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B.C.’s Post-Secondary Digital Learning Strategy

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B.C.’s Post-Secondary Digital Learning Strategy

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The Digital Learning Strategy outlines strategic priorities, recommended actions, guidance and resources to support the post-secondary system with digital learning in B.C. The strategy was developed by the Digital Learning Advisory Committee, a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills and subject-matter experts from across B.C.’s post-secondary system.

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Digital Learning Strategy - Province of British Columbia

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What is the intent?

On June 8, 2022, the Digital Learning Advisory Committee (convened by the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training) produced a consultation draft of their Digital Learning Strategy. The aim is to:
consult broadly with post-secondary institutions (PSIs) and organizations, learners, and Indigenous partners and organizations to collect feedback and solicit interest in participation in follow-up initiatives. Consultations are being initiated and will take place through September 2022.
Following this period of consultation, the goal is to
Refine recommendations and develop an implementation plan, including for pilots and further policy development.
What is the process?
In 2021, the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training ('the Ministry' or AEST) engaged the post-secondary system to better understand and support the use of digital learning models in post- secondary education in British Columbia, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Digital Learning Advisory Committee (DLAC) was initiated to lead a collaborative process to enhance digital post-secondary experiences across the province by:

Identifying the lessons learned from the widespread adoption of digital learning models in post- secondary education over the past two years,

Envisioning how human-centred digital learning environments can complement and enhance British Columbia's (BC) post-secondary system over the next 5-10 years.

The Associate Vice President of Teaching and Learning at the University of Fraser Valley and the Assistant Deputy Minister in the Post-Secondary Policy and Programs Division in the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training served as DLAC's Co-Chairs, exemplifying the collaboration between the post-secondary system and government. DLAC consisted of three Working Groups:
What is the outcome to date?
The collaborative efforts of the DLAC and Working Groups have resulted in:
I set out below the main recommendations. However, much more detail - such as specific recommendations for post-secondary institutions - is available and I strongly recommend you read the whole document if you are interested in a system- and institution-wide digital learning strategy.

Strategic priorities

Strategic Priority 1: Policies and Processes
The successful adaptation of BC's post-secondary system to the rapidly growing and evolving role of technology in post-secondary education will require institutions to update existing policies or develop new secondary operations and to foster innovation and excellence. policies to address the impact of digital technology on all facets of post-
Strategic Priority 2: System Collaboration
System-level coordination and collaboration is required across BC's post-secondary system to reduce the escalating costs related to digital technologies, and to improve the sustainability of BC's post-secondary institutions in response to increasing demands for digital infrastructure including hardware, software, and human resources.
Strategic Priority 3: Enhancing Digital Equity
The post-secondary system contributes to mitigating or eliminating digital inequities by developing BC's digital capabilities within the post- secondary institutions, across the post-secondary system, inclusive of adult higher education entities, and within BC more broadly.
Guidelines for technology-enhanced learning
The Guidelines are intended to assist post-secondary institutions (PSI) in navigating the expanding use of digital technologies supporting teaching and learning by complimenting and guiding PSI policies and processes.
Guidelines

Implementing institution-wide strategies to support an appropriate technology-enhanced environment

Digital literacy
Digital inclusion, or a person's access to adequate hardware and software, is a require[ment] for developing digital literacy....post-secondary institutions (PSIs) are encouraged to consider and address barriers learners might encounter when accessing digital learning spaces including connectivity, software, devices, and learning spaces.
Instructional resources
Three pathways or actions were identified to increase digital literacy across post-secondary communities.
Thematic competencies

Management issues (Technology, Finance, and Administration)

Appendix 3 describes how technological, financial, and administrative adjustments can improve technology-enhanced learning across BC, under different sectors:

My comments

As the document acknowledges, this initiative was driven by the realisation that the pivotal shift to online learning during the pandemic will have repercussions and implications for post-secondary institutions well beyond the pandemic. Online and digital learning will expand and play a more fundamental role in all post-secondary education.

I am very pleased then to see my home province take this initiative to develop a system-wide digital learning strategy that should influence the actions and strategies of individual institutions, programs and courses within the province. I am particularly pleased to see that it is a values- and ethics-driven strategy, with a focus on equity and indigeneity. This is a welcome change from the commercialisation and marketing of the ed tech industry.

However, I would like to see more focus in the strategy on pedagogy and the need for the upskilling of instructors, in order for them to teach effectively in a digital learning environment. A Digital Learning Strategy should include a recognition of the need for faculty training and support. This is an area where government can have a positive influence on institutional policies, through funding and perhaps more importantly, through subtle pressure or encouragement, without impinging on the autonomy of institutions.

Lastly, while I welcome the value- and ethics-driven approach, there are several risks. The first is that digital learning may be held to a higher standard than conventional teaching. Institutions and programs currently vary considerably in terms of embedding values and ethics within their teaching and admission policies. This is particularly important regarding accessibility on campus, and funding of disadvantaged potential students. Do such guidelines and strategies exist for conventional teaching and learning? If not, why not?

Secondly, the document, understandably, clearly reflects the priorities of the current BC (NDP, or left-of-centre) government. A different government may - indeed almost certainly will - have different values and priorities. For instance there is nothing in the current document that ties digital learning to the needs or priorities of the labour market.

The third risk is the potential impact of the strategy on innovation in digital learning. It should be remembered that most new technological developments are initially available only to a select few. A good example is virtual reality. It clearly will not become a 'standard' technology used across all courses or for all students. However would applications of VR to post-secondary teaching need to match the digital equity standard in this document?

Lastly, strategy should never be fixed and immovable. It needs to change as the environment around it changes (it would have been good to have a more extensive environmental scan than just the impact of Covid-19). The availability and use of different technologies can change rapidly in a short time.

In the meantime, this strategy is a very important step forward and the process should be replicated by other jurisdictions although the outcomes will almost certainly be different (if you know of similar digital learning strategies at a system-wide level, please let me know).

The BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Training welcomes feedback on an ongoing basis. If you have input you would like to make to the Digital Learning Strategy, contact the Post-Secondary Digital Policies and Programs Branch at . In addition, ETUG has a Slack forum # to discuss this document. I would also be interested in your views on this document. Please use the comment space below.

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British Columbia drafts a digital learning strategy for its post-secondary education sector | Tony Bates

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On June 8, 2022, the Digital Learning Advisory Committee (convened by the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training) produced a consultation draft of their Digital Learning Strategy. The aim is to: consult broadly with post-secondary institutions (PSIs) and organizations, learners, and Indigenous partners and organizations to collect feedback and solicit interest in participation in follow-up initiatives.

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Digital citizenship refers to the responsible use of technology and the internet. It encompasses a range of behaviors and attitudes related to online communication, information sharing, and digital identity. Digital citizenship involves using technology in a way that is respectful, safe, ethical, and legal.

How do you create a culture of trust in your learning spaces?

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Co-creating Rubrics with Students [Video: 5:35]

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When students design their own rubrics, they engage in higher order thinking such as critical thinking, analysis, and evaluation. They take ownership for their learning and define their own standards. Creating rubrics with students clarifies the expectations for the assignment and checks for their understanding of the components of the assignment. Co-creating rubrics is an inclusive teaching practice when you create transparency for grading, encourage full participation in the creation of the rubrics, and allow students to express their own perspectives.

