The social media opportunity for education
We’ve come a long way from the days of schools imposing blanket bans on access to social sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Social media use is taught in classrooms, and traditional classroom learning is being supplemented by education programmes that include at least an element of social media.
That might be an online tool to aid remote learning, or a way of collaborating with other pupils on projects, for example. Innovative sites such as Radiowaves (a free tool where schools can create and use their own social pages) encourage collaboration between pupils and teachers, and provide a more informal community for pupils – who are unlikely to be inspired to use a school’s corporate website - to interact with the school and with each other.
There’s a huge opportunity, too, for universities and colleges that want to stand out from the crowd to use social media to build reputations and differentiate from the competition. The success of Facebook – coming as it did from universities and colleges - shows the potential that social media has for universities wanting to engage with pupils, or market themselves to new recruits. Hard-to-reach 16 to 24-year olds are the heaviest users of social media, and universities (in the UK particularly) are competing for student fees, especially from lucrative overseas students in the face of reduced central funding. Social media has a huge role to play here.
UK universities are pretty good at using social media, by all accounts. A blog by the Bath University-based digital expert, Brian Kelly, reports that a survey of Russell Group universities showed that: “UK universities are by far outperforming other countries in communicating via social media. More than 60% of all university twitter followers are connected to UK institutions. They also account for 42,4% of all Facebook members.”
Kelly points to Cardiff University as a particularly interesting example of a university using social media. A snoop round Facebook proves his point. Cardiff university’s Facebook profile states that this is a place where students and other fans can interact with the university. And it gives a window onto the university world that you couldn’t get from a campus prospectus, with photos, news, events updates, and discussions between students on anything from flatshares to careers information. Compare this to the Facebook community run by Oxford University – which, though active, is full of spam comments, and generally not very well maintained.
The University of Westminster runs two ‘knowledge networks’ (communities that provide a hub for businesses and individuals to share information), one of which is the new media industry site New Media Knowledge. This is a great example of how a learning institution uses the concept of community to reach into the business community, both to share research and new thinking, and to garner a reputation in a particular field. Glasgow Caledonian University has started working with Yomego to help it grow its current social presence and audience; the Scottish Qualifications Agency (also a Yomego client) is creating an avatar help service (and also monitors its reputation in the social space); and the London Business School uses Yomego’s Social Media Reputation (SMR) service to monitor its reputation – both sure signs that the sector is taking the impact of social media very seriously indeed.
Look stateside, and Stanford University’s Facebook page jumps out at you. Its ‘Office Hours’ initiative is an interesting way of encouraging interaction between students and professors. Stanford professors post a two-part video of themselves on the community: part one discusses their work, after which students can ask questions (via comments on the post); and part two answers the students’ questions. Alumni sites are a big deal here, too, providing a way for universities or schools to keep in touch with ex-students, to promote events, share news or – importantly – for fundraising purposes.
Students are driving the social media agenda for universities, too, with initiatives like the viral ‘Lipdub University’(started by Furtwangen University in Germany) where students film a showcase of their own university while lip-synching to a soundtrack (this one, filmed by L'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) has had more than 8 million hits on YouTube). And, of course, brands have always understood the power of social media in engaging students: the publisher Scholastic is creating an entire virtual world and social game for its Horrible Histories series (designed by Yomego, and built on the HuzuTech platform).
It follows, then, that universities operating in this ever-more competitive environment will ramp up their social media to differentiate themselves from their competitors, creating a reputation direct with prospective and current students, in order to attract pupils or promote new courses. Social media offers an incredible insight into the reputation of universities, among the audience that is most engaged over social channels.
Those universities that can develop their reputations over social media channels will be the ones best equipped to compete in a tough funding market.
