With both the DAYTIME #sachat and EVENING #sachat in full swing yesterday, it’s safe to declare Thursday as #sachat day! The topic yesterday was Connecting with Students on Facebook, and once again we set new records for conversing and learning. The conversation produced 581 comments from 87 student affairs professionals!

In case you missed it, below is a quick recap. If you haven’t yet participated in an #sachat, learn more here.

Full Transcripts
DAYTIME:
View as webpage
Download as PDF
EVENING:
*There was a tech error with the EVENING transcript. We’re working on getting the transcript.

Last Night’s Top Contributers
@edcabellon
@cindykane
@reyjunco
@debrasanborn
@pereirap80
@thestacyface
@brockter
@lvanlysal
@gballingerjr
@ediemccracken

Here’s to another successful #sachat. See you all next week! In the meantime, make sure to join our Facebook Page.

Facebook Insights is an application available to all page
administrators.  It measures
exposure, actions, and behavior related to your page.  Insights gives you almost instant data––it is updated 12
hours after the end of each day. 
Available data includes: geographic and demographic information about
your fan base, a record of interactions (comments, wall posts, photo/video
views, “likes”), and the growth of your fan base over time.  All of this information is displayed in
the Fan Dashboard, and most of it can also be downloaded into a spreadsheet so
you can use the data in any way you see fit.

In Practice: How UW–Milwaukee University Housing Uses
Our Facebook Page

I created our Facebook Page
in July 2009.  After the first week of school, we were hovering under 100
fans.  Next, I harnessed the
influence of the Neighborhood Housing Office, who at that time had over 200
fans of their Facebook Page. 
Within two days of suggesting our page to all of their fans, we had over
200 fans as well.  By this point I
felt that our page had enough content and fan support/interaction to go
public.  So, when we launched our
new website on September 10, I included a prominent link to our Facebook Page
on the homepage.  Since then, our
fan base has grown at a modest pace of 3 pans per day, which should put us over
400 fans by the end of this semester. 
Facebook Insights gives me the tools to track this data easily,
especially if I take note of the dates when actions with potential impact on
our fan base occur (other page suggestions, new advertising strategy).

By downloading the Fan Demographic data from Insights, I can
see that 75% of our fans are between the age of 18-24 and 5% are 13-17 years
old.  So, it’s likely that 80% of
our fans are current or prospective students.  The remaining fans are likely staff members and
parents/family members –– yes, we have had a parent become an active fan of our
page!

Knowing who our fans are is not enough; to truly assess our
Facebook activities, I need to know if students are interacting with our
content.  From the Fan Interaction
data set, I can report on the number of total interactions with our content
(74), average number of interactions per post (1), total photo views (1711),
video plays (170), and comments on our content (30).  Astonishingly, our Facebook Page has had 3,875 page views
from 1,234 visitors since its creation. Soon, Insights will also allow page
administrators to see the Click Through Rate and Engagement Rate, which will
provide a clearer picture of how many fans are responding to your content.

Do you use Facebook Insights for assessment or reporting?  How have you used the data?

We had a very successful live webinar panel on “Facebook and Orientation” yesterday afternoon. We maxed out the available slots with almost 50 schools in attendance.

Thank you again to our wonderful panelists:

Debra Sanborn, Iowa State University (find her on twitter: @debrasanborn)

Dr. Jennifer Sherry, VCU School of Education

Beth Oakley, University of Windsor

This webinar was intended as an experiment in live, distance, collaborative learning for student affairs. The feedback from the participants and the panelists was enthusiastic. We’ll definitely be doing more.

Unfortunately, however, we learned (the hard way) one limitation of our webinar software: it does not record the conference call on the VoIP bridge.

This means that I won’t be able to post the recording of the webinar as I had hoped. My apologies to everyone for this. We will figure out a work around next time to make sure that the information is captured and shared.

I can, however, share some interesting tidbits from the seminar, and Debra will be doing her own recap shortly.

We ran a quick poll of the attendees on the wiki page for the seminar, and here were the results (26 respondents):

1. Do you have a personal Facebook account?

Yep 96.00%
Nope 4.00%

2. Did you officially start your class of 2013 Facebook group?

No 88.46%
Not Sure 7.69%
Yes 3.85%

3. If you didn’t start your 2013 Facebook group, are you in contact with the person who did?

No 64.00%
Yes 16.00%
Not Sure 16.00%
I started the group 4.00%

4. Would you accept a Facebook friend request from a student?

Yep 50.00%
Undecided 26.92%
Nope 23.08%

So, if you haven’t yet, reach out to your 2013 group leaders!

As always, there was some discussion about appropriateness of friending students and the challenges of blending the social and academic context. I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation around these topics.

Here are few follow up resources:

Dr. Sherry participated in a podcast on using Facebook in education. It’s available here.