Slides from this video presentation (PDF)

[Stephanie Foster]: In this session, we'll talk about co-creating rubrics with students. Why should we co-create rubrics with students? Doing such an activity encourages the development of higher-order thinking, such as critical thinking, analysis, and evaluation. Critical thinking is the ability to think, reason, and make judgments. By applying it to this kind of activity, it promotes self-assessment and metacognitive skills, or encourages us to think about our own thinking and learning. Students take ownership for their learning by defining their own standards. Co-creating rubrics with students clarifies the expectation for the assignment and helps to check for their understanding. And it is also an inclusive teaching practice when you create transparency for grading, encourage full participation, and allow students to express their own perspectives. In my experience, it also helps to identify the blind spots that everyone has as an instructor and helps you to address those blind spots before moving forward.

This approach encourages you to use co-creative rubrics and peer review for formative assessment, rather than summative assessment. Formative assessment is an in-process assessment to check with students and see how things are going. Are they learning what you want them to learn? Do they understand what is expected? Formative assessment helps to improve learning and performance by allowing students the metacognitive activities we discussed earlier. Formative assessment clearly communicates learning goals and the criteria for success, it provides clear and detailed feedback, and prepares students to use that feedback for improvement.

Formative assessment also allows you as the instructor to be able to make changes or provide additional instruction. So how should we approach co-creating rubrics with students? Five approaches listed here, some of which come from a book that is included in your show notes, titled Instruction to Rubrics. The first is to start with a complete draft. In this case, you as the instructor would provide a complete draft of a rubric but leave room for changes and clarifications. This may be helpful for students who have not had much experience with rubrics but still allows them to engage with the ideas and offer some options for improving the rubric and improving their own understanding. This probably takes the least amount of time overall; this can be done individually with students or perhaps better done in- as group work. The second option is to start with a partial draft. This may be good for students who have some experience with rubrics or who have some experience with your instruction. In this case, you as the instructor would define the dimensions of the and the performance levels and students would complete the cells. Another option is for you as the instructor to complete some of the cells and ask students to complete the rest of the rubric. This also could be done very well in groups. The third option is to try a progressive model. I describe this like a progressive dinner in which appetizers are served at one house, entree at the next, and dessert at the third, in which case you divide the work of the rubric among several groups so that students are not overwhelmed with creating the entire rubric but instead can work on maybe one dimension of the rubric. You could put this in a Google doc, for example, and students could then come together and discuss the rubric as a whole before moving forward. A fourth approach is to start with learning outcomes. This is particularly useful for upper-level students or graduate students who have had significant experience with rubrics or students who are submitting a multiple-stage project or revisions for projects, in which case you communicate with the students what the learning outcomes are for the assignment and then the students then define all the dimensions and the- and complete the rest of the rubric. Finally you could build the rubric as the instruction progresses. So this works well for ongoing projects for which students will produce multiple drafts at different stages. I've used this very often with courses in which students have a term research paper for instance that they work on for most of the semester. So in this model you would build the rubric as students learn each piece so if you're working on introductions and conclusions that might be a good time to build out those pieces of the rubric, or if you're working on data collection, for instance, sampling techniques, you would create that portion of the rubric that focuses on sampling techniques, for example.

Some approaches to constructing the rubric¹

1. Start with a complete draft. Instructor provides the structure, organization, and standards and leaves room for changes and clarifications. This is helpful for students who have not had much experience with rubrics. This approach probably takes the least amount of time overall.

2. Start with a partial draft. Instructor defines the dimensions and performance levels and students complete the cells. An option is to complete the cells for the highest or lowest levels of performance and ask students to complete the rest of the rubric.

3. Try a progressive model. Like a progressive dinner in which appetizers are served at one house, entrée at the next, and dessert at the third, the labor of constructing the rubric could be shared by groups working on different pieces.

4. Start with learning outcomes. Instructor provides the learning outcomes for the project, and students develop the rubric in its entirety. This approach works best with upper-level or graduate students who have had experience with rubrics or with submitting multiple stages or revisions for projects.

5. Build the rubric as instruction progresses. This works for ongoing projects for which students will produce drafts at different stages, such as research papers and term projects. This might also be useful for assignments that are repeated with the expectation that students improve their performance with each submission. Using lab reports as an example: When you are working on sampling techniques, have students create the portion of the rubric that focuses on sampling (e.g. chooses correct tool, measures accurately, uses safety protocols).

¹Some of these approaches come from Stevens & Levi (2013)
Applications from CU Boulder instructors

Participants in a workshop were asked to suggest ways in which these ideas could be used in their own classrooms.

For a writing assignment that requires students to integrate concepts learned throughout the semester, both formative assessment and co-creation of rubrics can be beneficial. For a large classroom setting, co-creation can be done by recitation sections. A recitation section can be divided into 3-4 students per group, and then students can be asked to break down the expectations in the assignment guideline. We can then regroup to brainstorm about the expectations/criteria. During the process, we can encourage students to think about the reasons we have the assignment (focusing on learning outcomes), how the assignment helps them to achieve the goals of the course, and what the final product will look like in order to achieve those goals.

For lower-level Spanish courses, it is probably best to at least have a detailed discussion about the rubrics with students (for oral exams and writing assessments). But for a course like AP Spanish (high school), it would be extremely useful to identify the learning objectives that the College Board establishes and then have students work on defining what each of those learning objectives would actually look like as rubric criteria. Many students would benefit from seeing writing samples and understanding why each writing sample earned the score it did.

An instructor might work with students to build the rubric section by section, at the end of each class, over the course of a semester or instructional unit. So for instance, a class on selecting and evaluating sources of information might finish by co-creating the relevant section of the rubric: i.e. the part that requires X number of sources, or X different types of source, and so on. A class on the revision process might finish with a group discussion of how this should be reflected in the rubric. This would keep students returning to the rubric, rather than allowing them to forget about it and move on.

To engage students, the instructor could run polls on different parts of the rubric, or get students to debate the benefits and drawbacks of different options.

In a chemistry course, most rubric-based assignments involve some sort of experiment lab report or a presentation. The most effective method for students to co-create the rubric for a lab report is to give them a starting point of what is expected. Using a "partial draft" method would provide the dimensions that the instructor thinks are important and necessary, and leaves room for students to decide how they should be evaluated and judged. A good approach might be to allow students to define dimensions based on experiences they've had in previous courses, then work together to define the assessment scale.

Selected Resources

Fraile, J., Panadero, E., & Pardo, R. (2017). Co-creating rubrics: The effects on self-regulated learning, self-efficacy and performance of establishing assessment criteria with students. Studies In Educational Evaluation. DOI: 10.1016/j.stueduc.2017.03.003

Selke, M. J. G. (2013). Rubric assessment goes to college: Objective, comprehensive evaluation of student work. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Stevens, D. D., & Levi, A. J. (2013). Introduction to rubrics: An assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback, and promote student learning (second edition). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

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When students design their own rubrics, they engag

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Netiquette is a made-up word from the words net and etiquette. Netiquette thus describes the rules of conduct for respectful and appropriate communication on the internet.

A netiquette agreement is a set of guidelines or rules that establish proper online behavior and etiquette within your learning community. It outlines the expected conduct for individuals who are communicating or interacting online, such as in learning management systems (VIULearn), chats, or social media platforms.

