strategies. The majority of institutions surveyed use an “umbrella strategy” for all audiences, with only 29 percent tailoring their social media strategies by target audience. Recognizing the largely untapped potential of these communication tools for expanding engagement with high-priority constituencies, we asked Andrew Gossen, senior director for social media strategy for alumni affairs and development at Cornell University, for advice on how development and alumni relations […]

Social Media and Student Recruitment

In student recruitment, social media tools present opportunities to extend your reach, but you’ll see the best results when you use these channels in ways that are both targeted and closely aligned with your communications in other media, with very specific outcomes in mind. Jason Simon, director of marketing and communications services for the University of California’s Office of the President, recommends asking these questions up front: What organizational objectives or priorities are you using social media to support? (e.g., increased yield, increased application rate) How does your use of social media complement your other efforts to achieve that objective? Are there gaps in your strategy that social media tools could enable you to address? Rather than simply drive to get a number of Likes on your institution’s Facebook page, focus on one of the outcomes that really matter to your department (such as number of applications completed) and identify specific opportunities to use social technologies to complement your other efforts toward that goal. Here are two case study examples of how other institutions have integrated social media effectively into their larger efforts. Example A: Multi-Channel Campaign to Recruit Out-of-State Students North Carolina State University makes a fascinating case study […]

Social Media: Not a Brave New World

Although most postsecondary institutions now leverage social media channels to some extent for marketing and communications, alumni engagement, and teaching and learning, many of these efforts remain ad hoc and largely unintegrated with key strategic efforts within each division. An April 2011 survey of professionals at research institutions conducted by Slover Linett Strategies Inc. and mStoner in collaboration with the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) found that: Only 36 percent of professionals surveyed would describe social media use within their unit as “planned” (as opposed to “spontaneous”), and 65 percent would like to see the amount of planning increase 62 percent regard their unit’s use of social media as only “somewhat successful” in achieving strategic goals Because social media tools are new, it’s easy to assume that they require a new approach or a new “social media strategy.” Yet what is actually needed isn’t a new strategy, but rather a close look at your current strategy and a thoughtful analysis of how social media tools can be brought to bear on some of the challenges you face in meeting specific, strategic outcomes – such as increasing student yield, boosting the engagement of students in hybrid or online […]

Managing Your Institution’s Social Media Channels

Many of the institutions seeing the greatest success in leveraging social media communications to help boost strategic efforts in marketing and communications, student recruitment, and alumni engagement have actually invested relatively little budget and few staff to the effort. Instead, these institutions’ marketing and communications offices have focused on identifying and leveraging those social media communications that are already happening, at varied points throughout the academic community. Coordinating university communications across multiple social media and traditional platforms can appear daunting, but the effort becomes simpler once you embrace the decentralized nature of social media, and then move to provide the necessary central resources to integrate, aggregate, and make the best use of the content that your faculty, staff, and students are already creating on social platforms. Your central channels can then tap those sources of content when needed to aid you in meeting specific objectives. To learn more, we reached out to social media veterans Alan Webber, industry analyst and managing partner for Altimeter Group; Tim Jones, interim executive creative director at North Carolina State University; and Patrick Powers, director of digital marketing and communications at Webster University. Here is their advice on: Identify Your Content and Your Contributors Much […]

Course Materials for Mobile Devices: Key Considerations

In the past term, Duke University piloted a course in introductory chemistry that replaced the standard textbook and course materials with online, multimedia content collected by the instructor from open repositories, as well as materials developed by the instructor under creative commons. The content included video clips from recorded lectures, ePUB texts and PDF files, and recorded whiteboard animations, all housed online. Students gathered at small tables during the course sessions and collaborated to solve chemistry problems, accessing the course resources as necessary during the class via laptops, tablets, and smaller mobile devices. Rather than lecture at the front of the room, the instructor circulated among the students, checking their progress, offering advice, and asking guiding questions. The project was an experiment in selecting, creating, and using open-access educational materials on mobile devices, and in using classroom time to maximize collaborative learning, problem-solving, and application. The instructor piloting the project recognized that many students now access online course materials primarily through their mobile devices — not through a desktop computer. Projections by technology researchers over the past year confirm the immediacy of this trend: In a May 2011 survey, Gartner Inc. reported that the amount of time people currently spend […]

Checking for Policies and Procedures that Impede Student Success

Last July, we interviewed a past college president, a current college president, and a vice president of student affairs, about the need to review and audit institutional policies and procedures that delay students in progressing toward their degree — and they had specific tips on where to start looking for “bottlenecks.” This week, we decided to take a more in-depth look at how enrollment managers can make strides in identifying process bottlenecks that can frustrate and slow students. We interviewed Susan Leigh, associate vice president of enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, and Lawrence T. Lesick, vice president of enrollment at Ohio Northern University, who have each fostered a true “customer service” approach in enrollment management at their institutions. Leigh and Lesick have specific advice to offer related to: Reviewing Student Complaints “Most frequently, student complaints emerge around the speed of getting a critical task done. Periodically review complaints, and when you find bottlenecks, take them apart. Often, behind that bottleneck, there is an outdated policy or an outdated procedure. Get the right people around the table, ask them directly: How can we improve this service for the student?”Susan Leigh, DePaul U For example, DePaul University, which enrolls a large […]

Strategies for Supporting a Diverse Faculty

While the diversity of undergraduate student populations is steadily increasing, faculty diversity continues to lag, especially in fields such as engineering and science. To see what could be learned from institutions that have made real strides in this area, we reached out to Wanda Mitchell, vice provost for faculty development and inclusive excellence at the University of New Hampshire, and Myron Anderson, associate to the president for diversity and associate professor of education technology at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. Anderson and Mitchell suggest that to really see gains in fostering a diverse faculty, you need to: “In removing the impediments that minority faculty face, at the end of the day you are creating better resources, tools, and policies for all of your faculty. When you are working toward “inclusive excellence,” you create a situation where everyone wins.”Myron Anderson, Metropolitan State University of Denver Reviewing Your Policies Mitchell suggests that the first step is to review your tenure and promotion policies — and make them more prescriptive. For example, ensure that there are clear guidelines for a structured conversation between department chairs and faculty at the annual review, and that both parties know how to prepare for that conversation. “It’s […]

Changing the Culture of Space Allocation

As more postsecondary institutions undertake space management initiatives, those tasked with such initiatives are finding that they face challenges not just in inventorying and benchmarking space utilization, but in grappling with a siloed campus culture and attitudes of ownership toward space. Yet if institutions are going to meet increasing and competing demands for more space to enable more teaching and more research, it will be critical for academic and administrative leaders to treat campus space as a strategic asset, and for space management to cease to be an isolated function within facilities services and be seen as a shared responsibility across the institution. “We need to make it clear that space is not owned by a department; it is allocated to a need or an activity, to contribute to that activity’s success. We need to set the expectation that as activities shift in priority, space reallocation will be necessary.” Phil Rouble, Algonquin College   When we interviewed Frances Mueller, the University of Michigan’s assistant vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs and recently the project manager of the institution’s Space Utilization Initiative, early this year, she stressed the need to promote a collective commitment to stewardship of the campus’ physical […]