The SA Blog - Archive - Myspace/Facebook Best Practices

Beyond Facebook Applications

"A dot.com is on the computer. When you go there, you do something on it."

Ahhh, the wisdom of a kindergartner describing my latest foray into Web 2.0.

So what is that something? What does it do for us in Student Affairs?

I was an early adopter of Facebook on my campus. By early, I mean somewhere in between the university rollout in 2004 and before high schools were invited to join in September 2005…early by Midwest standards. Facebook became a novelty for checking the pulse of my students and colleagues. It was humorous to argue its merits and always sparked interesting conversation among my student leaders. When did facebooking became a verb?

The class of 2010 arrived on campus as the first group of students to have Facebook in high school. They were networked, had added a truckload of university "friends", and expected me to be in tune with their needs. Just as Kevin discussed in the Strange Power of the Go-Getter Freshman, they used Facebook Messages for email because it was easier than looking up my actual email address. I had a responsibility to become a Facebook user, not just a guest.

Iowa State’s Facebook network has 36,477 members up from 21,500 in January 2006. There have been 222 Facebook story references in the Iowa State Daily. Online identity is discussed in our campus orientation programs and is a lecture topic in my first-year seminar. I am a frequent Facebook advertiser and have profiles pages for each of the programs I coordinate. I also recognize the interpersonal divide that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace may create for students seeking meaningful connections to peers and the university.

Searching for utility in student social networking, I helped initiate Red Rover on our campus to link new students to clubs and student leaders. With nearly 700 registered campus organizations, our students need useful navigation tools. I am now spending my summer tracking down our many student leaders (on internships in remote destinations without email access) to engage them in this new web tool.

Applications like Red Rover build connections so students can move beyond Super Poke to actual networking through shared campus interests. How cool is that? A Facebook application where your students can do something besides stalk their friends.

Statistical Data on the Growth of the ‘Class of 2012′ Facebook Groups

March 25th, 2008 | Posted by Tom Krieglstein in Myspace/Facebook Best Practices | Online Tools | Orientation | Technology and Programming - (0 Comments)

The idea that new students are orienting themselves on Facebook without institutional guidance is a reality as discussed previously on the Student Affairs blog. Search Facebook for "Class of 2012" and you can see with your own eyes the trend. But we are lacking the hard data such as what percentage of new students join these groups or how influential are these groups. It’s an opportunity for interested academic researchers to investigate as I suspect this is not a short term trend.

Through a very simple study, Brad J. Ward from SquaredPeg has been tracking the activity of the Butler Class of 2012 Facebook Group. His three metrics are the # of Members, Wall Posts, and Discussion Posts.

This is only the current screen shot of Brad’s data, but you can follow his latest by visiting his Google Spread Sheet.

I would love to see a series of data points like this one for a big enough sampling of 2012 groups so academia can get a better idea of when new students start engaging in these groups.

Can someone start this now or are we too late and needed to start back in January? I suspect the window of opportunity to track the activity is almost closed for this upcoming school year.

It would also be interesting to see when these groups were created. The group page doesn’t say the creation date, but one way to get a rough idea of the creation date is to look at when the first comment was made. The first comment on the Butler group was Jan 4th 2008.

The Most Powerful Communicator in the Class of 2012: Jack Responds

March 17th, 2008 | Posted by Kevin Prentiss in Myspace/Facebook Best Practices | University - (0 Comments)

In my last post, I mentioned that I had Facebooked Jack, who started a huge class of 2012 group for the University of Pittsburgh.

Picture 10.png

Despite the fact that Jack is in High School, and, if he’s on East Coast time, he should probably have been in class, he responded in 20 minutes.

I copied my questions and indented his answers under each question:

————–

1) Are you working for the university in any way? Or did you just do all of this work on your own?

I am not a part of the university in any way. I live in a suburb of Philadelphia. I did this on my own after being accepted as I was seeking other people who were also accepted.

2) If you did it all on your own, why? You found and posted a lot of great pictures, it must have taken some time. What motivated you?

At first, it was for me to find others in the same situation I was, then as the group became progressively bigger, I did some research about the school and added a few updates on some important events for accepted students. Most of the pictures are actually provided by the members of the group.

3) What are your plans with the group?

Just a place where people can get to know each other before actually going. I am not very certain whether I will even be attending Pitt, but I am glad a lot of people in this group are finding friends ahead of time.

