open access to scholarly work will change how academics use online tools
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on September 15th, 2009
Inside Higher Ed reported today that five major universities have signed a Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity, an agreement that pledges to support journals that provide free and open access to content, upholding the rigors of peer review and research while providing greater access to publications that previously have been quite costly and published only in print or closed online subscriptions.
I’m particularly interested in this development as it relates to the individual’s increased ability to share their work with audiences larger than those a subscription publication may be able to provide. I’ve been working with a client on a new Portfolio tool for academics, and in a lot of our market research, academics cited publications’ unwillingness to share content as a major barrier to them being able to showcase their work to larger audiences.
With online portfolios, websites and blog becoming a major venue for those in higher ed to publish their work to the wider world, this move by universities to support opening the walled garden of research to the general public will be a major boon to academics looking to increase their visibility in their field.
It will definitely be interesting to see how this open access plays out, but if you want to learn more about the compact, you can read Inside Higher Ed’s take here. You can also weigh in on academic portfolios and how those in higher ed showcase their work by taking a quick survey here!
10 harsh truths about institutional websites
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on September 8th, 2009
Paul Boag talks about the top ten challenges he sees in getting a working and worthwhile college/university website and web presence. This is a great presentation and is DEFINITELY worth listening to all the way through, but I’ve pulled out a few great points here below to consider:
1. Make better use of CMS and content providers: be sure that writing, updating and removing out of date web copy is included in people’s job descriptions. Having a dedicated web team doesn’t negate the need for getting information from the experts themselves.
2. Social media is hard. Take a moment to think about what is it you are trying to do with social media? Facebook and Twitter are merely tools for engagement; engagement should be the main goal, not use of the tool for the sake of using the tool. For example, using Twitter as simply a broadcast tool defeats the actual purpose of that platform. Invest in social media strategy for the long term. Has to do more with customer service than marketing.
3. Think about becoming more user-focused. Create user-personas, understand what terminology and content makes sense for each persona, what are their goals and structure your site around those use cases. And make sure content providers understand the user personas so they are writing for that audience! User-test your site on a regular basis.
4. Stop trying to appeal to everyone. Instead, design your website to offend nobody, but appeal to somebody. Know what your institution is about, and cater to that audience.
5. Your site is bloated and out of date. Whose job is it to deal with that out of date content? And there is too much content! Users get lost in it all. Massively simplify your college’s website.
6. Undergraduates especially are very savvy about being marketed to. They want transparency, relationship building, honesty and openness. This is what builds engagement online.
7. Because you have so many content providers, content becomes repetitive, inconsistent, and not aligned with overall strategy. To avoid this, put together content templates for content providers. Helps them to focus on user needs, learning purpose, what can the user do in this section of the website, and what action do they want visitors to take.
8. Why do you have a website? How do you measure success? Set business objectives and measurable success criteria. Be proactive. Consider your overall strategy.
9. You sell courses. And your course finders stink. Invest in your course finder. Help people make the right course decisions, pick the right classes. It can be very overwhelming. Make it simple, provide guidance.
10. Politics are killing your site. You need someone senior with authority over the whole site who can get over power struggles. You need the power to say NO.
Ten harsh truths about institutional websites from Paul Boag on Vimeo.
online coursework gets a call for support
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on August 31st, 2009
The big news in higher ed this week is out: Faculty are ready to start teaching more classes online, they just need better support from their institutions.
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities- Sloan National Commission on Online Learning polled over 10,000 educators and interviewed 213 faculty, administrators and students in a report released today that shows over one-third of the nation’s faculty have taught an online course, while over one-half have recommended an online course to students. Faculty cite student needs for flexibility as a major factor in moving toward online classes, in addition to an increasing recognition that online learning can often be a better way to reach certain kinds of students.