Netiquette agreements typically cover a variety of topics, such as respectful communication, appropriate language and tone, privacy and security, online safety, intellectual property rights, and responsible use of technology. These guidelines aim to promote a positive and productive online environment, prevent misunderstandings or conflicts, and encourage responsible and ethical behavior.

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What is Netiquette? 20 Internet Etiquette Rules

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What is netiquette? ✓ With these 20 rules, you and your children will learn the right behavior on the internet and in online communication. ✓

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I will:

Use digital devices, networks, and software in school for educational purposes and activities

Keep my personal information (including home/mobile phone number, mailing address, and user password) and that of others private

Show respect for myself and others when using technology including social media

Give acknowledgement to others for their ideas and work

Report inappropriate use of technology immediately.

Jesse Stommel
Cheating and plagiarism are pedagogical problems, not technological ones. They’re not inevitable. We can address issues of academic integrity by designing proactively and together with students, creating a culture of trust rather than suspicion. pic.twitter.com/96GqQoQy82

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Turning a forbidding acceptable use policy into a friendlier digital empowerment guideline can shift your school culture into a more tech-friendly place.

Photo credit: Institute of Play

An acceptable use policy is a document that is present in every school district around the country. The purpose of this policy is to provide safe parameters for exploring digital resources and using school-issued devices properly. It also ensures that schools do their very best to block out the darkest corners of the web. And while these policies are effective and required, they have not evolved in their semantics.

From Acceptable to Empowered

Within the development of these school-wide policies, several shifts need to happen. My observation about the need for a semantic shift, probably one of the biggest shifts requited, reflects how acceptable use policies are interpreted by students. Essentially, these policies read more like a legal document rather than a document that students can understand and carry out. Additionally, we need to shift the focus from "you shouldn't do that" to a sense of empowerment around technology. In short, schools should place a positive connotation around technology use.

Some districts have started implementing responsible digital use guidelines or empowered digital use policies. Regardless of the title you choose, it should provide a sense of purpose for using technology beyond the idea that "said devices may get me in trouble." Similarly, this policy should be something that all students can understand and interpret. It should be simple and direct without creating an air of fear when signing on the dotted line.

Here is an example that I've used to begin simplifying my district's Empowered Digital Use Policy:

I understand that using digital devices (whether personal or school owned) and the GDRSD network is a privilege, and when I use them according to the Responsible Use Guidelines I will keep that privilege.

I will:

Use digital devices, networks, and software in school for educational purposes and activities

Keep my personal information (including home/mobile phone number, mailing address, and user password) and that of others private

Show respect for myself and others when using technology including social media

Give acknowledgement to others for their ideas and work

Report inappropriate use of technology immediately.

This novel policy fits within the parameters of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) and the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and doesn't cloud the tasks with lofty, legal verbiage. Another great resource for developing a school-wide policy for digital use is the wiki Unmasking the Digital Truth created by Dr. Wesley Fryer. Dr. Fryer breaks down the legal verbiage for each policy enacted by the federal government and shares what schools must comply with and what they can allow.

Health, Wellness, and Information

Once you've developed a policy, it's time to introduce the concept of digital health and wellness to students. This term may sound like I'm talking about calorie-counting apps, but it actually refers to making good choices online much like you would for your body's health. One of the best places to start is Common Sense Media. They offer iBooks and printable digital citizenship curriculum for grades K-12. These resources look great on an iPad, but they also offer a printable scope and sequence curriculum that allow teachers to prepare students for engaging in a digital space.

Beyond creating policy and teaching digital citizenship concepts, schools must include parents in these conversations around digital health and wellness. One of the biggest challenges for parents and schools is to develop policies and practice for a subject matter that is constantly in motion. As soon as you feel like you've gotten a handle on Instagram and Snapchat, something else comes along -- like Yik Yak -- that throws a curveball into every policy and practice you've created.

In my roles as both an instructional technology specialist and a director of technology, I used a variety of resources to make every attempt at staying ahead of the curve so that I could help the district, teachers, and parents understand what applications were out there and which of them posed an issue. Additionally, to inform parents on these new apps, I would offer community tech nights in our district. These events had a focused topic and took place in the evening. I targeted them toward parents but invited all community members to participate. The purpose was to share information about what apps students were using in class and what apps they might be using outside of school. In addition to the informative pieces, we would segue into a workshop setting where attendees could actually use the app itself to better understand how it works.

Whether your district employs technology or is just beginning to plan, it's never too late to start integrating lessons on digital citizenship. The two key elements in developing a healthy digital culture in your school are leading with transparency and establishing trust. Administrators and teachers need to place their trust in students and empower them to use the technology provided. This includes technology directors who may occasionally find it easier to block the entire internet rather than allow access to digital information. School administrators and teachers should also be upfront and open with the parents about what applications or digital resources they are incorporating into the classroom. If trust and transparency are leading your technology initiatives, schools will begin to see great successes in teaching and learning.

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Digital Citizenship: Developing a Culture of Trust and Transparency

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Turning a forbidding acceptable use policy into a friendlier digital empowerment guideline can shift your school culture into a more tech-friendly place. Photo credit: Institute of Play An acceptable use policy is a document that is present in every school district around the country.

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Here's an example of a netiquette agreement for higher education:

As a member of this academic community, I agree to abide by the following principles of netiquette:

Respectful Communication: I will use respectful language and tone in all communications, including online discussions, email, and chats, and I will not engage in personal attacks, threats, or harassment.

Proper Grammar and Spelling: I will use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation in all online communications.

Appropriate Use of Emoticons and Acronyms: I will use emoticons and acronyms appropriately, and only when they enhance, rather than detract from, the clarity of my message.

Posting and Sharing Materials: I will respect the intellectual property rights of others, and only post or share materials that I have the right to share or that are properly cited.

Respect for Diversity: I will respect the diversity of perspectives, opinions, and backgrounds of my fellow students and instructors.

Timely and Responsive Communication: I will communicate in a timely and responsive manner, and will acknowledge receipt of messages promptly.

Privacy: I will respect the privacy of others and will not share personal information or sensitive material without their explicit consent.

By agreeing to these principles of netiquette, I recognize that I am contributing to an online community of learning that values respect, integrity, and responsible communication.

(OpenAI, personal commuication, March 01, 2023)

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Map w Jamboard
https://jamboard.google.com/d/1YIciql5_Mf35m2CUMOFK8bZ3OXWlHVeMirzXU_GA0CE/edit?usp=sharing

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The mapping process is a Visitors and Residents based group activity which is designed to explore individuals engagement with the Web. It's a good starting point for discovering how staff, students or clients are using the Web. A neat explanation of the activity can be found here.
An openly licensed version of the facilitators guide and workshop slides can be downloaded here.
The second section (the activity on day two) in the workshop is designed to help participants consider the digital identity and presence of their institution or group. The workshop was written for the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme but can be modified for different audiences, including students. There is a closely designed structure and extensive notes - plus example V&R maps to help you run the session and links to further resources.

The document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence so you can edit, modify and reproduce it to fit your context/needs. The workshop plan provides useful facilitation notes on what is likely to emerge via discussion informed by the mapping process and advice on how to nurture thinking and reflection. Crucially the workshop plan also outlines possible 'next-steps' after the mapping activity so that participants make the most of what they have learnt.