4) Do you have history of student leadership in high school? Do you plan to be a student leader in college?

In high school, I am the president of a couple of clubs and participate in numerous others. When I go to college, I plan to continue being involved.

——-

Dear University of Pittsburgh,

Jack, despite possibly skipping 5th period to Facebook a random higher education guy, is a doer. He’s responsible and proven himself extremely capable as a 21st century leader.

It would be a real shame to let him slip away.

Send him a fruit basket at the very least. Better yet, send him a friendly little “thanks for running our 2012 class on Facebook” scholarship.

He can be reached here.

My Best,

Kevin Prentiss

—–

UPDATE: Jack wants everyone to know that he’s not skipping class, he’s on spring break. My apologies for being suspicious : )

First-Year Experience, Orientation, University of Pittsburgh

Self Orientation Begins on Facebook (What are you doing about yours?)

March 17th, 2008 | Posted by Kevin Prentiss in Club/Org Recruitment | Myspace/Facebook Best Practices - (0 Comments)

A number of Class of 2012 groups on Facebook are in full swing, do you know where yours is?

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Five months or so before school starts and already there are almost 1000 students in this group.

Students don’t need to wait for Orientation to socially integrate (Tinto style). This has been happening since Facebook first let in high school students back in September of 2005.

It’s been widely reported in the Chronicle of Higher Ed(behind subscription, sorry) and the New York Times among others.

Yet many many schools still ignore it, either out of ignorance or confusion about what, exactly, to do about it.

Without any school participation, official or peer helper /ambassador style, the Facebook groups take on a cultural tone that sets the introduction for the college.

Sometimes the groups go down hill. Just check out the wall comments on this group from Greensboro class of 2011. This is probably not the introduction the school would prefer.

In the case of the University of Pittsburgh 2012 group, however, the conversation is currently exactly what the school would hope for – students asking questions about financial aid, information on official orientation days, discussions about majors, school spirit around sports, and 27 pictures of the campus and its classrooms that look great.

The person who put this all together?

Picture 9.png

Jack is a senior in high school, and I’m guessing he acted completely on his own and spent some time compiling the pictures and keeping the conversation going. (I sent Jack a Facebook message with some questions. If he responds, I will post his thoughts up on this blog in another post.)

Jack is good with the tools and did a huge favor for the University of Pittsburgh. If they haven’t already, it would be very smart for the University to recruit Jack as a student leader. He’s now one of the most powerful communicators on campus.

What You Can Do With Your Group

First, know that it matters for admissions. If you need a hard, short-term motivator to figure this out, admissions can be it. Students look to peers to develop their opinions and the impression of your Facebook Class Groups does matter in this process.

Sometimes the students just straight up ask, so getting your ambassadors in the group is a good start. The ambassadors do need training, if they come off as “too official” it will damage their credibility. As in the response above, when they present the pro and con, they are much more effective in the conversation.

I had a great chat with Staci Weber of Juniata college at the recent APCA conference about her terrific work with her class of 2011 group. She was playing with four goals for her incoming first years and Facebook. She plans on integrating these steps with the official Orientation process.

1) Get the students to join the Juniata network.

This is great for future alumni tracking and for assessment within Facebook. This is not the same as pitching Facebook, it’s just saying, if you are already on Facebook, connect yourself with the school network.

2) Join the Class of 2012 Juniata group.

Staci is excited about clustering the students because she can then “Facebook” the whole class to make announcements, knowing that this will often be more effective than email. She is very sensitive to the spam issue, and plans to use the mass Facebooking the 2012 class very selectively. From her experience with 2011, she mentioned that 80% of that class was in the 2011 group on Facebook and this was a great way for her to get the word out. She felt that there were at least 15% more students on Facebook who were either not part of the Juniata Network or did not join the first year group, she is hoping to get 90% to participate in the 2012 group this year. (This, BTW, is already more than double the average participation in e2Campus emergency text messaging systems.)

3) Use Red Rover to segment the class by topic interest.

Staci is part of the Red Rover pilot program. [Full disclosure: I am with Swift Kick, and Red Rover is a Swift Kick project.] Red Rover is a free “orientation on Facebook” application that allows Staci to segment the first years by various keywords for better communication and to increase involvement.

4) Train peer leaders and student group leaders to participate in the group.

This is a continuation of what worked last year. She has some new ideas of directions to take the training.

