Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

New Jersey firm links students, professors through technology

Students have turned away from eMail and toward social media.

A New Jersey entrepreneur and his college professor business partner saw a growing campus communications gap between professors and students as an opportunity and jumped on it.

They created a Wayne, N.J.-based company, ConnectYard, that offers colleges and university professors the ability to send messages that will reach students where they are most likely to read them, and allows students to get an eMail message in text form, as a tweet, or as a private Facebook message.

ConnectYard grew out of an observation that Donald Doane and Howard University Professor Grant Warner made in 2007—that while professors love to use eMail, students increasingly were ignoring their eMail inboxes in favor of Twitter feeds, texts, and Facebook updates.…Read More

Viral video spreads Occupy message beyond college campuses

More than 1.3 million people have watched the UC Davis web video.

Chris Wong saw it unfold just hours before millions saw it on the internet: A police officer dousing students with pepper spray, a scene recorded with smart phones and turned into a viral web video that has brought national attention and energized the Occupy movement on college campuses.

Wong, a senior at the University of California (UC) Davis, was on the outskirts of the human chain formed by students who has set up tents on the campus quad in protest of state tuition hikes. Watching his peers sprayed at point blank range with the chemical gas was harrowing, he said, but broadcasting web video of the incident could be a boon for the movement, which has connections to the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests.

“In a strange way, [the police] did us a big favor,” said Wong, whose face was dotted with pepper spray, while students forming the human chain “looked like their faces had been painted.” “It’s good for waking people up to what’s happening on the ground. … Some people choose to ignore it and say it won’t accomplish anything, but we’ve seen an exponential surge in support [since the video went viral]. It served as a good platform for us.”…Read More

How many people does it take to run a college’s Facebook page?

Most colleges have social media teams of two or three people.

Most college campuses don’t have one staff member toiling away on the social web, answering students’ burning questions and updating the school’s Facebook page. Some institutions have an entire team – seven people, sometimes more, managing the daily Facebook goings-on.

It depends on the size of a university and its commitment to consistent communication with prospective and current students and web-savvy alums, but social media staff varies widely from campus to campus, according to research released Nov. 16 by Varsity Outreach, a company that advises schools with web-based promotion.

Three in 10 colleges have one employee to manage the school’s Facebook presence, according to the Varsity Outreach study, while a few schools – 4 percent of respondents – have seven or more staff members managing and updating social media sites.…Read More

Social media fuels Occupy Colleges movement

More than 5,000 students participated in walkouts Oct. 5.

Within a week of launching Occupy Colleges, a group in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests, more than 100 U.S. campuses had offshoots of the national movement. That would have been impossible, organizers said, without Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook groups and Twitter accounts have cropped up across higher education since the beginning of October, when Occupy Colleges launched its website and invited schools of every size to join the burgeoning protests against corporate excesses, including rising tuition and growing student loan debt that leaves many graduates with hefty monthly payments in a stagnant job market.

Student organizers said they expected students at 140 campuses – from community colleges to research universities – to launch protests Oct. 13, a week after more than 5,000 students from 80 schools participated in a walkout as Occupy Wall Street continued its protests at Zuccotti Park in New York City.…Read More

The masters of social media in higher education

StudentAdvisor evaluated social media initiatives at 6,000 colleges.

From tweeting the day’s dining hall menu to online posts showing where students can find an empty parking spot, campus officials have found inventive ways to use social media for practical purposes.

The 100 best uses of social media in higher education were released this fall by StudentAdvisor.com, a Massachusetts-based website that helps prospective students compare schools.

The annual ranking reads like a laundry list of the most effective ways campus decision makers can draw students with relevant information that can become an everyday part of their Twitter and Facebook feeds.…Read More

Controversial social media rules spark student backlash

SHSU student groups might have to change their names in accordance with new school policy.

Sam Houston State University’s controversial social media policy is perhaps the only thing that could unite the campus’s College Republicans, College Democrats, and the Young Democratic Socialists: The groups have joined together to protest rules that could affect their presence of Twitter and Facebook.

SHSU, a 17,000-student public campus in Huntsville, Texas, rolled out a new policy for university-related social media this semester, creating a “social media universe” that student groups can join on popular social sites where students communicate and announcements are made and discussed.

The school’s policy stipulates that any student group that uses the university’s name or abbreviation must join the official SHSU social media universe or change their name.…Read More

Gov. releases performance funding model for higher education

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced his newest education plan Aug. 25, proposing a performance-funding model for higher education. The model will fund higher education, but only if colleges and universities meet the goals they each set for themselves, the Maneater reports. Nixon said this is his next step for higher education, following up last year’s “Training for Tomorrow” and “Caring for Missourians” programs, which created certification programs in high-demand fields for Missouri college students.

“Moving forward, we must now fix the funding model for higher education, to make it less crisis-driven and more predictable from year-to-year,” Nixon stated in a news release…

Click here for the full story…Read More

Gov. releases performance funding model for higher education

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced his newest education plan Aug. 25, proposing a performance-funding model for higher education. The model will fund higher education, but only if colleges and universities meet the goals they each set for themselves, the Maneater reports. Nixon said this is his next step for higher education, following up last year’s “Training for Tomorrow” and “Caring for Missourians” programs, which created certification programs in high-demand fields for Missouri college students.

“Moving forward, we must now fix the funding model for higher education, to make it less crisis-driven and more predictable from year-to-year,” Nixon stated in a news release…

Click here for the full story…Read More

Gov. releases performance funding model for higher education

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced his newest education plan Aug. 25, proposing a performance-funding model for higher education. The model will fund higher education, but only if colleges and universities meet the goals they each set for themselves, the Maneater reports. Nixon said this is his next step for higher education, following up last year’s “Training for Tomorrow” and “Caring for Missourians” programs, which created certification programs in high-demand fields for Missouri college students.

“Moving forward, we must now fix the funding model for higher education, to make it less crisis-driven and more predictable from year-to-year,” Nixon stated in a news release…

Click here for the full story…Read More