Educause 2008 – Crafting a Campus Identity: First-Year Students, Residential Life, and Social Networking

Notes from this session at Educause 2008:

How are today’s undergrad students using social networking applications are part of their campus lives?
How might student use impact recruitment and retention?

Today’s Students:

Net Gen students use a variety of technologies to structure and organize their lives – for entertainment and communication
These students have high expectations regarding networked campuses
It’s unclear how well student technology use translates directly to teaching and learning (Wagner, 2005)

Today’s Institutions:
Struggling to meet students high expectations regarding technolgy
Institutions increasingly using Web 2.0

Horizon Project’s Call for Scholarship recently identified social networking tools as a possible education tool for building learning communities (October 2007).

30+ years of research has built on Tinto’s findings that student persistence is related to social and academic integration (1975)
Students have showed that web-based collaboration tools can increase retention in courses (Fisher and Baird, 2005)
Others have found that online social networking can increase social engagement (Lento, Wesler, Gu & Smith)

Most students start w/ MySpace but then transition to Facebook because it’s “simpler”, it’s “what college students use”.

According to presenter’s study:
63.4% of students log into a social networking site several times a day.
Only 32% of students indicate that they use a mobile device to connect to a social networking application.

Discussion related to getting students involved in the social network before they even arrive on campus so they can begin to connect with each other and make the transition easier. Students have joined Facebook groups/MySpace groups related to their residence halls.

“Does Your Preferred Social Networking Site Improve or Enrich Your Non-Academic Life at ASU? – 70.3% of Facebook Users from survey said ‘yes’”

Some students may feel like an outsider if most other students do not use their preferred social network.

All University Day – A “Virtually” Fantastic Event

Penn State University recently celebrated “All University Day”.  This day brings together students from all of Penn State’s campuses and recognizes those students and campuses during the halftime celebration of a Penn State football game.  Penn State World Campus participated in this event and ten of our amazing students traveled from their homes in Texas, California, South Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with us here at University Park campus.

Our students arrived on Friday afternoon and evening and we welcomed them with a tailgate featuring local BBQ, great conversation, and the opportunity to mingle and meet World Campus staff members and the Nittany Lion himself.  Saturday’s events consisted of a rehearsal for the halftime celebration, a tailgate for all the participants, and a fantastic football game between Penn State and Illinois that evening.

This year’s event also featured something else – a virtual component. For the first time, All University Day was also celebrated in a virtual world.  Penn State World Campus now has a private area in the virtual world of Second Life and the All University Day celebration there consisted of a virtual tailgate, guided tours, a live musical performance from a former World Campus student, and the opportunity for students, staff and faculty to meet and mingle with each other.  Throughout the course of the day, visitors included Penn State faculty members, staff members, World Campus students, prospective students who were considering attending Penn State, and Penn State graduates. It was truly an amazing day and wonderful experience.  Hours after the “official” event concluded in Second Life, several staff members and students remained watching the Penn State vs. Illinois football game online while discussing the game with others in Second Life.

Second Life and education have been hand-in-hand for years and this environment certainly provides us with the opportunity to learn and experience our learning in ways not possible in the physical world.  These virtual spaces are not limited to classes, however, and Penn State World Campus plans to use Second Life as a way to provide our students with a way to connect with their education in a very different way.  Online students face different challenges than resident students not the least of which is developing a sense of belonging and pride in their campus experience.  Creating a virtual campus space for our students is the first step in personalizing online education, unlocking the power of informal learning and connections, and building a community of learners.  We’re looking forward to meeting you there.

[cross-posted to Terra Incognita]

Educational Marketing with Twitter

I was just reading a post this morning about using twitter as a marketing tool. It talks a bit about how higher education might want to pay more attention to what companies are doing and how they’re using twitter to market their brand and interact with customers.

I must say that I’m feeling pretty good about how twitter is being used at Penn State. I think that we’ve got some pretty great communities coming together and with yesterday’s announcement that Penn State Live is now using twitter to send out news stories, I feel as though maybe we’re moving into the mainstream with things.

That being said, I think we have some work to do with thinking outside the box a bit and considering how we might start to engage people outside the normal groups.

Here’s an excerpt from the blog post talking about companies using twitter:

One of the most comprehensive lists of individuals or organizations who use Twitter is Jonathan Kash’s Twitter Brand Index.  This soon-to-be fellow alum from Norwich University’s MBA program has done a great job in compiling hundreds of cross-industry examples of organizations or individuals using Twitter.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Carnival Cruiselines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Air and JetBlue Airlines use it as a way to announce special deals and communicate with travelers.
• Amazon has both Amazon Deals, which offers special deals on a new product every day, and their Book Finder bot.
• Dell has a whole slew of people you can follow, from all various parts of the business.
• Home Depot has someone in their corporate communications office that is “moonlighting on Twitter to help out our customers”
• Wine Enthusiast posts “Twitter only” deals on wine, polls for followers and generally amusing wine-related articles.
• H&R Block has someone on Twitter to engage customers and give tax advice.
• Non-profits such as the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and March of Dimes, post news stories and announcements that are of interest to their users.
• Government agencies are also getting in on the fun – NASA has over 2,000 followers, you can get live updates from both the House and the Senate, and many state and local governments are providing updates as well (including my home state of Vermont!).
• If it’s culture you want, you can get it from a number of museums, including the Smithsonian and the US Holocaust Museum.

Now, here’s some ideas they put forth for educational uses:

Think about how your institution can use the tool beyond syndicating news releases and sports results.  How can you create value for prospective students, current students, parents, and alumni?  Here are a few ideas to get your started:

• Give out an application/interview/campus visit tip of the day
• Offer quirky advise to students who have enrolled and are going to be moving onto campus soon
• Negotiate with your bookstore to offer occasional coupons and specials just for Twitter users

I personally love these ideas. I’ve been toying with some ideas to use twitter for World Campus students and the first idea I had was to use it to announce new sections or additional seats of courses that would be opening the following day. We have a lot of students that are desperate to get into a class that’s full, but if they knew that more seats or an additional section of a course was opening the next day, they’d have a chance to enroll before others. That’s value-added, for sure and would give students a *reason* to follow us.

I’m also considering making “special” announcements over twitter and Facebook so that students following us in those venues will learn about the ‘fun’ things before we use normal means of communication like email or newsletters.

Lots to think about, and I’m sure we can come up with many interesting ways to use twitter. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.