Faculty on Facebook: Confirm or Deny? available here.

The main Facebook page of VCU school of education is here.

Here are my slides from the APCA National Conference. The first half is Orientation and Facebook, the second half is an overview of the Red Rover pilot program of last fall. (I did not present during the webinar.)

More resources are coming in now. I’ll post them up here as I receive them.

In the spirit of sharing information as widely as possible (just like this blog!) here is a 25 minute video from the recent APCA National conference. The session was about Facebook, Orientation, and reviewing opportunities to help the students.

Facebook and Orientaiton Ed Session at APCA Nationals 2009 from Red Rover on Vimeo.

If you are interested in the subject, please join us for a free webinar tomorrow (Tuesday, April 7th). You can register for the event by clicking here.

I will be moderating the panel, and we will hear from:

Beth Oakley, M.Ed. | Director, Educational Development Centre | University of Windsor
Creating your college’s entering class Facebook group.

Jennifer Sherry, Ph.D. |Secondary Advisor and Recruitment Coordinator | Virginia Commonwealth University
Communicating campus culture, events, and key information using Facebook.

Debra Sanborn, M.A. | Director, Hixson Opportunity Awards | Iowa State University
Increasing engagement by creating targeted groups.

Come join us!

Posted by Kevin Prentiss – Swift Kick

I’m sitting in a hallway at the NACA Northern Plains conference talking with Katie Mraz, who is student Activities Chair for Homecoming at Coe College, in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Katie was in our Advisor Technology Round Up Ed Session this morning and had strong feelings. She said she “Wouldn’t be comfortable with professors or advisors messaging her through Facebook” and then afterwards she said that, through the session conversation, she felt like she wanted to clarify.

The best thing about these conferences, the thing that technology will never replace, is the sit down conversation to really understand someone and their thoughts. Katie is a thinker and articulate. She’s one of the students that can really dig into an issue. She had reflected more on her first comment and wanted to dig in. I was excited to hear it.

I asked her if she would be willing to discuss the matter and let me blog about it, because this issue – whether staff belong on Facebook or not and how they should act – is a big discussion across the country. Any advice she could give would be invaluable. She agreed, pulled up a chair, and we took this picture:

To the discussion . . .

We started with her clarification:

“I’m uncomfortable with the social aspect [of Facebook] being breached with attempts at professional conversations. . . I don’t think Facebook should be used for formal messages. That’s not something I’m comfortable with . . . yet.”

The “yet” seemed to be an undercurrent of our conversation, Katie had this feeling that technological “progress” was inevitable. She kept qualifying her statements with “I might be the only one” or “maybe I’m old fashioned. . .” She had a sense of futility – that she was alone trying to hold the line against insurmountable odds.

I love the students who are willing to stand up for themselves.

Katie made clear distinctions between her advisors and professors. Professors were more clearly in Katie’s “business” category and she was more hesitant with them on Facebook. Like technological progress in general though, she was resigned with that as well:

“I get that professors are going to eventually use Facebook, it’s a tool they are going to use. I accept that, though I don’t know of any professors who are on it now.”

“If they care . . “

She was more open to advisors though. “It’s good for advisors to see who we interact with, it’s good for them to know what’s happening with me, if they care.”

I love the distinction she is making here and think it is critical. In her words:

“Advisors decide how much more they care to know about their students. If they get on Facebook, they will see more about students than they would get to know on a normal basis. Then they have to decide if they want to care about that extra or not.

The advisors that I’m connected to on Facebook are the cool ones. They are the ones I want to be friends with, they are the ones that care. “Cool” is defined by the ones that really want to get to know the students, who are here for the students.”

It’s the words “cool” and “care” that I think are so confusing for advisors. (Let’s start by saying it’s certainly NOT the “care” that lawyers use in liability fear-flag terms like “duty of care.” Katie does not want or need advisors to take responsibility for her.)

In the conversation, this is where the rich experience of sitting across from someone comes into play. When Katie is explaining “cool” and “care”, she softens up, it’s all in the eyebrows (So much connotative meaning is lost with fast paced tech communication.) She means sincere interest, empathy and understanding (opposed to judgment). She means, simply, friends.

“I compartmentalize my communication. I check e-mail first, then I check Facebook. my e-mail is professional, that’s where my advisor talks to me about the NACA presentation, partially because of attachments. Then when I get on Facebook I’m looking for whose birthday it is and what is happening this weekend.

I’m comfortable with professors or staff being on facebook, but I will not be on my most professional in communication with them. I will be “LOL”-ing . . I wouldn’t be comfortable IMing either – if their expectation was professional.”

Katie’s first concern is the relationship. Like most of us, she compartmentalizes her communication and strives to relate appropriately in a variety of contexts. This is an emotionally intelligent and efficient system.