If she can meet all four goals, Staci should be able to present the school in the best light for admissions and admitted students, increase social integration with her peer leaders and between the incoming first years, increase positive connection points and set herself up with multiple effective communication options within Facebook. (The key to maintaining these is to not abuse them, so definitely don’t follow these steps and then mass message your first year class 50 times before schools starts.)

Easiest way to find your group is to simply search Facebook for your school name plus 2012. If one has not started yet, you may want to have one of your peer leaders set it up (probably better if it is not a staff or faculty member).

Just tell them follow Jack’s lead!

Faculty Ethics on Facebook – The Collaborative Project

January 9th, 2008 | Posted by Tom Krieglstein in Myspace/Facebook Best Practices | Risk Management | Technology and Programming - (0 Comments)

Mark Clague, a faculty member at Michigan State, created a Facebook group titled Faculty Ethics on Facebook. The goal of the group is to collectively define a set of guidelines for faculty members to use when entering into the social networking world.

Here’s the current list:

1. Keeping official course activities in official online tools and not on Facebook.

2.
Never requiring students to participate in Facebook or having Facebook
participation influence a course grade. (An exception is for class
projects that might use Facebook for research purposes [such as a
statistical analysis of how Facebook groups grow and fade] and make
their connection to a course explicit.)

3. Not friending
students unless they request the connection. Not poking students. Never
pressuring students to friend the professor (such as repeated mention
of a faculty profile in class).

4. Accepting friend requests from all students (unless the instructor makes the decision not to friend students at all).

5.
Not looking at student profiles unless the faculty member has been
friended by the student and even then using Facebook information
judiciously and for educational purposes. In short, not spying on
students, but getting to know them better when invited to do so.

6.
Faculty members should avoid association with Facebook groups with
explicit sexual content or views that might offend or compromise the
student / teacher relationship. This guideline must be applied
sensitively within the context of a diverse educational environment in
which both students and faculty practice tolerance and accept competing
views.

7. Taking extreme care with privacy settings and faculty
profile content to limit profiles to information relevant to
educational purposes. A broad variety of information may be
appropriate, however, given the area of expertise / subject, the local
customs of an instructor’s school, and the personal dynamics of his or
her classroom. Content should be placed thoughtfully and periodically
reconsidered to maintain this educational standard.

8.
Exercising appropriate discretion when using Facebook for personal
communications (with friends, colleagues, other students, etc.) with
the knowledge that faculty behavior on Facebook may be used as a model
by our students.

9. Never misrepresenting oneself by using a
false name or persona on Facebook, unless that characterization is
connected explicitly with the real identity of the instructor.

10.
Considering that the uneven power dynamics of the academy in which
professors have authority over students, continue to shape the online
relationship, even when the network tool (such as Facebook) is
apparently democratic.

11. Keeping wall posts and other
Facebook communication in concord with standard ethical practices of
the educational relationship.

12. Never posting official course
communication (feedback on an assignment, for example) in a public area
of Facebook. Feedback might be given through private Facebook messaging
when the student has asked a question via Facebook or a previous friend
connection exists.

I previously posted a similar set of guidelines and think the two compliment each other well. What do you think about the guidelines? Would they work for you? If you were to add or change a point, what would it be? Join the discussion on this collaborative list and share your two cents.

I’ll See You on Facebook – Teacher Self-Discloser, Student Motivation

November 12th, 2007 | Posted by Tom Krieglstein in Myspace/Facebook Best Practices | Online Tools | Technology and Programming - (0 Comments)

Steve Thompson at College of DuPage referred me to an interesting article titled, “I’ll See You on Facebook”

The article was a collaborative project to explore if and how teachers should use Facebook to engage students outside the classroom and what if any the effects will have back in the classroom. Even though it was written in January 2007 (which in technology terms is almost ancient) there are some interesting findings relevant to student affairs professionals and worth sharing.

The results concluded that:

…teachers high in self-disclosure [on Facebook] anticipated higher levels of [student] motivation and affective learning and a more positive classroom climate.

The danger is in the details, as too much information turned out to be damaging to the teacher/student relationship:

…instructors must balance their private information to guide the boundary management process. Teachers decide what information they want to reveal to their students in an effort to create a comfortable classroom environment that fosters student learning.

The surveyed students suggested that teacher self-discloser on Facebook should not include polarizing issues such as politics, religion, and hot topic debates. At the same time the students said the teachers should be themselves. If they are not the same person online as they are in the classroom, the students reacted negatively.