The report has already gained a lot of attention, primarily because there has often been the perception that while online course enrollment is growing at an exponential rate (12.9 percent between fall 2006-2007), teaching online courses is not as highly regarded and is largely ignored in tenure decisions, and results in no increased recognition or pay despite proven statistics showing that teaching online courses is actually more time-consuming and requires more support than in-class teaching. This report shows that despite these hurdles, many faculty continue to push forward in offering these courses to students, and are looking toward university administrators to provide the support needed to grow online programs and integrate those programs with the fabric of each schools’ curriculum and mission.
The report offers a series of observations directed at administrators, which I think really hit the nail on the head when thinking about how technology and online resources can be brought into mainstream classroom experiences. The list is as follows:
- Online learning programs have the capacity to change campus culture and become fully integrated if presidents, chancellors, chief academic officers, and other senior campus leaders are fully engaged in the delivery of “messages” that tie online education to fundamental institutional missions and priorities.
- Online learning programs may work most effectively as a core component of institutional strategic planning and implementation.
- Online learning initiatives benefit from ongoing institutional assessment and review due to their evolving and dynamic nature.
- Online learning activities are strengthened by the centralization of some organizational structures and administrative functions that support and sustain the programs.
- Online learning programs overseen by academic affairs units may be more readily accepted and may be more easily integrated into the fabric of the institution.
- Online learning programs need reliable financing mechanisms for sustainability and growth.
- Online learning programs succeed with consistent and adequate academic, administrative, and technological resources for faculty and students.
Many of these observations demonstrate how integral administrative support is to the success of online learning, and how important it is for universities to begin planning for the integration of online learning opportunities with current course offerings. In many cases, institutions will need to work closely with faculty to restructure teaching goals and learning goals, and change the perception of and access students have to online classes. With growth of online coursework continuing to grow at a significant pace, I imagine we’ll continue to see universities struggle with how to make this change, but this report offers a comprehensive look at how to start.
What are your thoughts on this movement? Do you think increased institutional support will foster an even greater increase in online learning opportunities?
thoughts on engaging alumni in social media
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on August 26th, 2009
I wrote this post for our Other Side Group company blog yesterday, so I thought I’d share it here as well!
Mashable wrote a piece last week that is getting a lot of attention in the higher ed space. The writer focused on ten ways universities are engaging alumni in social media, a topic that we’ve discussed here before. The post discussed both the successes and failures universities are experiencing in attempting to connect with alumni on social media.
It also discussed two separate tracks: those that are engaging with alums on social media for the purposes of fundraising, and those who are focused more on connecting alums with the school and with each other after graduation, maintaining a better and more up-to-date database of where alumni are and what they are doing.
We worked with universities to help them get more out of their alumni networks, and so have a couple thoughts on the article I’d like to share.
First, building your own social network is really hard, takes a lot of resources, and is rarely successful.
I don’t want to be a downer here, so let’s think about it this way: For every hugely successful social network that has been built in the last ten years, commercially speaking, there are probably at least 20 or more that failed. It’s really hard to build the right system, harder to keep it up-to-date and constantly evolving, and even harder to get people to use it. Even for companies that are dedicated to only that product. You shouldn’t feel like you HAVE to build your own network, there are other, better options to consider.
Universities should think about ways to leverage existing social networks to their benefit. For example, huge populations of current seniors and recent grads are on Facebook. Meet them on their turf, don’t make them come to you. You’ll spend a fraction of the resources you’d need to build an internal network, you won’t take on nearly the upkeep cost, and you’ll have a ready-built audience. That doesn’t mean your Facebook efforts can’t direct people back to you site, or provide content exclusively to your alums, you CAN do that, but doing it through and already-successful platform will bring you much greater success.
And you don’t have to just focus on Facebook either. The Mashable article notes universities that are using Flickr, Google Maps, LinkedIn, etc. The point here is to go where your audience is.
Second, make sure you have a specific goal in mind when you begin working on these social media projects.
