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Photo by stevendepolo, Flickr.
This session is the second chapter of the Kevin Prentiss’ original “Tying it all together” presentation which won best in track two years ago. That presentation was known for its 20 second per slide thing. That presentation was a vision. This presentation discussed about where we are going now.
Where is Higher Education today?
- We’re going to hit 1 trillion in student debt.
- There might be a higher education meltdown, a bubble to bust to speak
- If we let the future happen, we’re doomed.
Lets make Unicorns!
- Visionary leadership is awesome, because it will marshall our absolute best.
- Right now technology is the thing that changes or saves higher education
- This our moment to do something visionary
- Flight was the ultimate unicorn once, and the key to winning is to try something.
- Innovation is not for the faint of heart, the guy who first developed theories of flight died trying to fly
- Starting from good theory is the key
- Dance floors are a good analogy, if you asked people what makes a bad dance, they blame the DJ. People form a circle, it doesn’t matter what the DJ plays, the kids will have fun no matter what. Maybe its about the connection, maybe thats what determines the state of engagement
- 60% of students will not take part in student activities. Our dances aren’t very interesting. They aren’t working.
- Ugh have you met Ugh? thats the move. That’s how you make connections. It’s as simple as that.
- Having a twitter account for the school to push out information, really just uses a 2.0 tool to do 1.0 goals.
- Students need connections, so they can feel comfortable. They need people who like what they like. Students need connections to:
1. People like then
2. People who like what they like
3. An audience that cares
- Connections: Thats what make high ed web amazing, is the fact that build communities and that’s what students need. Thats what they need now.
- the launch from theory to practice isn’t straight.
- Learning moments are needed, they are great if you don’t die. Like the flying guy did at least.
What happened with Red Rover?
- Directories are under utilized for making connections with students
- Lessons learned
1. students love “people like you” over the summer
2. students are happy to connect social media
3. students love “tag shopping”
4. insights from tags are very powerful they build social architecture
5. tagged communication increases open rates
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6. group recommendations increase initial involvement rates by approximately 80%
- Group recommendations lead Red Rover down the road to group management technology. This was bad it lead to complication and with complication comes cost, time and money.
- You can go small or large but not “half vast” and thats the key
- They had 3/5 of a unicorn and it caused them to fail, they had to do soul searching
- Talked to big corporation, really wanted to do lots of crazy stuff. Felt like selling out but they had to do it to build the technology.
- They are buying the technology not the process
- Interests in the directory are they key. Tags, Tags, Tags – helps students find people they can connect to by what they are interested in.
- Stop at the ability to send communications to students based on interests, don’t make 3/5 a unicorn
- Aggregation of all social media within the directory is important, since people can tie their social media together. Then searchable by topic. Activity streams are built under the hood – actor verb object
- Analytics from the Aggregation-
1. Gather activity streams
2. Dashboard allows allocation of scoring for verbs
3. Tiering is based on time based scoring system
4. allows for stakeholder involvement, common language, introduction
- Think social architecture not social media
- Imagine being able to measure student involvement based on social architecture. It completely changes the way we could measure student involvement
- There will be tools to bring in learning management system data to port in academic information about a student.
- Could this lead to Yet Another Network syndrome? Students don’t have to join new networks, everything they do on social media is aggregated into it. Pulling students away from Facebook into other social networks would help students move into the semi public professional world.
