Utilizing the Web and Social Media in Student Affairs and Higher Education

Integrating web 2.0 and cloud services into student affairs can be an exciting and innovative way to connect with your students. Below are some useful sites, apps, and services that you can use and some examples of how to use them. Have other ideas? Please share them in the comments on Slideshare here: http://www.slideshare.net/paulgordonbrown. This document is posted there.

Poll Everywhere www.polleverywhere.com Poll Everywhere allows you to set up online polls that can be displayed in real-time in a web browser or embedded in a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. Participants can txt their answers to a poll-specific phone number and results will be displayed instantly. Poll Everywhere allows you to set up multiple choice or free response type polls. Basic level access is free even though it limits the number of responses.

Facebook www.facebook.com Creating a Facebook group and inviting students to join is a great way to communicate messages, allow them to share and post common group photos, and comment on almost anything. You can also integrate it into icebreakers where groups need to take team photos or videos and post them to the group. It’s also a great way to collect quotes or photos for later use in program recruitment materials.

Twitter www.twitter.com Establish a hash tag for your program and advertise this at the start. Hash tags are basically common search terms that you can establish that allow you to set up your own virtual “chat room” of sorts. Searching for that hash tag produces an entire threaded conversation from your community. Avoid using something generic like to avoid confusion with others that may be using that term. You can use this to start conversations, allow students to submit questions, and, for presentations, even stream the results on a projector at the front of the room. Apps like hootsuite.com allow for constantly updated streaming.

You Tube www.youtube.com (alternative sites: vimeo.com) YouTube is a great way to engage students in videos over the summer or during the year. If you find videos you want to include in your presentations, you can also use a site like keepvid.com to download them and embed them in a presentation to be able to show them without needing an internet connection.

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Google Docs docs.google.com (and related Google products like Google Sites and Calendars) These online collaborative tools are excellent resources for creating and sharing calendars, sign-up lists, program tracking, polling, and many other collaborative projects. Docs allow you to change sharing preferences so students don't even need an account to edit them. Two often-overlooked features include the ability to distribute surveys (Google Forms) and create staff-specific web portals (Google Sites).

GroupMe www.groupme.com GroupMe is a group SMS txt messaging service. Add your students, staff or leaders into a list and it creates a virtual text chat room. Members can send txts to a common number and they get sent to all members of the group. Services like this are great for keeping in touch with a student conference delegation or for a staff or executive board to share timely information and coordinate during critical times. This can be used with or without a GroupMe smartphone app (although the app enables many additional features).

SlideShare www.slideshare.net SlideShare is an online repository for different presentations and documents. You can easily upload PowerPoint, Keynote, and PDF presentations and tag them so others can easily search for them. This offers a great way for students to review presentations later. You can also do a search for presentations designed by others.

Prezi www.prezi.com Prezi is an online app that allows you to create interesting “zooming” presentations. It’s a great alternative to the standard boring PowerPoint and can be accessed online at anytime. Another alternative is to use Apple’s Keynote (available only on the Mac). Keynote is similar to PowerPoint but was built with much more cinematic transitions and the ability to more easily integrate multimedia.

A Note About Social Media Social Justice When engaging in any of these technologies, it is important to think about universal design and the ability of all of your students to participate. Although many of these sites allow increased accessibility for some, they can create new barriers for others. Additionally, the socio-economic status of your participants, and the cost of smart phones and txt messaging plans can also present a barrier.

 

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The original of this PDF can be found here: slideshare.net/paulgordonbrown © 2011.08.11