I can’t stress this enough, especially when you’re devoting a lot of time and resources to building a network and creating an infrastructure. If your goal in connecting with alumni is raise money, then you need to focus on the ways you are going to encourage them to do that. So for example, the Mashable article calls out the success of a University of Texas Austin program that encourages alums to post pictures of themselves giving the hand signal of the school, and fill out a profile when they do.
That’s a creative plan, and one that has been fairly successful for them so far in terms of the number of people who have participated. But their goal going into it was to get people more connected with the school and see what alums are up to. It’s NOT meant to make money. Yes you’ll now have their contact information, but this social media effort is not going to have any direct relationship with donations. If your school is asking you to support and increase donations using social media, you are going to have to think differently about how you engage with the audience.
Take Emory for example, and their giving campaign efforts that they managed and updated through Facebook, Twitter and other media, or Colgate, where donors could make a donation and then share that information with their networks through Facebook. All these are examples of how schools are beginning (and I say beginning because in each of the examples I just gave, a lot more could have been done) to think about how social media can have a major impact on fundraising efforts.
The point is, read the Mashable article. But don’t get so excited about what one school or another is doing that you just try to apply it to yours. Each group of alumni is unique, each school has different goals, and each social media program should tie back to your institution’s communications and fundraising goals. There is so much untapped opportunity in connecting with alumni on social media, you just have to find the program that is best for you.
Anya and Kate of Other Side Group on PermissionTV live!
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on August 20th, 2009
10 ways universities can (and should) use twitter
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on August 17th, 2009
My last post on twitter and higher ed got a lot of attention…it seems higher ed communicators are trying to figure out how twitter works, while at the same time wrestling with what kinds of information and content would be helpful and appropriate for their twitter audience.
I do think that in many cases twitter can be an incredibly powerful tool for universities, as long as it is used with a specific goal and purpose in mind. With that in mind, here are 10 ways I recommend universities can (and should) use twitter.
1. Connect with alumni
Find and follow alumni and track alums discussing the school online. Include a link to your twitter account in all alumni e-mail communication, put a link to it on your alumni site and your career center site, and encourage alums to follow school news and alumni events through twitter. You can even set up a separate twitter account specifically for alums so that they are getting targeted information, like daily tips for job seekers. If you have a large alumni event, be sure to post event updates prior via twitter, and pictures and other follow-up on twitter afterward. Interact directly with alums, invite them personally to events, and share in the follow-up conversation after alums get together.
2. Share achievements of students/faculty
Bring more to your twitter feed than your standard news feed. Call out interesting projects you know about on campus, recognize students for awards or achievements, announce a faculty member’s new research etc. Be sure to call out the person’s twitter name if they are on twitter, and link to any online examples of work if they have it. This will make your twitter account more interactive.
3. Promote campus events
Hosting a great guest speaker or a regional conference? One of your faculty presenting at a major event? Promote through twitter. Include links, tell readers how to get involved, and engage the community outside the walls of the campus by inviting the general public via twitter. You’ll build the reputation of your school in the local community and beyond by engaging more personally with these audiences and bringing them onto campus for an event they find educationally or professionally valuable.
4. Disseminate university news
Ok, don’t go crazy here. Think about what your twitter audience (alums, current students, community members, etc.) actually care about. Don’t use your twitter account for JUST news either. You can put out announcements of major news items, but your feed should be a diverse set of information, not a regurgitation of your News page.
5. Interact during campus events
Don’t just use twitter to publicize the fact that you’re having an event, use it to make the event itself more interactive. Invite students, faculty or staff to “live tweet” the event, posting quotes, observations, photos and video of the event as it happens. This will give those who could not attend a live feed of what is happening, give those who are attending a way to interact and discuss the event, and everyone else an opportunity to learn from speakers, feel involved and even see a record or what happened if they missed the event.
