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.
The “Hook” of Social Networks and Social Media
People that post things on the internet for others to see are subject to the extraordinarily powerful force of positive, negative, or no feedback at all for an indefinite and infinite amount of time. This is the first time in human history that this is so, and frankly, our neurons are not wired to handle this kind of uncertainty. In fact, humans are highly motivated to seek out certainty and security in regards to social acceptance, inclusion, and praise.
Facebook for Admissions and the Schools App
Join the Inigral team for a free webinar as we explore the ins and outs of Facebook pages in Higher Ed, and how to move beyond them for optimal results.
“Beyond Pages: Enhancing Facebook to Achieve Institution-Wide Results”
Friday, October 30 at 1PM EST
Facebook, Privacy, and Higher Ed: Implications of December 2009 Privacy Settings Update
Facebook.com will continue to make strides to make the world more open and connected, including changes like the most recent ones that further open up user profiles. By the nature of that ambitious aim, they can’t afford to focus on Higher Ed specific concerns like FERPA and rights over intellectual content. Higher Ed specific goals for the use of Facebook must be met by Facebook Developers like Inigral.
Location-Based Gaming in Education?
We all saw it coming as soon as the iPhone came out. It took a few years, but finally Foursquare and Gowalla have proved the viability of location-based gaming. Location-based gaming is going to prove be a great leap in both augmented reality and computer-facilitated interaction: it will reveal peer-to-peer recommendations
10 Ways to Engage Faculty and Staff Through Facebook
Today on Twitter, a colleague of ours posted an inquiry on how to engage with faculty and staff using a Facebook page. At first, it seemed like an intuitive question, as Facebook is all about engagement. But on second thought, I realized that engaging faculty and staff is actually one of the more difficult tasks [...]
Social Networking: Use-Cases for the Classroom
There is an increasing number of college professors finding success with putting social networking tools to work for them inside of the classroom, including Facebook, Twitter, Wikis, and social bookmarking sites.
Highlights from the 2009 Community College Survey of Student Engagement
The Center for Community College Student Engagement has released their 2009 Survey results, and the winner is….social networking. This year, the survey focused on the importance of building relationships – among students, faculty, staff, and with the institution, itself. What they found was that “personal connections are the unanticipated success factor – a critical variable [...]
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 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.
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.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em
Anyone used to watch the cartoon Tom and Jerry? Well, if not, the two characters became wildly popular for trying to plot each other’s demise episode after episode, until one day, when Jerry proposed a truce to Tom to resolve their age-old rivalry. Well, i’m convinced that this cartoon classic has a lifelong lesson for those involved in the ongoing dialogue of student content censorship on the web.
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 [...]
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 [...]
Facebook Profiles as Acceptance Criteria
Since Facebook opened user profiles to the public in 2006, there has been much debate around whether Facebook profiles are an appropriate face for college students to show to admissions counselors and potential employers.
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 [...]
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.
