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IAS > My Day > Posts > Social media and the university admissions community

10/23/2009

Social media and the university admissions community
Chris Rice, UK's social technologies strategist, told me about Karlyn Morissette's blog posting on Hobsons' recent survey on admissions information:  http://doteduguru.com/id3839-the-credibility-of-college-info-from-social-network-sites-or-lack-thereof.html
 
I agree that social media is not a replacement for official websites or formal interviews with admissions staff.  However, the "trust factor" in branding of universities in general is not fully explored.  Just think how hard it must be to have really thoughtful, long-term conversations and dialog about postsecondary education with the general public in Kentucky. And what must it be like to have a meaningful dialog for more than just a few minutes (longer than it takes to fill out a quick survey) about a 16 or 17 year old's trust in anything at all.  Do admissions staff listen to these kinds of conversations regularly?  I suspect not.  However, there may be some late night conversations going on among groups of teenagers that could teach us educators a lot about what they think our institutions are or ought to be.  But we don't have access to those conversations as a rule.  But there could be some brief glimpses if we construct those conversations among these high school students' peers.  I imagine that many of us are just now starting to think about peer recruiters, peer admissions counselors, peer academic advisors... i.e., "side-facing marketing." I liked some of the comments appended to Morissette's blog posting:
 
"The most important step is to create communities around meaningful exchanges with others in ways that are relevant to the brand and to the genuine interests and needs of community members."  Notice, this person is talking about "community members" ... not a dialectic pair of university staff talking about their own community to high schoolers (and trying to convince them they want to join a new/different/better community).
 
and
 
"Social websites by their very nature do not provide factual information. It is sort of like asking your neighbor for a restaurant recommendation. Ultimately, I think social websites serve the function of sending students in a direction -to get more information rather than provide it."
 
Ah, now this is why we're experimenting with the Big Blue Network in the Office of Undergraduate Education.
Posted at 8:34 AM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: Oct 2009 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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