The three big no-nos from the students were:

A teacher should not gossip about students online
Use personal information a student shares on their profile against them
Respect a student’s privacy, so if a student doesn’t want to be your friend online, don’t push it. (I’ve never sought out a student’s online profile to be friends, instead I give them the choice to find and befriend me.)

A while ago, I wrote a blog with guidelines for academic professionals that compliments this article’s conclusions and might be worth reading.

I think this research is further confirmation that academic professionals should be actively using online social networking sites such as Facebook as a tool in education.

Other interesting findings:

As of May 2006, 297,000 Facebook members identified themselves as faculty or staff. I haven’t seen an updated number, but I would guess that the number is now near 600,000+ due to the larger acceptance of Facebook.

Students felt more comfortable opening up online than face-to-face.

“Scholars found that students who communicate via [social networking sites online] with other students use more direct uncertaninty reduction strategies (e.g. more intimate questions and self-discloser) than students in face-to-face converstaions (Tidwell and Walther, 2002)” (related blog)

Facebook Eases Freshman Woes

November 7th, 2007 | Posted by Tom Krieglstein in Freshman | Myspace/Facebook Best Practices | Orientation - (0 Comments)

CNN recently posted an article about two college freshman roommates who met on Facebook first and became best friends before meeting each other physically on campus. The article argues that Facebook is a great tool to help ease the stressful transition for freshman.

"Min is just one of the many college freshmen who will be stepping onto campuses this fall with a jump-start on their new social lives, thanks to friendships they’ve formed during the summer on the social networking site Facebook.com."

What is interesting to me is that all the stories covered in the article talk about organic peer-to-peer communication with no institutional intervention, for better or worse.

With quotes like

"…freshmen are arriving at school with ready-made friendships waiting for them on the first day."

and

"Facebook helps ease the anxiety of going off to college by giving incoming students a sense of what to expect."

and

"On college message boards within Facebook, entering students can interact with each other and with knowledgeable upperclassmen, trading useful tips and advice about starting school."

it sounds like Facebook is the holy grail that orientation departments have been looking for. If that’s the case then why are so few using it? How could they be using it? How have you used it?

The article doesn’t cover the negative side of meeting your future roommate online. I am sure for some schools that’s caused issues. Does anyone have first hand experience with this topic?

Advisor Sessions/Handouts from APCA Northeast 2007

The Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities held it’s Northeast conference just last week in Syracuse, NY. 30+ Schools attended from across the Northeast region. The conference highlighted entertainment acts as well as a series of ed sessions on various topic related to Student Affairs.

APCA conferences offer a separate learning track of ed sessions for advisor. Due to the extermly tight schedule of the two day conference only three hour long sessions were provided for advisors.

Here is a list of the sessions and handouts/slides(pdf):

1) Creating a Course on Student Activities – Jason Enser (Hilbert College) – jenser@hilbert.edu – handout

This session will discuss how college Student Activities Directors can go about offering an academic credit-bearing course on Student Activities Programming Theory and Application. We will begin by reviewing the 3-credit course that is currently offered at Hilbert College. Other staff members will then have the opportunity to share any courses they have taught related to programming. Suggestions will be provided on how Activity Staff can look to implement a course of this nature at their institutions.

2) Technology and Activities: Current & Future – Swift Kick – sk@swiftkickonline.com – handout

Student Life is changing faster than ever. Advisors are expected to be on the cutting edge, and often find themselves drowned in paperwork and procedures. This session discusses the most current trends in leadership development formats. Listen, share, and discuss best practices with other advisors. In the pre-conference survey, “understanding and using technology” was the number one priority for advisors for the next 3 years. Come find out some of what the next 3 years holds in tech. In this session you will learn about the key trends (in a non-techie way) plus see some of the brand new options in technology that will make your job so much easier! Technology has always promised to allow you to do more with less, come get your hands on the new tools to do just that. We will also cover some new emerging orientation and assessment methodologies and discuss what it means for the future.

3) Organizational Networking Session – APCA – apca@aol.com – handout

It is all about getting to know each other! This Conference is proud to offer a great selection of education sessions for you. HOWEVER, we are all educators and we know that learning in communities and learning from peers is a much more powerful and effective way to create real transformations. With that knowledge in mind, we present our favorite community building energizer, “It’s About Time.” Join us as we kick the off the Conference with the best getting familiar, information exchange, comfort zone creating activity that is out there. See you for “It’s About Time”!!

