Social Media and Student Retention: Can Schools App Move the Needle?

Michael Staton

A social media interface will be a core and vital piece of the technological infrastructure for institutions.  And it’s exciting, because the potential for student retention is huge.  To exemplify this shift, I’d like to talk about the core Student Retention objectives of our product, Schools on Facebook.

1) Accelerate a sense of belonging by rapidly multiplying the number of acquaintences, friends, and other connections.

Facebook in Higher Education: Uncovering Existing Connections in Schools on Facebook

By revealing commonalities and introducing light social-game mechanics, social media can amplify student inter-connectedness by revealing to people with similar interests and backgrounds as well as potential friends, study or project partners.

1b) Turn peers into resources.

Schools on Facebook can turn friends into resources

By revealing information and calls to action around the involvements, course history, and interests of peers and friends, Schools on Facebook can help turn peers and friends into resources….

2) Adaptively encourage users to follow the behavior patterns of engaged and successful students

Schools on Facebook can bring new and social data sets into the math of Student Retention.

Individual behavior in any group always gravitates towards the “perceived norm.”  Social software can influence this perceived norm, as well as provide easy calls to action and follow up information.  News items like “35 of your classmates have joined student organizations.  Here are some recommended ones,” or “12 of your classmates have asked friends how to bet approach the class.  Here are some friends you can ask,” can influence the engagement level of students.

3) Further connect students to their interests and activities.

Schools on Facebook connects students with their interests

News feeds create what can be an automatic, customized student newspaper publishing in real time. It can can intelligently inform students of upcoming ways to get involved, contribute, and have fun – all on Facebook where they’re already spending most of their time.

Schools on Facebook generates dynamic news to promote involvement and engagement.

4) Provide efficiency and personalization to programmatic communications.

Schools on Facebook can provide a new platform for communications and interventions

People like academic advisors, peer and alumni mentors, and career services counselors can hardly keep up with their case load.  Social Media can provide overviews of activities and provide efficient one-to-one and one-to-many communications tools, like virtual gifts, that can bring both efficiency and effectiveness to those kinds of initiatives.

4b) Facilitate new and traditional intervention strategies.

Schools on Facebook can bring new and social data sets into the math of Student Retention.

Social Media will unseat email and snail mail as a way to send out vital interventions.  It will also introduce completely new ways of influencing at risk students by generating news items like:

“12 of your Friends have enrolled in honors courses”

“8 friends can help you with your upcoming class.”

“2 have taken this class in the past, 6 have had this professor for other classes.”

5) Reveal never-before-seen data sets to identify students at-risk.

Schools on Facebook can bring new and social data sets into the math of student reteniton

With new, social data like growth in the ratio of friends to classmates over the course of the semester, we will be able to introduce new data into the analysis and mining capabilities to uncover patterns in student attrition and retention.