She’s right, I think, to protect her own system by saying she’s not comfortable with professional relationships through Facebook. But she is NOT saying to professionals stay off of Facebook. She is saying cool is good. Cool means you care. If you care enough to be friends with me show up in Facebook and it’s up to you to handle yourself as a “friend”.

I know not every advisor wants to be a friend. I can just hear someone arguing the goal of education should not be to be “cool”.

Right. Be authoritarian and lame, then try to influence at the college level. Try to dodge “care” and insist on not learning anything new yourself. Good luck.

I’m going to hang out with Katie on Facebook. We have lots more teach each other.

I’m sitting in a hallway at the NACA Northern Plains conference talking with Katie Mraz, who is student Activities Chair for Homecoming at Coe College, in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Katie was in our Advisor Technology Round Up Ed Session this morning and had strong feelings.  She said she "Wouldn’t be comfortable with professors or advisors messaging her through Facebook" and then afterwards she said that, through the session conversation, she felt like she wanted to clarify.

The best thing about these conferences, the thing that technology will never replace, is the sit down conversation to really understand someone and their thoughts.  Katie is a thinker and articulate.  She’s one of the students that can really dig into an issue.  She had reflected more on her first comment and wanted to dig in.  I was excited to hear it.

I asked her if she would be willing to discuss the matter and let me blog about it, because this issue – whether staff belong on Facebook or not and how they should act – is a big discussion across the country. Any advice she could give would be invaluable.  She agreed, pulled up a chair, and we took this picture:

To the discussion . . .

We started with her clarification:

"I’m uncomfortable with the social aspect [of Facebook] being breached with attempts at professional conversations. . . I don’t think Facebook should be used for formal messages. That’s not something I’m comfortable with . . . yet."

The "yet" seemed to be an undercurrent of our conversation, Katie had this feeling that technological "progress" was inevitable. She kept qualifying her statements with "I might be the only one" or "maybe I’m old fashioned. . ."  She had a sense of futility – that she was alone trying to hold the line against insurmountable odds.

I love the students who are willing to stand up for themselves.

Katie made clear distinctions between her advisors and professors.  Professors were more clearly in Katie’s "business" category and she was more hesitant with them on Facebook.  Like technological progress in general though, she was resigned with that as well:

"I get that professors are going to eventually use Facebook, it’s a tool they are going to use.  I accept that, though I don’t know of any professors who are on it now."

"If they care . . "

She was more open to advisors though. "It’s good for advisors to see who we interact with, it’s good for them to know what’s happening with me, if they care."

I love the distinction she is making here and think it is critical.  In her words:

"Advisors decide how much more they care to know about their students.  If they get on Facebook, they will see more about students than they would get to know on a normal basis.  Then they have to decide if they want to care about that extra or not. 

The advisors that I’m connected to on Facebook are the cool ones.  They are the ones I want to be friends with, they are the ones that care.  "Cool" is defined by the ones that really want to get to know the students, who are here for the students."

It’s the words "cool" and "care" that I think are so confusing for advisors.  (Let’s start by saying it’s certainly NOT the "care" that lawyers use in liability fear-flag terms like "duty of care." Katie does not want or need advisors to take responsibility for her.)

In the conversation, this is where the rich experience of sitting across from someone comes into play. When Katie is explaining "cool" and "care", she softens up, it’s all in the eyebrows (So much connotative meaning is lost with fast paced tech communication.)  She means sincere interest, empathy and understanding (opposed to judgment).  She means, simply, friends.

"I compartmentalize my communication.  I check e-mail first, then I check Facebook.  my e-mail is professional, that’s where my advisor talks to me about the NACA presentation, partially because of attachments.  Then when I get on Facebook I’m looking for whose birthday it is and what is happening this weekend.

I’m comfortable with professors or staff being on facebook, but I will not be on my most professional in communication with them. I will be "LOL"-ing  . . I wouldn’t be comfortable IMing either – if their expectation was professional."

Katie’s first concern is the relationship.  Like most of us, she compartmentalizes her communication and strives to relate appropriately in a variety of contexts.  This is an emotionally intelligent and efficient system.

She’s right, I think, to protect her own system by saying she’s not comfortable with professional relationships through Facebook.  But she is NOT saying to professionals stay off of Facebook.  She is saying cool is good.  Cool means you care.  If you care enough to be friends with me show up in Facebook and it’s up to you to handle yourself as a "friend".

I know not every advisor wants to be a friend.  I can just hear someone arguing the goal of education should not be to be "cool".

Right.  Be authoritarian and lame, then try to influence at the college level.  Try to dodge "care" and insist on not learning anything new yourself.  Good luck.

I’m going to hang out with Katie on Facebook.  We have lots more teach each other.