Call for Innovation Partners – Winter 2009
Inigral has been fortunate enough to have great Founding Partners. These are schools that bought into the vision of meeting their students where they spend their time online – on Facebook. They helped us mold that vision into something palatable – our Lifecycle Engagement Platform – with a coherent set of capabilities that would extend the power of Facebook and Social Media for Higher Education. We’ve learned a lot, and we’ve built almost as much. We haven’t been perfect. But we’ve been faster and more responsive than any vendor we’ve heard about.
It’s Conference Season!
The leaves are changing. Hotels are booked. Extra business cards are printed. Yup, you guessed it. It’s conference season! All over the US right now are this year’s Higher Ed leaders converging to discuss the latest trends and technologies in our markets. Though the ROI isn’t the most quantifiable for college administrators attending these events, I think we could all agree on the amount of learning that’s done when we get there.
The Classroom Backchannel: Professors love the “chatter”
Purdue University recently unveiled Hotseat – a social networking-powered mobile Web application that allows students to provide feedback via Facebook, Twitter, and mobile devices during class and enables professors to adjust the course content and improve the learning experience.
Facebook Facebooks About Schools on Facebook
For the past few months, Facebook has focused marketing efforts on the education community. And since that shift, they have spent time identifying the real movers and shakers using Facebook to add practical value to educators around the world. We were interviewed by their marketing team to learn more about how our application, Schools, benefits [...]
Texas A&M Making Waves on Facebook
Texas A&M has found an outlet for their audience to engage in dialogue with prominent campus figures on Facebook, in a program they’re calling “Face 2 Face”.
Facebook for Yield: An Annotated Bibliography
Facebook is a very popular social networking for prospective students, so it offers many options for schools to market themselves to and connect with their audience in order to improve yield. This is a collection of resources on the topic of using Facebook in Admissions and Enrollment.
Facebook Developer Garage: Roadmap Edition
This week’s Facebook Developer Garage was special. It was the first “Roadmap Edition,” where Mark Zuckerberg (Founder and CEO) and Ethan Beard (Director of Facebook Developer Network) took an unprecedented step in terms of laying out Facebook’s near future plans upcoming changes to the platform. This is great for developers because since we’ve wrapped our [...]
Living with Facebook’s Updated Feeds
Over the weekend, about 300 million people were surprised to find that Facebook had changed the default home page, without any warning. There are completely different options for what shows up on your news feed now – you can view a “Live Feed”, which is a continuously-updated stream of *everything* your friends do, or a [...]
Christmas Shopping on Facebook?!
Facebook announced a revamped Gift Shop yesterday, complete with a “mall style” design that allows users to browse gifts by type. Aside from the old selection of virtual gifts, users can now purchase school-themed gifts from a number of major colleges like Oklahoma State, gifts by Causes that benefit charities and…music! It also looks like Facebook will be rolling out the option to purchase and have actual, physical gifts delivered.
UPDATE: Are Facebook Pages and Groups Merging?
According to AllFacebook.com, it appears that Facebook is possibly merging Pages and Groups. Some groups saw the changes on Tuesday, October 13th, but their Group layouts reverted back to the old design within 24 hours. Is Facebook merging the two? Do you think they should?
Facebook for Retention: An Annotated Bibliography
As more and more colleges and universities dive into using social media and social networking to attract and keep students, there is an increasing body of literature on the topic. The following is a collection of resources showing the success of using Facebook to keep students engaged and to increase retention in higher ed.
Why Facebook Ignores Higher Ed
if you read the book “Inside the Tornado” by Geoffrey Moore, you’d part see a stroke of genius and part vomit on yourself. There are a few rules to being a company inside the tornado, according to Moore. One of them is “Ignore the Customer.” Seriously, I’m not joking. It’s a rule.
Students Want Existing Connections Uncovered On Campus
The freshman experience has always been an elusive target for higher ed institutions, primarily because it’s clear how to engage with high school students, and it’s clear how to engage with college students. But it’s the transition between high school and college that is consistently awkward for the student, the instructor, and the mentor. Entire departments are dedicated to this cracking the code on this one phenomenon.
Professors Increase Engagement With Facebook
Arizona State Professor Lisa Rodrigue McIntyre seized this opportunity to try something new with her students last semester. She joined about 50 other Arizona State professors to use Schools in an attempt to reach their students within Facebook. Lisa had one goal in mind when using the application, and it was to increase engagement with students through a means of communication that they were comfortable with.
Are Schools Ready to Live With Social Media? A Resounding Yes!
This morning, the Baltimore Sun declared that colleges and universities are finally ready to live with social media. The article focused on the use of social networking sites – mostly Facebook – throughout the process of admissions and enrollment. The fact is that 86% of college-age students have profiles on Facebook, and they expect schools [...]
September Wrap-Up
Greetings Inigral friends! It’s been a fast and furious month here on the west coast, but productive nonetheless. Hopefully your newest class of Freshmen are settled in at this point. We can’t wait to hear about the new things you’ve tried this year to make them feel at home! Here’s what we’ve been up to. Earlier this month, we were invited to speak at Facebook’s headquarters to help educate their platform team of what we’re up to for the upcoming school year.
What Facebook for iPhone 3.0 Means for Inigral
By now, every Facebook user with an iPhone probably has Joe Hewitt’s latest creation: Facebook for iPhone 3.0. It’s a beautiful application, with a totally revamped interface and functionality. Several noteworthy features were launched including a new home screen which will offer the ability to customize (i.e. adding boxes to the default start screen), a better ‘News Feed’ (a [...]
Build Communities That Will Last
Student retention is a growing concern for colleges and universities throughout the United States. With decreasing endowments, every student that pays tuition every year brings the campus valuable operating funds, not to mention a more vibrant community.
Engaging Alumni Using Social Media
In a Mashable article that was recently published, called “10 Ways Universities Are Engaging Alumni Using Social Media”, a number of colleges and universities were highlighted for their social media efforts. Schools were selected for different uses of strategies and tools to reach and engage the alumni community, and the same three seemed to show up repeatedly: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Easily Build Your PLN and Your Knowledge
Personal Learning Networks, or PLNs, have been around forever. Originally, they were your family and friends, maybe people you worked with, but as the internet and web 2.0 tools have become nearly ubiquitous, PLNs can include tons of different communities – social networking sites like Facebook, blogs, Twitter, nings, social bookmarking tools, LinkedIn, and so many more. Basically, anyone that you [...]
Using Facebook to Teach History
A friend recently contacted me about an idea she had to use Facebook to teach history, by having students pick political thinkers from the enlightenment to today and have them friend each other and talk.
Inigral Speaks at Facebook HQ
Last week, we were invited to Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, CA to present on how we’re changing the way higher education uses social media. It was very informative both for us to hear from the creators of Facebook’s platform on how Schools on Facebook was the type of application they envisioned being used when it was first built.
How will today’s students use the web of tomorrow?
Last week, our CEO Michael Staton was on a panel during Internet Week New York, called “Beyond Facebook: How Will Today’s Students Use the Web of Tomorrow?” Hosted by Mark Moran of FindingDulcinea, the panel included 4 other executives of interactive online educational tools.
Inigral in New York
From June 3rd to June 6th, our CEO Michael Staton and I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Internet Week in New York City. Michael was one of five speakers on the “Beyond Facebook: How Will Today’s Students Use the Web of Tomorrow?” panel, hosted by FindingDulcinea on Thursday afternoon. The entire experience was enlightening.