6. Connect with potential students and their parents
Use twitter to provide a channel through which prospective students and their parents can communicate directly and personally with the school. Offer access to admissions personnel once a week for live question and answer sessions, or post daily tips on selecting a school, writing admissions essays, doing campus visits, getting through the financial aid process, etc. You may find you’ll reach an even broader audience that just your applications, and that’s great. These efforts build awareness and connection with your school with audiences who become influencers when their friends and family begin looking at schools.
7. Connect department, students and faculty
You can use twitter to reach outside audiences. But you should also consider the power of using twitter internally. Twitter has been used in a number of cases to spur greater live classroom discussion, link related classes in different departments, allow professors to share ideas with their students, and build campus-wide communication.
8. Share live coverage of sporting events
For many schools, sports programs are a key link to alumni and community audiences. Get these groups more engaged through twitter. Live tweet sporting events, providing not only score updates but commentary and interaction with fans. Use a unique hashtag for your events so that attendees can also post pictures and commentary, and interact live with the fans during the game. Often out of town alums can’t get access to your school’s events, so providing a free way for them to follow the games online is a great way to build an engaging community.
9. Share career advice
Of course one of the best ways to keep alumni involved is to make their professional experience and integrated with their educational experience as possible. Alums who continue to view their alma maters as first-tier resources for job advice, job postings, networking connections etc. are far more likely to stay engaged with the school after graduation. And you can use twitter to build this engagement. Simplify access to career services through twitter. They should be available to answer questions, but should also be sharing constant advice, posting the latest job openings, and connecting proactively with alumni and local businesses. Offer weekly live sessions with a prominent alum or a local business person who can offer compelling advice to students. Track conversations about job searches and trends in hiring. Make the connection as valuable as possible, and alums will definitely keep coming back.
10. Get personal!
This is a broad statement, but is one that should be applied across any and all of the previous nine suggestions. Above anything else, your twitter feed should ring out as a unique PERSONAL voice for whatever department, school or office it is managed from. There is nothing worse than an auto-updating, auto-messaging, auto-feeding string of campus news announcements through the PR office. If you can’t get creative and personal, then don’t bother with twitter at all because you won’t get anything out of it. It’s the personal, one-on-one conversations that matter most in this medium, so don’t be afraid to lend some feeling and personality to your posts!
if teens don’t tweet… then why are universities on twitter?
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on August 6th, 2009
We’ve all heard the news… twitter is “in”. And universities and colleges are no exception to the mass of brands, users and organizations jumping on the 140-character bandwagon. In the last 6 months, there has been a massive uptake in university twitter use, w
ith admissions and marketing people leading the charge.
But a recent Nielson report on twitter reveals that the twitter population skews heavily in the direction of over-25-year-olds, with teens making up less than 16% of the twitterverse. While many argue this will change, and soon, and I do believe that it will, eventually, this fact still brings up a very important question.
Why are universities on twitter?
I ask this because as administrators, admissions personnel, marketing and PR people and alumni relations managers flock to twitter, they are ignoring other much larger populations of online interaction. The answer lies, in part, because these people understand twitter better than they understand other networks. Why? Because they all fall in the right demographic for twitter! We all would prefer to use tools and techniques we can relate to, understand and can use effectively. Broadly speaking, the university personnel to whom we refer fall directly in the target demographic for twitter use.
This is not to say that using twitter can’t be useful to colleges and universities. But I do think we need to do a better job of understanding the audience on twitter and catering communication effectively. For example, planning an alumni engagement strategy on twitter is a great direction to move in. Your target group is older, more likely to engage on twitter, and less likely to be consistently getting information about the school from other places.
Attempting to use twitter to grow enrollment? Probably not the best plan. Using twitter to reach currently enrolled students? Don’t count on major uptake in that area. Does that mean you’ll have to go back to using the old tools? Definitely not! Teens and early 20s adults are online constantly, usually in places like Facebook and MySpace, and are connecting with the community in ways that can be incredibly valuable for universities and colleges. We just have to build more strategy around how we communicate in different channels and understand where our target groups are interacting, not just which tool seems the best to us!