'Vanilla' version of the slides with detailed notes - designed to be edited and adapted.
The activity has been used by various people in a range of institutions including Cambridge University, The Open University, University College London (in which it forms part of their doctoral training programme), Carnegie Mellon, The New School and the American University of Paris. In a Higher Education Academy funded project I helped 18 institutions across the UK to gain a picture of how their students were engaging online by using the process.

Let me know if you are interested in me running a mapping session for you or have a go yourself. If you run a session please tag any Tweets with #VandR.

This video of me creating my own map is a useful guide for running mapping sessions:

There is also a useful video in which I introduce the Visitors and Residents idea:

Here are some example Visitor and Resident maps:

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The mapping process is a Visitors and Residents based group activity which is designed to explore individuals engagement with the Web. It's a good starting point for discovering how staff, students or clients are using the Web. A neat explanation of the activity can be found here.

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It's hard to understate the importance of social media in higher education marketing.

Why?

Because teens - in other words, the ideal target audience for most higher ed marketing campaigns - use social media a lot.

According to Common Sense Media, US teenagers average almost 7.5 hours of screen time daily, with about 16% of that time browsing social media. A further 39% is spent streaming video and TV on sites like YouTube, another social platform.

It's hardly surprising usage is so high, given that 95% of teens now have smartphones and 88% have access to home computers, according to Pew Research Center.

So, social media is a massive opportunity for higher education marketers.

Are you looking to get more from your social media efforts? Check out these 20 top-notch campaigns from universities across North America.

1. University of Iowa

According to RivalIQ's Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, the University of Iowa has been America's top university for social engagement for four successive years. So we simply had to include it on our list of the best higher education social media accounts.

The institution performs strongly on Instagram and Twitter, but its Facebook presence is the true standout.

So what's it doing so well?

A lot of things. But one brilliant tactic is its use of high-profile alumni to promote the university:

Research from Common Sense and SurveyMonkey found that teens are just as likely to listen to celebrities, influencers, and personalities as friends, family, and news organizations.

So showcasing big-name former students can be a highly effective promotional tactic. If you can encourage them to tell their followers how much they loved their college experience, all the better!

2. James Madison University

Virginia's James Madison University (JMU) is the top dog for higher ed Instagram, according to RivalIQ.

Artsy campus shots are its specialty. But it's not just about the images themselves; it's about the post format.

Specifically, JMU is a big fan of Instagram carousels. In a review of the account's 50 most recent Insta posts, we discovered that 42% were carousels.

For comparison, the University of Iowa - ranked third for Instagram engagement and first overall by RivalIQ - incorporated carousels in 34% of its 50 latest posts.

Why does JMU lean so heavily into carousels?

Because when you add multiple images to a carousel post, Instagram re-serves those posts to users who didn't interact with them the first time. That makes them a fantastic vehicle for driving social engagement.

3. University of Georgia

When it comes to higher ed social media, everyone loves a winner.

RivalIQ's research discovered that posts featuring big "wins" produced engagement lifts across all the social platforms it studied.

As the home of the national championship-winning Bulldogs, the University of Georgia is more fortunate than most when it comes to winning big.

And it's not afraid to shout about it, as a glance at its Instagram account will confirm.

Of course, only one school can have the country's top football team a year. Plenty of institutions are far more renowned for their academic prowess than their sporting achievements (remember, NYU doesn't even have a football program).

But "wins" don't have to be confined to the sporting arena.

If one of your students has received a special prize, or you've won a notable award, that's something to celebrate.

4. University of South Carolina

Despite having almost 85 million users in the US, TikTok is still comparatively underutilized by higher ed institutions.

According to Higher Visibility, the University of South Carolina ranks number 7 on the list of most popular colleges on the platform. It's one of the relatively few schools to have developed a solid TikTok presence.

That's because it takes time to create native content that resonates with users on TikTok. A great example is this cheer video, which has notched more than 270,000 views at the time of writing:

5. Central Michigan University

Sticking with the TikTok theme, another school that's smashing it on the fun-sized video platform is Central Michigan University (CMU).

Higher education TikTok accounts generate a median engagement rate of 6.7%. That's extremely strong by the standard of other platforms. But it pales in comparison to CMU's astonishing 16.85% engagement rate:

Despite having just 14,400 TikTok followers on TikTok, the school has more than 900,000 likes, with one of its videos generating a staggering 5.5 million views:

This post highlights TikTok's strongest suit: its ability to help brands reach new audiences that don't follow and might never have heard of them.

Sure, not every video you produce will generate millions of views, and CMU's second-highest performer has a comparatively paltry 10,800 views. But the more you create, the more likely you will learn what works and bring in big numbers.

6. Brigham Young University

Another institution that punches above its weight when it comes to generating likes, shares, and comments is Utah's Brigham Young University, which was rated as the top school for Twitter engagement in 2021:

Twitter isn't known as a video platform, but that doesn't mean it can't be effective.

Twitter's figures show more than two billion video views on the platform daily, with video posts generating 10X more engagements than non-video posts.

Brigham Young regularly posts video content on Twitter, such as this bird's eye view of LaVell Edwards Stadium, which has generated more than 12,000 views:

That means roughly one-sixth of its Twitter followers have watched it.

7. Harvard University

According to BestColleges, Harvard is the most followed higher education institution in the US, with 6.5 million followers on Facebook alone.

The school's average Facebook post generates nearly 1,600 reactions and 165 shares, so it's doing something right. The University regularly showcases news and events from around the university.

A good example is this post, which highlights members of the class of 2026 during their first day on campus:

This simple collection of images has generated 28,000 reactions and more than 7,000 shares at the time of writing, demonstrating the value of having "boots on the ground" creating content when anything important happens at your school.

8. Berry College

The phrase "if you've got it, flaunt it" definitely applies to the world of higher ed social media.

We've already looked at how the University of Georgia has taken advantage of showcasing its sporting achievements.

Another Georgia institution, the tiny Berry College - with a total enrollment of just 2,200 students - might not have the country's best football program.

But few schools can compare when it comes to the sheer size and beauty of its campus, which makes up an astonishing 27,000 acres, covering everything from rolling foothills to babbling rivers to forested parkland.

Unsurprisingly, this is a prominent feature of the school's social media content, especially on visual platforms like Instagram:

The message here is clear:

Every school is great at something. Figure out what you do better than most, and make that the focus of your social strategy.

9. University of San Diego

Another school that highlights its surroundings is the University of San Diego, named the most beautiful campus in the US by the Princeton Review based on student ratings.

As you might imagine, USD isn't shy about highlighting this trait, particularly on Instagram:

Because who wouldn't want to spend their time at college surrounded by palm trees and striking Spanish Renaissance architecture?

10. Tarleton State University

Social media can be a great leveler.

Smaller institutions can outperform their larger rivals on engagement with a smart strategy and a little (okay, a lot) of effort.

Tarleton State University (TSU) is an excellent example of this, one of the smaller institutions to make RivalIQ's list of the top 10 schools on social media.

Look at Tarleton State's Facebook page, and it's clear that the school's marketing team has paid close attention to branding.

