Blogs, Tweets, and Mobile Phones: Serving Today’s Tech-savvy Students

Scott Bush

Office of the University Registrar, University of Washington

More at scottbush.net

Welcome and Intro

• Thanks for coming to talk tech
• What gives me the right to be up here?
• More like a seminar than a lecture: let’s talk about what you want!
• What I’m going to cover
  • Good ol’ fashioned websites
  • Social media: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube
  • A bit on calendaring and Web Services

Relevant facts*...

Before we begin, a question: Why does technology matter to Registrars and Admissions officers?

• 98% percent of higher-ed students own a laptop or desktop. Eight of 10 freshman have a laptop less than one year old.By now, 63% of higher-ed students have an internet-capable mobile device.
• 46.8% of all students who own an internet-capable mobile device reported a preference to access "student administrative services" on that device. That was second only to e-mail (63.4%).

* from the ECARS 2009 study

...and Some Context

Why am I going to spend five minutes of my presentation on a video?
Because it’s important.

Websites (1 of 5)

Websites are ubiquitous these days; hard to imagine a school without one. Registrar/Admissions websites typically include policies, academic calendar, forms, info on transcripts, news about the school, etc.

• 

  UW

• 

  WSU

• 

  CWU

• 

  WWU

• 

  Gonzaga

Websites (2 of 5)

Websites are great because...

• Common and comfortable: most students expect web-based tools
• School-hosted, official .edu domain name
• Schools often have templates or content-management systems to tap into
• Great flexibility in branding, messaging, tone
• Can save money over printing and distributing/mailing info
• UW example: distributing Dean’s Letters online rather than postal mail

Websites (3 of 5)

Still, websites can have issues from staff and student perspectives...

• Staff: Needs a dedicated web developer, or at least a staffer familiar with HTML, CSS, FTP, and other acronyms as well
• Staff & student: Can get stale: aesthetically, or worse: outdated information
• Student: Sometimes seen as “old” technology
• Student: May be difficult to use, hard to navigate, lack a search feature
• Student: Big issue these days: poor experience on mobile devices

Websites (4 of 5)

Understand your website! What content on your site is most popular? What’s missing? Where are your visitors coming from? Should you offer a version translated into Spanish or other language?

Don’t know these answers? Get some analytics!

• Google Analytics lets you answer all these questions and learn more about your visitors’ behavior
• Google Webmaster Tools shows you what Google sees when it indexes your site (including errors you can fix)
• Both are free and quite easy to install and use

Websites (5 of 5)

Thinking of changing or “fixing” your site? Keep these points in mind:

• Check your site for broken links (easy!)
  • Either manually (good for checking content, too); or
  • With an online tool that does it for you
• Add a print-specific stylesheet (usually pretty easy)
• Add a mobile stylesheet (a little harder)
• Move to a content-management system like WordPress, Drupal, Plone—all free—or a paid solution (complicated)
  • Provides useful features like version control, site search, contact forms, etc.
  • Branding/visual changes separate from content
  • Non-techies can manage content without web-development skills

Social Media (1 of 9)

Nine out of 10 higher-ed students of all ages use social media sites or texting, most of the daily. For 18–19-year-olds, that jumps to 95.9%!^*

Social media is to the end of this decade what websites were at the end of the ’90s: “Everyone” has one.

The social media “Big 5”:

1. Blogging - periodic writings by one or more authors encouraging comments
2. Facebook - keep in touch with friends, groups and businesses; play games
3. Twitter - “tweet” short, timely messages to your “followers”
4. YouTube and Vimeo - videos, and lots of ’em
5. LinkedIn - business-oriented networking, resume posting, etc.

Show of hands: who’s schools participate in at least one of these sites? What about your office, specifically?

Social Media (2 of 9)

Blogging is now a very well accepted form of communication, whether personal, corporate, or educational. They excel for many purposes in an educational environment:

• Many free blogging tools available: WordPress, Drupal, Typepad, and online services like Blogger, Blogspot, etc.
• Easy to set up and maintain without much tech knowledge
  • This enables specificity; the UW has many blogs: Registrar’s, President’s, Web Service Developers, athletics, etc.
• Recommend strong visual ties with primary site to avoid confusion among users as to authoritative source of information from your deptartment
  • Display a list of recent blog posts in a sidebar on your main site
  • Always link to authoritative content on your site from blog posts discussing it, and vice versa

Social Media (3 of 9)

Be careful your blog doesn’t become stale, though: post regularly to keep the content fresh.

• Explain policy changes
• Student or staff profiles
• Alert community to new website features (“student e-mail accounts upgraded”) or tools (“online registration now available”)
• Historic notes (“10/25/50 years ago on campus”)

Social Media (4 of 9)

Facebook started in higher ed before becoming mainstream and epically popular. But now it seems every small business, group, product, and B-list celebrity want you to be their “fan.” What does FB offer registrars and admissions offices?

• Easy, no-coding way to create a stand-alone website: Notes, Photos, Links, Info
• Good exposure for your blog: new posts can appear in your FB feed to notify your fans
• Provides (very) basic event registration

A good example is Seattle U’s Law School Admissions FB page.

Social Media (5 of 9)

Despite its popularity, what purpose does FB serve?

• It’s so popular that not having a presence is deemed detrimental... but does it make sense?
• Provides yet another place to maintain information (office hours, phone numbers, etc.)

It’s definitely a good marketing tool for universities as a whole (and admissions offices): see the UW, Gonzaga, and Seattle U FB pages. But be careful: EWU and Evergreen State College don’t look very exciting places (no offense!)

Social Media (6 of 9)

Twitter started the “microblogging” revolution: the world in 140 characters. It’s a social phenomenon, sure, but would students "follow" their school’s admissions department or registrar?

Plenty of universities are tweeting, but again this is much more of a school-level use rather than by Registrars and Admissions departments: not many of those.

Really have something to tweet about? Ask your school’s marketing dept. to include your note on the school’s official Twitter account.

Social Media (7 of 9)

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social media site for networking with over 8 million users. A school’s presence there is usually oriented more toward alumni as another way to stay connected with their alma mater (and look for jobs!)

X