Your Facebook Network(Tips and Tricks)

I’m sure by now you are fairly familiar with the Facebook interface. Many users don’t use all of Facebook’s features.

The Network page can be a very powerful tool, but the Facebook interface does not allow the Network page to reach it’s full potential. The reason? The only way to access your network is by clicking the network link at the top of the page.

It doesn’t really jump out at you. I think it would be a lot more effective if the News Feed dedicated a portion of the page to list Network Activity.

So what does the Network Page do?

The Networks page lists
Shows all the upcoming events in your network.
Shows all the recently posted items in your network.
Shows all the recently active groups among members of your network.
Shows all the items in your networks marketplace
Shows network statistics such as top music, movies, and Interests, TV shows, Books, and also displays percentages such as sex, political views, and relationship status
.
Shows nearby Networks
Provides a discussion board and a wall.

So what can I do with all this?

Let’s start with the groups.

While searching through the active groups in your network you may stumble upon one titled Fall 2007 Freshmen, or something of the sort. This is a great place to promote, and Recruit. Tom recently posted a blog discussing this The Strange Power of the Go Getter Freshmen.

There may be other great active groups in your network you can promote with. Take a look, just don’t over advertise, because nobody likes spam, and overuse of these groups will begin to look like spam.

Let’s move on to the people in your network.

Near the top of the Network page six random members of your network will be displayed. Above these six members will display how many people are in your network, and a couple links to search or browse within your network. I don’t see much use with the browse feature, as it only displays ten random people in your network.

Click the search link, and then continue on and click the advanced link. I’m sure you have seen the advanced page before, but have you ever used it for student affairs networking? The advanced search page allows you to search within every portion of a Facebook profile. From the basic info to contact info, personal info, education info, and work info. If you are looking for any particular characteristic to promote, or recruit from you can easily search it from here.

Have you ever wondered which staff and faculty members have signed up for Facebook? Well it’s fairly easy to find out. Scroll down till you see education info, and in the school status drop down menu you will see staff, and faculty. select whichever one you would like to search, and click the advanced search button at the bottom of the page

What do your students like to do? what are their interests? Sounds like you need to put out another survey. No not at all, Facebook already did the Assessment for you!! Check the Network Statistics page and you may find what you are looking for. The best part is you can click each particular interest and get a list of the people who have added that interest to their profile.

How can you use this? Look at each category, is there something that jumps out at you that you can create an event about? perhaps if there is a particular type of music that is popular you can have a dance focusing on that type of music. Maybe under interests you see a sport such as ultimate frisbee, why not host a tournament. Look under the movies category, why not play one of the top movies for your students? Be creative, and you can put together a great event.

Does anyone else have any networking, promotional or recruiting tips or tricks that they use with Facebook?

How to Create a Facebook Flyer

Facebook made it incredibly simple to create targeted ads based on location, sex, age, keywords, political view, relationship status, education status, and workplace. These target ads, called flyers, are a great and cheap way to market your events. If you’ve never tired it, here’s a quick tutorial to get your started:

Step 1: Log into your Facebook account

Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of your profile page and click on "advertisers"

Step 3: Click on "Order Facebook Flyers"

Step 4: Click on "Flyers Pro"

Flyers Basic allows you to pay-per-flyer-impression which means that you will pay around $10 to have the flyer appear 5,000 times on Facebook. With Flyers Pro, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad instead of just appearing on their page. I think this is the more effective approach because you are only going to pay if someone is interested and if they don’t click through, you still get the flyer-impression on their page, but you don’t pay for it!

Step 5: Add the info you want to your flyer

Facebook will update your flyer in real time so you know exactly what it will look like when it’s live. You can add text, links, and photos to your flyer.

Step 6: Set a budget and the search criteria for who should see your flyer

This is where the power of the flyer gets impressive. You can narrow your listing down to only a select group of people if you want. Filter by location, sex, age, keywords, political view, relationship status, education status, and workplace. Only those people will see your flyer.

Step 7: See your results

Your flyer will appear on the side of a Facebook profile. And again you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Step 8: Monitor your progress

Facebook allows you to monitor how well your flyer is doing. Click on either of these two tabs and you will see data for your flyer. You can also go back and adjust your flyer’s content or search criteria at any time.