TSU's purple-and-white color scheme is apparent across pretty much every image on its feed:

This might seem like a minor point, but branding matters. It helps followers pick out your posts from their busy social feeds, making it easier to build an online community.

11. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Regarding social media reach, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ranks number two, based on research by Awario.

MIT dedicates its Twitter presence to highlighting the unique research conducted by its scientists.

As well as generating plenty of reach and engagement, this approach helps to cement MIT as a world leader in science and technology.

It's certainly worked hard to build that reputation, with various scientific and technological advances coming out of the college - including the discovery of quarks and the development of radar.

12. University of Nebraska-Lincoln

A big piece in the higher education marketing puzzle lies in figuring out the best way to position a given town, city, or state to prospective students.

Do you highlight the fantastic social life? The history and culture? The beautiful scenery? The friendly attitude toward students? Or something else entirely?

Rather than just discussing this in a few throwaway posts, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln built a whole social content campaign.

The Discover Nebraska series features native Instagram videos using a clean, striking design, engaging imagery, and attractive graphics to showcase the best of the state.

It also allows the university to promote highlights of its events calendar, feature profiles of former students, and get more eyes on its news stories.

13. University of Manitoba

Universities are some of our oldest institutions.

Take the University of Manitoba, founded back in 1877.

While all that heritage has a lot of benefits from a higher education social media marketing perspective, it can also have its downsides. How on earth do you go about rebranding an organization that was around when Billy the Kid was still stalking the Old West?

The University of Manitoba decided to use social media to communicate and explain its recent rebranding:

As well as showcasing visual elements of the new branding, this campaign directs viewers toward a dedicated landing page that explains the new logo and goes in-depth on how it came about.

14. Baylor University

Baylor University tops the tree regarding its social media marketing strategy. Or at least it did in 2016, according to research from Engagement Labs.

The study awarded Baylor a higher score than any other college for its Facebook presence and placed the university third for its Twitter strategy.

In particular, Baylor was applauded for its "high-quality content," focusing predominantly on campus life and the successes of its sporting teams. This focus helped it rack up the most likes and comments per 1,000 fans of any university.

This approach is still central to Baylor's higher ed marketing plans - and it still bags the university a ton of engagement:

The lesson here? Once you've found what resonates with your audience, keep doing it!

15. University of Phoenix

The biggest reason for going to college is to get a better job.

That might sound obvious, but it's important to remember what your audience wants to hear. What would persuade prospective students to choose your institution over a rival?

The University of Phoenix recognizes this. It's been running a Facebook ad campaign to promote its Career Optimism Index, which the university says it created to "address broad, persistent and systemic barriers to career advancement." These barriers are an area of massive interest to potential students.

This whole campaign is a fantastic example of thought leadership on social media. They included several juicy stats in their ads, all from original research.

The ads link to the Career Optimism Index landing page, which contains a ton of additional insights on the theme of career progression.

This campaign paints the University of Phoenix as an authority in career development and an organization that genuinely cares about helping people get more from the world of work.

16. University of California Los Angeles

Want a simple example of how universities can tap into current events to boost brand awareness? Look no further than this higher education marketing campaign from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA):

UCLA ran this ad campaign across Facebook and Instagram from late March to early April 2020, which, as you'll likely remember, was right at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

This ad invited people to download a selection of images showcasing iconic UCLA buildings and locations to use as backgrounds for video calls.

The timing on this is perfect because late March was precisely when so many of us first started working (and learning) from home, causing search interest for the phrase "Zoom background" to spike through the roof:

Think about it: whenever someone downloaded one of those images and used it as their video call background, they promoted the university. A great tactic!

17. Binghamton University

Humor is a powerful tool in higher ed marketing (provided you get it right).

That's not just my opinion - it's a scientific fact.

For instance, one study from the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice discovered that viewers receive humorous social video content more favorably than serious entertainment.

When you think of humor on social media, you naturally think of memes.

Whether memes are a good fit for your strategy depends heavily on your audience and tone of voice. Binghamton University is comfortable using them, such as when it jumped on the Bernie Sanders meme that blew up in January 2021:

This post worked for a couple of reasons:

1. The university posted it before the meme format became played out.

2. There's a legit reason for posting this - Bernie taught at the university in 1990, so it makes sense for Binghamton to get involved in the conversation.

In other words, this post managed to get the "funny" bit right while advancing the university's message.

18. University of Michigan

The following example from the University of Michigan sticks with the humor theme.

Like the Bernie example above, the University of Michigan proves that sometimes the best social media opportunities are unplanned.

For anyone struggling to recall obscure moments in social media history, this Twitter post references how a picture of an egg became the most-liked image on Instagram back in January 2019:

Not only does this video tap into something topical, it also showcases locations around the University of Michigan, which means it's effectively a double win for the institution's higher ed marketing team.

19. New York University

New York University (NYU) famously doesn't have a football team.

That seems like a massive oversight considering college football a huge deal. While attendance declines, the average game still attracts close to 40,000 fans.

As such, the lack of a football program could put off potential students - not just potential college athletes but regular students craving the social side of college sports.

However, the NYU marketing team has had plenty of time to come to terms with this (the university discontinued the football program in 1953, so it isn't exactly a recent occurrence).

Rather than ducking the issue, the university leaned into it with a Facebook video series highlighting all the other incredible sports on offer at the university:

Highlights include a World Archery competitor, an award-winning baton twirler, and a Nascar driver.

20. University of Central Missouri

This University of Central Missouri campaign demonstrates the value of understanding your audience's pain points in higher education social media marketing.

So what are prospective students' biggest concerns?

Well, according to research from Mission.org, their top two concerns are:

1. Choosing the right major

2. College fees and debt

This Facebook and Instagram ad speaks to both of these pain points while adding a third - the length of time taken to graduate:

That's a compelling piece of copywriting.

The ad reassures its audience by speaking to the university's heritage: "Trust 150 years of quality education."

It effectively says: "We understand your concerns, and we're here to help you out."

Conclusion
This blog is a diverse selection of social campaigns from higher education institutions.

We've got humor in there; we've got heritage; we've got sports. We've got an egg rolling along the ground in Ann Arbor.

This wide array of examples shows there's no one-size-fits-all approach to social media in higher education marketing. What works for you might not work for anyone else; it depends on your audience and brand.

That's why it pays to research what your audience wants and to try a wide range of tactics to learn what resonates.
Are you interested in more content like this? Make sure to sign up for our Social Media Conference for Higher Education.

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20 Inspiring Examples of Higher Education Institutions on Social Media

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It's hard to understate the importance of social media in higher education marketing. Why? Because teens - in other words, the ideal target audience for most higher ed marketing campaigns - use social media a lot. According to Common Sense Media, US teenagers average almost 7.5 hours of screen time daily, with about 16% of that time browsing social media.

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Affinity Diagram Tutorial: How to Create an Affinity Diagram

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As a writer, the content I love creating has often found a home on social media. As communicators in higher education know, social media is the perfect avenue for creating connections, building the university's brand, and tapping into multiple resources, including alumni and corporate research partners who can provide work-learn and co-op opportunities to students. It's no secret that it's extremely valuable. Having social media in your institution is almost a total no-brainer.

