With all of the tools readily available at your fingertips, how could you afford to not use them?
Yesterday I had a meeting with BUMegan about some communication for incoming freshman. Previously, the ‘welcome week newsletter’ has been a word document around 5 pages long. Gross. So we started brainstorming about what to do this year. Email? eNewsletter? Welcome Week Blog? Post the info to the Facebook Class of 2012 group and the BUForums?
So I went to my network of higher ed professionals on Twitter for advice.
No, i’m not trying to sell you a product. I’m trying to sell you on usability testing. That’s right, with only $10 and 10 minutes YOU can IMPROVE your SITE! (insert big logo and web 2.0 graphic here)
Last November I did a usability test with Marcie, a senior at a local high school. There was one question I wanted to ask her because I was pretty sure I knew the answer already, I just needed it recorded for proof to others.
It’s really hard to believe that nearly 3 months since I first posted about the Class of 2012 group on Facebook, and 2 months since I went public with the data tracking. I mentioned on that post that I would post occasional updates, and I thought the 3 month mark would be a good one.
Here’s the chart after 3 months, which is tracking Members, Wall Posts, and Discussion Posts: (more…)
There is one question I typically get when I present a viable option/solution that happens to utilize a 3rd party website/web2.0 tool. “What do they [the company who's providing the service for free] get out of it?”
It’s a great question, and should definitely be considered. What are we, the University, giving them, the person behind the curtain, in return for their services? What personal information will they collect? What advertisements come along with the product/solution? What if the product later goes to a paid service and all of our data/information that we have built up over the months and years now costs to use?
I know there’s a ton of Seth Godin lovers out there, so I wanted to post this real quick. He’s doing a conference call on Meatball Sundae for FREE. Considering seats at his events can go for upwards of $2000, this is a pretty sweet deal. The call is on Wednesday, April 9 from 12-1PT (That’s 3-4p for all us east-coasters).
Note: You have to actually own the book to sign up. For $25 you can buy the book and sign up, but you can also get it from Amazon for only $16.29 right here. You’d probably still get it quick enough to register, but no promises.
Enough of me talking, sign up here and listen to the man himself. And if you were wondering… yes, it will blend.
One thing that I have always been big on is ‘community‘. I love community, the feeling of being surrounded by others to share ideas with, have a good time with, and relate to. Community can build great connection with others, and it can make others proud to be a part of something. It is a big part of the vision that Matt and I have for BlogHighEd. So when an incoming link from a blog post titled “Discovering Community” linked to us, I felt a certain sense of accomplishment in that goal.
Then I got to thinking back to my early days of ‘community building’, in college as an RA, and remembered a presentation that I gave at a conference more than 3 years ago. So I dug it up last night and went through it, and found some slides that could relate to my job now. So I’m going to go through some of that, and make a few modifications as well.
The presentation is directly below, but it might make more sense if you follow along with me below it. At the end we’ll get into some direct implications for community in social media. Brace yourself, this will probably be the longest post in SquaredPeg history. What a great way to celebrate 100 posts! Stick with me, I think you will get something out of this.
Remember this post about the Facebook app I created? Mike Richwalsky from Allegheny is now blogging at HighEdWebTech.com. He’s only been blogging here for a few weeks now, but has been active in the Higher Ed community for some time; he won the Best Poster Session award at HighEdWebDev ‘05, was doing podcasting back in ‘05 (and interviewed by Karine Joly), and more recently has done 2 Higher Ed Experts webinars (check them out).
I missed this week’s How-To Tuesday, so consider this your viewing for the week. It came out yesterday by CommonCraft, they have a ton of other great video explanations too. This one is really good, I love the examples they use.
When you decide you’re ready to finally join Twitter, add me!