For more information, check out Mashable’s take on teens and twitter, they have some useful general info on what user groups are growing and interacting there today.
bringing the university to the student through social media
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on July 14th, 2009
University and college marketing and communications departments are still belaboring the debate as to when and how to get involved in social media. What about legal ramifications? Our content will be available for others to use, how will we maintain control? We already have a Web site… why do we need more? We give all our students e-mail addresses and get in touch with them through that. They are tech-savvy. That means they use e-mail. Social networks are for sharing pictures and for fun. They are not the place for a university to engage in the serious business of course selection, event notification, emergency messages or alumni interaction.
Right?
Wrong.
It used to be true that schools controlled how students interacted with the institution because they controlled all the channels. As a recent report from Educause points out, most universities and colleges controlled internet connections, phone lines, e-mail accounts and in many cases the actual devices used to connect.
That is no longer the case. Students bring their own laptops, have their own cell phones, already have their own e-mail address and have access to wireless internet. That means their modes of interaction are for the most part already established by the time they reach university. They will grant the university limited access to already-establish channels of communication, and usually on a need-to-know basis. It is no longer viable for a university to expect the student to come to them.
The university must go to the student.
What does this mean? It means you have to engage students in communication forums they are already familiar with. And it means you have to understand each channel so that you convey the right information through the right channel.
For example: don’t call their landline in their dorm. They haven’t even set that up. Text message them to their cell phone. And don’t text them that you are offering Yoga 101 next fall. Text them that class is canceled tonight due to a snow storm. The Yoga class message should go out through Facebook, with a link to see a schedule and sign up that allows them to do so without even leaving the Facebook interface.
Getting involved in social media isn’t just about setting up a page and some pictures, it’s about providing value and enhanced communications to students, strengthening their relationship with the institution and fostering a relationship that can be continued well after graduation. You have to think creatively about the kinds of information and assistance you can bring to the student rather than asking them to come to you. And you have to understand how different channels of communication work so that you can choose the right message for the right platform.
free social media help for non-profits
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on June 10th, 2009
It’s that time of year kids. When we give back to others and help those in need join Facebook!
No, seriously.
Other Side Group announced a contest today to give away a free social media consulting session and personalized social media report to one lucky non-profit. The winner will be chosen on July 1, so get your name in now!
Interested? Get all the details and enter to win here!
social media is not just for marketers
Posted by Anya in othersidenotes on June 9th, 2009
Social media is not just for marketers. It is a change in mindset, a shift in collaboration and information sharing, a way to connect people who WANT to be connected, for the purposes of learning, supporting, sharing, helping and improving. And more. We’ve yet to even scratch the surface of the potential uses for social media.
Here’s an example: Monica Rankin uses Twitter to help her classroom of 90 undergrad history students get more out of what would normally be a static lecture class. Twitter allows Rankin to turn a 50 minute lecture class into a 50-minute interactive seminar, complete with live online interaction from students via computers and cell phones. She and her TA set up a Tweetdeck account, asked students to join the Twitter community, and projected the class discussion on a screen at the front of the classroom. Rankin allowed students to write comments on paper to be put on Twitter later if they are not able to be online during class. She was also able to review student comments after class and respond individually, expand the topic or provide guidance, and foster an environment of interaction in a classroom that would normally have limited discussion.
And what were the results of the UT Dallas Twitter experiment? Students who would not normally feel comfortable voicing an opinion or interacting in front of a large group were able to interact with classroom discussion. Students were required to narrow thoughts or arguments into the 140-character limit, necessitating a concise and precise thought be processed by the student and entered into twitter. Class discussions were open to the wider community, fostering interaction with members outside of classroom confines. In general, what we’re talking about is substantially increased engagement. Check out the video of Rankin’s class for an inside look at how the experiment played out:
As we begin to move beyond the basics of social networking, examples like this one will become more and more frequent. Social media fosters a creative approach to changing and improving the way we can communicate. What examples of creative uses have you seen?