I was a student journalist at the University of Toronto when I first came into contact with the higher ed communications world. I loved how communicators at the helm of these social media channels, the unknown voices behind the posts that we all read as students, were able to speak so directly to students, staff, faculty, alumni, and external audiences so quickly and have such a wide far-reaching impact through a single tweet or share.

I graduated from the University and sought a career in marketing and communications. I found roles within research communications at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and most recently, the University of British Columbia.

The universities I've worked at use different social media guidelines and their strategies for social media are often varied. As I write and edit content and push it out into the world through social media, that it's not enough to just create the content. It's important to have a strategy. Publishing to social media alone won't get you the traction you perhaps desire, to engage students and get information out quickly about issues that impact them.

Here are some tried-and-true steps that I feel work for me as a social media strategist and marketing and communications professional within higher education, and I'd love to share them with you:

1. Create social media goals. For example, build a collaborative social media environment, build strategic opportunities while strengthening brand and reputation, and establish social media as a vibrant channel of communications within the university. The tactics would then include the number of times to post each week to each platform, broad buckets in which content could fall into, and efforts to build relationships across social by using mentions, shares, and responding to comments where needed and appropriate.

2. Create social media guidelines. The social media guidelines I've created in the past have included naming conventions, suggestions for avatars and profile pictures, notes on how to create bios for each account, and best practices for how to engage users online and how to ensure videos and photos are shareworthy while also adhering to the university's brand guidelines. Having a best practices document is crucial for ensuring everybody is on the same page, that the voice behind the platform doesn't fluctuate or deviate from the brand of the university, and it prevents confusion.

3. Create a workflow for your social. I've used spreadsheets, Asana, and Trello for creating the workflow for the social media accounts I've been responsible for within my roles in higher ed comms... But there are PLENTY of other tools, like Hootsuite, Buffer, and CoSchedule. A workflow ensures that everyone is on the same page and that the content is organized and ready to be distributed according to the plan.

4. Create a social media style guide. The styles for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. are all different. For example, Facebook is heavy on visuals, calls-to-action and longer text, while Instagram requires that text be kept short and sweet, that hashtags are used, and that content is visual. Find which platform works best for what you wish to communicate, and then communicate it in a way that works for that platform and your audience and your main purpose.

These are some useful tips for how to "up your social media game" as a higher ed communicator:

1. Create opportunities to tell stories. And then tell them well.

Obvious content for social media includes the usual suspects: key news, events, accomplishments, awards, rankings. However, as a writer, I'm a huge fan of having stories speak for the university's success. I love a good story, and who doesn't? Stories are key to connection.

My best tips for storytelling on social media include:

a) Make it easy for people to share stories with you. If you want to have a strong story every now and then on your social media accounts, have a way for people to get in touch with you, whether they're students, staff, faculty, alumni, or community members who are engaged somehow with the university. Make it easy for them to tell you their story. Be inviting and open to receiving all kinds of stories.

b) Be a busy bee and network with everybody. You'll hear stories through the grapevine and spread the word that you're always on the lookout for those whose stories should be told.

c) Hone your copywriting skills. Social media copy is crisp and short and to-the-point. You should be able to grab attention with a strong hook and keep it there long enough for your audience to feel compelled to read the rest of the story.

d) Get to know your audience. Once you know what students are talking about and what they're interested in, you'll be able to get on their level and write directly to them in a way that truly engages. The same goes for any other audience.

e) Learn how to utilize the stories feature on different channels. Facebook, SnapChat, and Instagram users enjoy the stories feature. This could be a great way to engage your audience.

2. Match your social media goals with institutional goals. It goes without saying that the social media strategy ought to support the institution's overall communications strategy. Consider recruitment and retention, alumni engagement, and enrollment increases as issues that you can support through your social media strategy.

3. Leverage analytical tools to tell you what you're doing right and what needs improvement.

4. Allow user-generated content to populate your social media channels. This essentially means that you allow existing students or even alumni to get involved with your social media accounts.

I think the main thing with social media in higher education is to create brand awareness by posting about things that show your audience what it is like to be a part of the university.

Did you see a beautiful sunset on campus? Upload that to Instagram! Did a faculty member make a research breakthrough? Congratulate them on Facebook! Did a researcher win a teaching award? Share the news on Twitter! Let it be known that this university is special and that we celebrate each other's wins. And this is what it's like to be on campus!

As a person behind the institution's social media, your job is to show people what it's like to be a part of the campus and to show off what the university has to offer!

By: Larissa Fleurette Ho, June 14, 2020

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How to create a social media strategy in higher education

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As a writer, the content I love creating has often found a home on social media. As communicators in higher education know, social media is the perfect avenue for creating connections, building the university's brand, and tapping into multiple resources, including alumni and corporate research partn

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Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard

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Social media usage is now the standard for higher education institutions. From student relations to recruitment to fundraising to crisis management, it's a powerful communications tool for post-secondary institutions of all stripes.

That's why we'll be digging into the expanding role of social media in higher education in this post. Read on to learn how to use social tools to build your institutional reputation and foster a sense of collegiate community.

Advantages of social media in higher education

Social media is relevant at just about every level of education, but it can seriously benefit higher education institutions to understand how social tools work. If you work in the post-secondary world, here are some of the main advantages of learning the tricks of the social media trade.

Promote your values and achievements

Social media use in higher education is significant in setting the tone on campus. Promote and represent the kind of culture your school aims to cultivate by making your institution's mission and values known.

It's a way to show students (past, present, and future) that you share values with them. This is critical, given that value alignment can inform everything from small purchases to major life decisions.

Tufts shared its commitment to democracy with a video series spotlighting its faculty.

Whether you're broadcasting commitments to sustainability, investments in the community, or advances in medical research, bragging isn't just a chance to show off. It lets prospective students, faculty, and partners know they're welcome and supported. It can communicate the types of behavior that won't be tolerated, too.

Promoting your achievements also gives your current class and alumni a chance to take a little pride in their alma mater. So go on: show off! Take followers on a tour of your state-of-the-art labs, announce award-winning research, highlight student accomplishments, or rally school spirit by celebrating athletic victories.

The University of British Columbia, for instance, shared its recent collaboration with clothing brand Lululemon, highlighting its innovative research into technical fabrics.

Connect with alumni and boost fundraising efforts

If you work in higher education, you already know that alumni are a major source of fundraising contributions. And if you're looking to connect with graduates, social media is here to help.

Colleges and universities can use social networks to maintain connections to graduates. In fact, there are plenty of schools that maintain social accounts that are specifically geared to alumni relations-for instance, Facebook accounts to bring together alumni from specific cities.

Social can also be a great publicity tool for fundraising events, like Columbia University's annual Giving Day campaign.

Social fundraising campaigns are a way to empower alumni, students, staff, and faculty to be active advocates for the school. Integrate these social campaigns with a CRM system. This will allow you to attribute funds, measure ROI, and see the cold-hard proof that your big Instagram push was a success.

Take advantage of UGC (user-generated content)

Your campus is jam-packed with digital natives. On TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and beyond, students are creating content around the clock. In other words: you've got a wealth of authentic student posts at your fingertips to help boost your institution's profile.

Take advantage of all this juicy content with a hashtag like the University of Alabama's #wherelegendsaremade. And encourage students to use it as they share photos and videos across various social media platforms.

You can even repost the best ones (crediting the authors, of course) on your official channels.

