Amplifying the Student Decision
May 1st is here, which marks the national deposit deadline for US colleges and universities. As admissions offices are anxiously awaiting to hear how their Class of 2017 is shaping up, we decided to try an experiment to see if students would share their admissions decision from the Schools App.
4 Ways to Maximize ‘Early Action’ Student Engagement
As the winter holiday approaches, high school seniors all across the country will learn whether they have been accepted early-action to their preferred schools. Early-action applicants have been a growing pool over the past ten years. According to NACAC’s ‘2012 State of College Admissions Report’, 31 percent of all four-year institutions currently offer an early-action [...]
Top Social Media Mashups from Private Universities
Here at Inigral, we look through a lot of different social media campaigns to see what our friends in Higher Ed are doing to drive social media engagement. Lately, colleges have been trying to manage the plethora of social media content in an easy to digest page which we call the Social Media Mashup Dashboard. [...]
What Teenagers Really Think of Your Marketing – 2012 TeensTALK Takeaways
Every summer STAMATS hosts a TeensTALK panel featuring 15 graduated high-school seniors who reflect on their college decision making process and what college marketing tactics resonated with them most. Some of the student responses were shocking such as, “don’t advertise on Facebook” while others seemed a bit more common sense “when you send us 100 [...]
Should Colleges Use Social Media to Engage Non-traditional Students?
One of the questions we’ve been hearing a lot lately from schools, “do non-traditional students use social media the same as traditional students?” This is a great question, since non-traditional students are one of the fastest growing segments in higher ed. For those of you not familiar with the concept, the most commonly-used definition of [...]
Is Social Isolation a Problem on Today’s Campus?
If you’ve seen any of our presentations, we often quote the statistic “3 out of the top 5 reasons students drop out are social in nature” from the ACT 2004 study on What Works in Student Retention. Although statistics like these are important, they lack the personal story that affects students every year. Yesterday, I was shocked [...]
Social Networking for Engagement and Retention
With all the recent talk about using social networking to increase student engagement on college campuses, schools are scrambling to find data to support spending time, money, and effort on implementing new strategies that involve tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Here is a collection of recent research.
Using Social Networking to Increase Student Retention
Selected Research on Social Networking from Emily Dalton Smith (Director of Student Engagement at ASU Online), and Michael Staton (CEO and Co-Founder of Inigral, Inc.). This was derived from a poster presentation that ASU and Inigral presented at Educause 2009.
Should there be a Sophomore Student Experience?
Student Retention is a passion of mine (as you may have noticed) and there were two talks at the 2011 Noel-Levitz conference which gave me some new ideas. One of my favorites was Julie Tetley’s talk (summarized below) which highlights the Sophomore Experience. She brings up some really great points, and I see this as a large issue that hasn’t gotten [...]
College Recruiting from the Teen Perspective (Part Two)
This is the second part of the TeensTALK recap from the Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference. In Part One, we discussed a few themes the panel found to be important during the college admissions process. In short, the students identified and expressed their approval of personal methods of recruitment. For Part Two, we are highlighting the [...]
College Recruiting from the Teen Perspective (Part One)
Last week, I was lucky enough to attend the 16th annual Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference in Chicago. Over the three-day conference, I sat in on both round table discussions and presentations led by higher education professionals. Surprisingly the event that resonated the most, wasn’t done by a professional, but by recent high school students. I’m referring [...]
Highlights: Predictors of Degree Outcomes for Community College Students
This kind of ethnographic research following students along their pathways for five years and pulling out trends – while helpful – does little to expose what innovations could be made to improve the circumstance of students found to be in the, let’s say, groups with attributes correlating to unfortunate tendencies. I just hope the smart researchers will follow on with ways to improve students in the unfortunate circumstances. Simply being more selective at the beginning is not an option for most community colleges.
Students Love Us: Success With Social Media
As Schools App reaches more and more students, we’ve been hearing a lot of great feedback about how students are using the application. Here’s a quick sample of what students have to say about Schools App and how students are using it to connect with each other (click on a post to see a bigger [...]
7 Ways Colleges Can Use Foursquare
After reading Michael and Seth’s thoughts on Location-Based Services and Higher Ed and as a response to Foursquare’s new Campus Rep program outreach, a couple of ideas came to mind for colleges campuses using Foursquare to engage their students with the school. Here are my ideas from a student point-of-view.
3 Reasons Students Use Location-Based Services
In the Higher-Ed Community, we get a lot of feedback questioning the relevance of telling the world where you are. Even moreso than status-updating service Twitter, it can seem pointless, vain, and unsafe to someone who doesn’t understand the value it adds. On our blog, we’ve been documenting the dialogue between those who believe location-based services have value in higher education, and those who don’t. And the verdict is still out.
Location-Based Services Will Rock Higher Ed
Imagine if you could see check-ins to libraries and student activity centers; imagine if you could see trends in social habits. The campus is a natural place for mobile-device mediated friend making. People freely friend on Facebook and all of these services. Increasing the frequency that students bump into one another in virtual spaces (which double as real ones with location-based services) drives how connected they feel to one another, even in real life.
5 Reasons Higher Ed Can Forget about Location-Based Services
Location-based services are all the rage. Whether it’s Foursquare, Gowalla or MyTown, tech blogs are bombarding us with every reason imaginable for why these mobile tools are the future of marketing. But before you buy into the hype and sign up for all the geo-focused social networks you can find, here are my five reasons why higher ed can, for now, forget about location based services.
Bridging the Gap Between Higher Ed and Facebook Events
Personally, on a given night when I want to find something to do, I call, text or Instant Message my friends. Generally speaking for all students, when it comes to finding something to do at school, I am going to check my Facebook Events page because it lists almost all the events I would be interested in.
Unofficial Facebook Class Groups and Copyright Infringement
Third-party marketers who are hungry for your incoming freshman and their attention can try to hijack your brand on Facebook and other social media sites. That seems obvious; I know, you’re thinking “What can we do about it? It’s inevitable.” It’s worth investigating. Before exploring how we can help, let’s tak about the proliferation of Facebook Pages and Groups that represent your brand, but are not created by you or an official representative of your institution.
According to Pearson, Most Professors Use Social Media. But What Does That Mean?
According to the Pearson Learning Solutions Social Media in Higher Education Survey, “more than four out of every five professors use social media. And more than half of professors use tools like video, blogs, podcasts, and wikis in their classes.” But as the Chronicle mentions in their commentary on the data, the seemingly pervasive numbers should not paint a picture that faculty have fully embraced social media.
Three of the Biggest Factors in Student Retention are Social
Three of the top five institutional factors in student attrition are social in nature.
The Hidden Truth About Facebook Fan Pages
When it comes to my hundreds of friends and dozens of groups, I am constantly bombarded with News Feed stories by the second. While some of these stories interest me, those that do not are mostly Fan Page stories. To understand why that is, I decided to take a look at the Fan Pages I “fan” and how they communicate.
What Employers Can Do for Postsecondary Completion
This is what Employers can do to encourage Postsecondary Degree Completion. I stole this copy from a circular by the Gates Foundation to the Business Convening they had for Employers on March 23, 2010 in Washington DC.
