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.  With overall graduation rates of entering freshman just above 50%, changes obviously need to be made.

Research has always shown that with increased engagement, there is increased persistence in higher education.  The more connected a student feels to their community, the more likely they are to stick around and – hopefully – graduate.  There are a few major research projects every year, namely the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the National Survey of Student Engagement, and Noel-Levitz’s Student Retention Practices and Strategies Report, that reflect habits and attitudes, but where are the studies that show the results of implementing social-networking based strategies?  At this point, we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities that these tools offer, in terms of increasing engagement, and here are some of the results:

Dr. Rey Junco is a leading researcher and author on social media use in higher education.  In March 2009, he and Greg Heiberger presented ‘You can use Facebook for that?  Research-supported strategies to engage your students‘, which bridges current information about students’ widespread use of Facebook with Alexander Astin’s highly-regarded Theory of Involvement and Vincent Tinto’s Model of Departure.  The slideshow highlights data that suggests increased student engagement based on social networking activity and includes suggestions for how to use Facebook in Higher Ed.

Junco also teamed up with co-editor Dianne Timm this year to release a report entitled Using Emerging Technologies to Enhance Student Engagement: New Directions for Student Services, number 124.  Each of the seven chapters was written by different experts and all of them focus on student affairs using technology to enhance student learning, build community, facilitate communication, and increase student engagement.  To give you an idea of how relevant and powerful the report is, here are a few of the chapter titles:

• Have You Facebooked Astin Lately? Using Technology to Increase Student Involvement (by Greg Heiberger, Ruth Harper)
• Students’ Technology Use and the Impacts on Well-Being (by Shelia R. Cotten)
• Privacy and Social Networking Sites (Dianne M. Timm, Carolyn J. Duven)
• Technology for Institutional Enrollment, Communication, and Student Success (Grace Salas, Julie S. Alexander)

There are also anecdotal cases of schools finding success using Facebook to increase engagement:

Instructor Andrew Brazier, who runs a vocational Games Development course at Warwickshire College, a UK system of campuses with over 25,000 students, wanted to curb summer melt by setting up a Facebook group for accepted students, in the summer of 2008.  “The course has run since 2005 and although retention rates are generally very good, I often lose one or two students in the first couple of weeks of term as they find out that the course wasn’t suitable for them. Since setting up the Facebook group in September 2008, there haven’t been any withdrawals. In fact, the retention rate is over 100% as an extra person has joined!”

Gloucestshire College has seen similar results.  “There has been a significant improvement in retention,” said their media curriculum manager Perry Perrott.  He says that making Facebook groups for individual courses helps the students to bond with each other and maintain connections with staff.  Instructors have designated times when they will check the private pages for questions and to monitor student discussions.  “We’re embracing it rather than fighting it.”

Murdoch University, in Australia, is currently in a trial period of using Facebook as a means of engaging with new students, in a program called ‘First Year Facebook’.  Pamela Martin-Lynch presented some of the theoretical underpinnings of this strategy and expected outcomes in a talk given at the First Year in Higher Education Conference this past summer.  You can find a version of her talk here.

Many other schools are using Facebook groups – well over 1,000 U.S. institutions, alone.  It may take time before actual data emerges about retention rates, but the logic is clear.  95% of college students are Facebook users.  If you meet them where they are and provide a comfortable place for them to interact and get involved, this bolstering of the community will lead to greater satisfaction with their experience and greater retention.