Social media contests encourage students to share content you can use. Simple rewards like university logo clothing work well as motivational prizes. Plus, those promotional clothing items will likely appear in later posts, organically promoting the university.

Develop new learning opportunities

Social media in higher education presents powerful opportunities for creative thinking and presentation. As important as traditional information sources like books and academic journals are, social media can be a valid research or communication tool. Maybe students could use a course-based hashtag to collect Tweets and discuss their impact or meaning, or dive deep into Facebook for a critical look at misinformation and propaganda in the 21st century.

This Memorial University course used Twitter as a discussion forum: students discussed readings and research for their Human Kinetics and Recreation 1000 course using the hashtag #HKR1000.

#HKR1000
Term Assignment #1 is due today by 3:59pm (NL time)!

You need 21 days of mood checks (MC); submit your mood heat map, total # of MC bar graph, and 250-300 word analysis of your moods in 1 docx. Look for patterns!

Submit early to mitigate any technical issues!

- Laura Squires (@MUNles162) October 26, 2021

The A. Holly Patterson Library at Nassau Community College provides resources for instructors to incorporate social media education in assignments. These include guides on information literacy and spotting fake news.

The importance of social media in higher education

Social media is a prolific and popular communication tool in our modern society: the way most people in the Western world build connections and exchange information. More than 4.6 billion people around the world use some form of social media-that's more than 75 percent of the eligible global population.

Not every university should feel compelled to run out and start a TikTok account. But to ignore social media overall is to miss an opportunity to quickly and easily share important messages, build community, and expand your institution's profile.

New York University, for instance, uses Twitter to share news about expanding their campus, exciting academic publications, new scholarships, and more. These posts reach 184,000 followers.

We couldn't resist SPRINKLING a little SWEETNESS around campus as students head into the final stretch of the semester. 🧁 Study well, NYU! 💜 pic.twitter.com/susnKNjDPC

- New York University (@nyuniversity) December 13, 2022

Social media is flexible and approachable. It brings people together, and offers a platform for sharing important information.

If your job as a higher education institution is to educate and inform, consider your social media accounts to be digital classrooms. They are spaces where all are welcome to come and learn more about you, your accomplishments, and your values.

Using social media in higher education: 14 essential tips

Here's how higher education institutions can make the most of their social media accounts.

1. Attract new students and staff

A recent study by Niche Partners found 73% of aspiring students use social media to research schools. Make it easy for students to picture their future at your university. Showcase college life with virtual tours (l ike this one of Wegner Library from Harvard) and student takeovers.

Feature the clubs, communities, and social opportunities attendees can get involved in. Show off the campus, or a super-fun football game (wee see you, U or Idaho Vandals!). Help them understand the benefits your institution offers beyond academic study.

@uidahovandals
POV your first home football game 🏈 Too many things to love about it. What's your favorite? ⬇️ #vandalfootball #kibbiedome #uidaho #vandals

♬ original sound - University of Idaho

2. Listen as much as you share

Social media is a powerful broadcasting tool, but it can be a great space for listening, too.

Students are conversing, interacting, calling out their profs, airing complaints, participating in trends, critiquing cafeteria food, and engaging in rousing debate. This chatter can offer some intriguing insights into life on campus or highlight issues that are bubbling under the surface.

All this makes it essential to conduct active social listening, monitoring key accounts, hashtags and keywords to keep yourself in the loop.

Here's an intro to social listening using Hootsuite streams.

3. Establish social media guidelines and policies

With so many people and accounts involved, it's important to establish guidelines and policies to keep everyone on track. Solid documentation helps streamline onboarding, promotes best practices, and maintains a unified voice across channels.

Your complete set of higher education social media guidelines should include:

It may seem like a lot of ground to cover. But thorough guidelines provide crucial support to social managers. They also empower students and faculty to participate in an independent and authentic way. As a bonus, they reduce the need for support from the core team.

4. Share important updates in real time

No one hopes for crises or emergencies. But it's important for institutions to plan for them. People increasingly look to social media for real-time updates and information, so social should be a key part of your crisis communications plan.

Think ahead about how you might address faculty drama, on-campus criminal activity, or even natural disasters, so that your communications team isn't caught off-guard when the unthinkable happens. Rumors travel fast on social media, so ensure you take charge of chaotic situations with clear, concise messaging to help quell concerns early.

Even something like a bad snow day-like the one Simon Fraser University faced recently-may require a public announcement. Social is a great place to spread the word about the status on campus, or safety precautions.

All SFU campuses are open today, Dec 1. Remember to exercise caution and give yourself extra time as you make your way to campus. Visit https://t.co/rkT0MxjdGS for transit alerts and check https://t.co/s9I0q6OhCb and the SFU road report for the latest commuting conditions. pic.twitter.com/hkyFiDebba

- Simon Fraser University (@SFU) December 1, 2022

Crisis communication can go beyond an on-campus scandal or weather disruption. It's expected, in 2023, that institutions and corporations alike respond to social movements as well. Social media can be used to share concrete action plans to address social or institutional issues as they arise.

5. Streamline your social media operations

Higher ed social media operations tend to involve a lot of people... even more channels. Bring everyone and everything together with a central hub. With the support of a tool like Hootsuite, a core team can monitor all channels from a central dashboard.

This makes life easier for often under-resourced social managers. Use the dashboard to assign tasks, approve and schedule posts, coordinate content from contacts across the campus, and mobilize in the event of a crisis.

6. Reply to all messages

Speaking of streamlined - you'll never miss a single message from a candidate, existing student, or alum if your team uses one inbox to manage all social media communications.

With Hootsuite Inbox, you can bridge the gap between social media engagement and customer service - and manage all of your social media messages in one place. This includes:

The all-in-one agent workspace makes it easy to

Track the history of any individual's interactions with your digital campus on social media (across your accounts and platforms), giving your team the context needed to personalize replies

Add notes to profiles that interact with you the most (Inbox integrates with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics)

Handle messages as a team, with intuitive message queues, task assignments, statuses, and filters

Track response times and CSAT metrics

Book a free demo
Plus, Inbox comes with handy automations:

Automated message routing

Auto-responses and saved replies

Automatically triggered customer satisfaction surveys

AI-powered chatbot features

7. Engage students on and off-campus

A key advantage of social media in higher education is that it allows students to connect. That might be from home, different campuses, work study programs, or at a conference.

Not all students live on campus. That doesn't mean they're less motivated to engage and participate in student life.

Create a social media group to rally students. Base them on wide-ranging topics, interests, experiences, and activities. For instance, University of Chicago runs a Civic Engagement page to bring together students looking for community service and activism opportunities.

UChicago Medicine has debuted a new Simulation Mobile Unit! It will be used for community outreach as well as...

Posted by UChicago Civic Engagement on Monday, December 5, 2022

8. Livestream campus life

Nearly a third of all internet users report watching at least one video live stream each week.

And can you blame them? Live streaming is authentic, engaging, and-we won't deny it-a little bit thrilling. Social media makes it incredibly simple to broadcast campus life to the world.

Whether a private livestream just for students of a particular class, or putting a commencement speech up for the world to see, it just takes a few taps to livestream on most social media platforms.
Check out our full guide to livestreaming on social here.
9. Develop a social media strategy

Behind every successful social media channel, there's a strategy at play. Add more channels to the picture, and the need for strategy increases. But so do the challenges.

