Sunday, March 15th at 03:30 PM
Presenter:
Brad Ward – Butler University
Dylan Wilbanks – University of Washington School of Public Health
Many times there are usually just a small collection of people from higher education at conferences. The room for this session was overflowing with folks from higher ed.
This discussion is about ways we’re different and ways we’re the same. We’re a special group when compared to corporate environments. The audience is different, and the audience is different. We’re mainly focusing our communications on a very particular demographic (high school/college age). Education is much more open than corporate – sharing is more prevalent.
It was recently discussed that universities in Australia get more money based on the number of students in your school.
What are the downsides of Education?
- There is less money (similar to a startup) with the negative hierarchy of a corporate environment.
- There is a large age gap between the audience and the folks delivering content
-Students want all content online
-Professors don’t want all content online - Many things are done in small teams for low money (there are a lot of generalists)
- Forced to look for cheaper solutions (open source, ning, etc.), but we get a massive return on investment for small things
- Small teams CAN do great things
- Don’t be scared of risks of cheap solutions (social media).
- Always be present and willing to be there to help.
Discussions
Marketing and/or Communications teams seem to do better (?)
Development or design by committee is generally bad
Where does your “web team” sit? IT or Marketing or Instructional? – All over
Faculty don’t always know what’s out there in tech (they are very busy) – Young facult dont’ always know about or are required to know what’s out there (tech not built into tenure)
What is the biggest problem now?
-Get faculty to use the learning management system
-Make human side of relationship easier and more easy to manage (prof office hours)
Facebook:
- UF – looking at Facebook for recruiting and outreach
- UCLA – it is a good connection with students in open forum – answer questions and also poll users (two way conversations)
- Walden University (Internet only school) – Recruit students and market all events and communicate with students
- DePaul – 3500 FB users – alumni said they want email and provided input and evidence to the alumni office via Facebook
- Western – engage alumni for get togethers through FB – they are now pulling record numbers by using Facebook.
- UF Law School – pages or groups? Pages: top level Groups: more niche HowardKang.com has good breakdown
Discussions
Software vs. Service offered by school or outside school. Sometimes it’s easier and cheaper to go outside based on internal charge-back.
Standards accessibility – are they important? YES (most). Multimedia accessibility is done on request (508). Enterprise tools to test across an entire site for accessibility – IBM Radional Quality Tester or WorldSpace
Universities have brilliant people and sharing is a plus – it is helpful to set up groups to discuss various things – web or social media working groups.
Communication is successful when they know and trust you – open 2-way communications are important (blog?)
“We wish challenges were technical and not political!”
http://cuwebd.ning.com
Video of Presentation: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1257227