If there is one piece of web2.0 that we use in both our personal and Student Services professional lives it is Facebook. Although as I found out at a conference recently there are still some institutions that don't permit the use of Facebook. It cannot be a bandwidth thing as it sometimes is with Skype and Second Life, perhaps its still the fear that Students will say rude things about their University. Well just google your institution or search for it on YouTube and you will discover that it not something that we are likely to stop.
If you want to see the benefits of Facebook and to gain an insight into how our students use it then try setting up a Facebook group for students planning to come to you this coming February or September. What you will see is that students may be time poor but they are network rich. They will look out for others studying the same subject or housed in the same Hall. They will share common moans about lack of information but also share things that work. But don't expect this group to last too long. Facebook groups tend to die once the intial common reason for joining them has gone.
A few tips. Don't just create the page and hope. You have to send your future students the link to the page. However don't just put it into print. Send it as a clickable link either from your website ( but not buried too deep) or in any email sent to confirm a place or even an open day invitation or all of them. Monitor what is being said, less from fear of abuse but rather to spot things that are working or not. Don't get too depressed if it is the later - remember go to Uni is something the vast majority of these students have never done before and it is easier to blame ' the university' than it is to admit that they don't know what to do. Please avoid the grave danger of 'IT Dad dancing' and pretent that you are a student to try to correct something they have said. If you are going onto the Facebook group then do so as the Institution.
What the film 'Social Network' does not show is how Facebook has grown in just a few short years to having over 500 million users.One major factor has been its openess to links with other web 2.0 social networks. This has now developed to such a state that a Facebook 'page' where you don't have to join Facebook to access, is now effectively your own free website.
You can upload via text and email as well as online; video, photos, links to other sites . It links with Twitter and can be used as a chat room and a blog...what more could you want for free and it is not a pressure on your institutions IT servers!
Here is presentation I gave on texting and Facebook and how a Facebook page is the new website.
http://www.slideshare.net/Hipkin21/talking-txt-2010
(These views are my own and don't represent those of AMOSSHE or any other organisation)
I am not sure about Twitter. I was an 'early adopter' many years ago but an 'early adopter' in the same way as you join a Gym just after Christmas - it seemed like a good idea at the time and like that standing order for the gym membership my twitter account just sat there, completely forgotten until just recently.
Twitter was very much under the radar until it was taken up by the media who found it useful as a reporting tool and live news feed into 24 hour rolling news programmes and websites. Today such is its presence that it has become a news form all by itself.
It is undoubtedly an increasingly powerful tool now that it has features such as automatic shortening of urls and speedy ways of retweeting. It sits alongside Facebook and YouTube on nearly all smartphones and will form part of Facebook's new message system together on the same feed as email and text. Yet its place in HE in general and Student Services in particular is illusive. That is until now.
Out of curiosity I started following the twitter feed for the national student protests of Wednesday 24 th November 2010. The volume of tweets was staggering even if some were retweets and if that was not revealing enough it was the use that people we making of the tweets that so impressed. There were links to google maps to show where student occupations where taking place, tweets from students 'kettled' by the police, tweets from the parents of students 'kettled' by the police. People exchanging stories real, imagined or just wished for, about police actions, legal advice on your rights together with phone numbers, the latest news from occupations. Those from Russell Group were in upper and lower case, perfect spelling and even ironic.
And finally with new tweets reaching over 100 in 3 mins and to show that Twitter was here to stay- a tweet from the Met Police in London saying that they were slowly releasing students - but was it really them?
(These are my own views and don't represent AMOSSHE or any other organisation)
