Universities + Social Sites = ?
Posted July 2nd, 2008 by Andy FossTo be honest I have a love hate relationship with social sites. There have been some great finds like www.thesixtyone.com, and www.digg.com but I also tend to find some that keep my attention for a couple of weeks and then become so annoying that I never come back. That probably leads you to ask, so what? Well I find that a lot of universities are trying to take advantage of the facebook phenomenon. Quickly changing assignments or schedules could be easily accessed by students if they could follow it with Twitter. Having a process where alumni could follow old professors or news from the university would allow continued contact with potential philanthropists for fundraising projects.
While the social sites increase, how and why these types of features can be used becomes more apparent. I guess the better question is where should these features be used? or how could universities use these types of features? Please let us know where you think they have the greatest potential, or if they shouldn’t be used at all. Remember comments build your user ranking so be active.
About the Author
Posts by Andy Foss:
Five user profiles to follow on eduStyle.
19 Aug 2008 in Uncategorized
Winners to be announced 07/22/08!!!
21 Jul 2008 in Uncategorized
Universities + Social Sites = ?
02 Jul 2008 in Uncategorized
Five user profiles to follow on Edustyle.
20 Jun 2008 in Uncategorized
The future face of Higher Ed websites?
13 Jun 2008 in Uncategorized
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Looking forward to reading all the comments. Here are few thoughts from my perspective:
- delicious: I’m experimenting with this as something like a “Class notes on the fly.” Google News turns up a ton of press releases and brief mentions of alumni doing interesting things — things that, I think, other alumni, prospective students and their parents might be interested in. We didn’t have a home for them, so I just started tagging them and putting them here: http://del.icio.us/ColgateNewsmakers
-LinkedIn: Powerful career networking possibilities for students and alumni, but the lack of features from the group admin end, in my opinion, severely limits the potential here.
- Streaming/capturing classes: Great way to give people a taste of what academic life is like on a campus. Also starting to hear about some research showing that weaker students tend to do better when video captures of lectures are available. This allows them to go back and re-listen to key points, check their notes, etc.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I think social sites can prove useful when trying to give visitors the opportunity to share content. Creating a destination as a social site for universities might be a harder sell to me. Are we to expect alums to visit these sites daily? Do we really even expects student to do that. I find that the more social media i get involved in, the less social I become. It is a balance and a tough line to walk. YouTube and Flickr are great sources for sharing video and photos. They also have methods of placing content on other pages and most web users, not even the savvy ones can do it. Exploiting these sites and their growth is an opportunity for universities to dabble in the social media world with out getting in too deep.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
As far as Facebook goes, I have yet to get Richland College on there because the system is such a walled garden. I know there is potential there, but we haven’t seen a real demand yet. We are on MySpace and have been for a while and seem to have good exposure there.
We use MySpace to send out registration reminders, events and other important dates via the bulletin board.
We’re also active on Twitter, mainly using it right now for event updates, but are exploring other, more personal ways to use it.
We’ve also gotten on YouTube and Flickr to give our students an idea of the types of activities that go on at the school, and what the campus looks like. The video is a great way to show a different side of the college because it’s a bit more raw than most video students see on the campus website.
We’ve also got student and faculty bloggers so the students can get a ‘real’ look at what it’s like to go to the college here, and what the professors are like. There are also several teachers who blog about GreenRichland, which is our commitment to helping the environment.
We’re still looking for more ways to get in touch with our students, but here are some of the places you can find us online:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richlandcollege/
http://youtube.com/richlandcollege
http://www.myspace.com/richlandcollege
http://twitter.com/richlandcollege
http://www.plurk.com/user/richlandcollege
http://pownce.com/richlandcollege/
http://www.richlandcollege.edu/
November 7th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Me and some other students are developing a social web application for the College of Computing and Informatics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It’s primary function will be to let students comment on and post projects (curricular and non-curricular). The goal is to get students more involved in the college, get a conversation about REAL issues going, and show prospective students that the College of Computing and Informatics is a “happening place”. We will also let prospective students post their projects and get involved in the community. So, for example, if a student has a blog, he could post it as a project and get input about it, ask blogging related questions, and post about what he has learned. If a group of students are building a game as a class project, this is a place where they can talk about it.
The project is in the incubation stage—we are working on a prototype to show the dean. We, the students who are building it, will use it to talk about our projects and if it gains some traction, hopefully we can get it featured on the College’s website.
I think something like this could be used in other colleges as well. For example, English students could post their drafts and get input from other students. At least for me, getting my work out in the wild motivates me to do a better job and also excites me about the project I’m working on.