It's an enormous challenge to create a strategy for a multi-channel organization, but it starts with creating an overarching social media marketing strategy for the institution itself. Then, each individual department or account should align its specific strategy back to the university's core objectives. This creates a clear business case for social media and allows managers to better allocate resources.

10. Pore over your analytics

Sure, you might be able to gauge student sentiment on campus by measuring the number of sweatshirts sold from the gift shop, or eavesdropping in the cafeteria. But social media analytics offers accurate data to help you understand your audience quantitatively.

Maybe you're hoping to drive more traffic to your website or reach a specific demographic of potential students. With social media metrics, it's clear as day how close you're getting to your goals.

Reviewing your engagement, reach, and audience data can help you understand just how successful your communications have been-and guide you towards obvious areas for improvement in the future.

Hootsuite Analytics can package up intel from your various social platforms with one-off or regularly scheduled reports.
Try it free today
11. Use social media as a message board

Social media can act as a great hub for feedback or conversation for the community at large. It's also a natural place for connection for specific classes, clubs, or identity groups.

Instead of spending time and money building a student portal no one is going to use, embrace the platforms that are already known and loved (or at least, tolerated) by the community.

Here are some ideas for digital gathering spaces for the campus community:

Facebook groups for students seeking housing

Twitter threads collecting input for the new student center

Hyper-specific Instagram accounts dedicated to the experience of international students

Of course, social media's messaging potential doesn't have to be limited to social activities: professors can use hashtags to generate and track class discussions, too.

12. Build and empower communities

Create hashtags the student body can rally behind online. Develop an accessible intake program so students and faculty can apply to create and manage accounts. Let students and their creativity take over - it pays off.

The University of New Hampshire has an application form so any student can apply to take the reins of their social channels for a limited period of time.

Student takeovers are a powerful view into authentic campus life, whether you're sharing the work of one dedicated creator or are sharing user-generated content from a various community members.

@livheim
A day in the life a second year architecture student at penn state during covid 😍😍😍 #pennstate #psu #fyp #covid #zoomuniversity

♬ Stuck In The Middle - Tai Verdes

The point is, the more people who share content, the greater your institution's reach and social share of voice, so invite in ambassadors to help whenever you can. With Hootsuite Amplify, faculty, staff, and students can share vetted, on-brand content and increase reach.

13. Adopt a platform-specific approach

Did you check out the social media directories we mentioned above? If so, you'll notice the social platforms used vary across departments, faculties, and other areas of university life.

Does admissions need a LinkedIn page? Does information aimed at parents need to go on TikTok? It's important to consider which platforms are most likely to reach the right audience.

But remember: You're not just talking to Gen Z. Your audience includes students and potential students, of course, but they may not all be in their late teens or early twenties. In public four-year schools in the U.S., 90% of students are under 25. But for private for-profit four-year institutions, 66% are 25 or older.

Beyond mature students, you've also got to reach plenty of other adult audiences:

parents

corporate partners

other institutions

faculty and potential faculty

Staff

Get to know each of your social audiences. Look for trends in age range, gender, location, and, if available, occupation, education level, and interests. With these findings, tailor and personalize messages for each different audience.

For instance, LinkedIn may not be the best platform for recruiting undergraduates. But it could be the ideal place to market continuing education programs or recruit new instructors.

TikTok might be a good channel for admissions content, or recruitment. Just look at how University of Florida entices potential students with this 15-second campus tour.

(It can also be a platform to experiment and simply build community in the inexplicable way that only TikTok can.)

Stay on top of platform and demographic trends to identify where your communities are most active. This allows managers to focus on channels that drive the most results. Management tools like Hootsuite make it easy to compare how channels stack up against each other.

14. Invest in building a team

Social media for higher education is not a one-person job. Nor is a job that should be left to interns. (Although it is a great idea to include student interns or work placement positions on your social team.)

Don't yet have a full team? Create strategic alliances with other departments. You'll gain access to more information and resources than you could on your own.

You can also maximize the time of a small team with a social media management platform like Hootsuite. Create posts in advance, schedule them for the best posting times, and upload batches of posts in bulk. You also don't waste time logging in and out of different platforms.

There's really no denying the benefits of social media for modern higher education institutions, as well as for students, alumni, and faculty of those institutions. But if you need to prove to higher-ups that you require more budget for social media, come prepared with plenty of information about your current return on investment, like a social media report.
Save time managing your social media presence with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today. Get Started

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Social Media in Higher Education: 14 Essential Tips

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Social media usage is now the standard for higher education institutions. From student relations to recruitment to fundraising to crisis management, it's a powerful communications tool for post-secondary institutions of all stripes. That's why we'll be digging into the expanding role of social media in higher education in this post.

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What is a community agreement?

A community agreement (also known as a group contract, a learning agreement, or a classroom agreement) is a shared agreement between learners about how we want to work together over the course of our time together. This can include guidelines for what it means to be respectful, expectations about turn-taking, or accessibility needs (e.g., please don't bring peanuts to class).

Why make community agreements?

Discussing and deciding on how the group will work together builds a collective responsibility to make the classroom a safer place and give students an opportunity to voice their needs in co-developing a productive and equitable learning environment. In building community agreements as a class, we have the chance to foster shared accountability and student buy-in to the learning process.

How to develop a community agreement?

During one of your first classes together, invite students to think about what they need in order to make the class environment safer, equitable, and productive for learning: What would help us work best together? You can do this through individual writing prompts, a think-pair-share, or another active learning strategy. After giving students time to reflect and discuss in small groups, collectively generate a list of agreements. You can also consider asking this question in advance through email or Quercus, and having students contribute digitally to the generation of ideas.

Make sure to clarify what each contribution means. For example, "being respectful" can mean different things in different contexts. Also check for active consent: are these the guidelines that people want to govern the group? Does anyone have concerns about them? Revise these guidelines until the class members are satisfied and feel ready to commit to the collective agreement.

You can also use group agreements for group project work. Allow each group time to develop their own agreements for how they will work together. This may help alleviate the stress of unclear expectations around group work, help students to advocate for themselves and resolve conflicts together.

Looking for suggestions on things to include in a community agreement?

Respect-Give undivided attention to the person who has the floor (permission to speak).

Openness-We will be as open and honest as possible without disclosing others' personal or private issues (e.g., family, roommates, friends). It is okay to discuss situations, but we won't use names or other identifiers. For example, we won't say, "My older brother...", instead we will say, "I know someone who...".

Right to pass-It is always okay to pass (meaning "I'd rather not" or "I don't want to answer").

Nonjudgmental approach-We can disagree with another person's point of view without putting that person down.

Taking care to claim our opinions-We will speak our opinions using the first person and avoid using 'you'. For example, "I think that kindness is important", instead of "You are just mean".

Sensitivity to diversity-We will remember that people in the group may differ in cultural background, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity or gender expression and will be careful about making insensitive or careless remarks.

Anonymity-It is okay to ask any question by using the suggestion box.

Acceptance-It is okay to feel uncomfortable; people feel uncomfortable when they talk about sensitive and personal topics, such as sexuality.

Have a good time-It is okay to have a good time. Creating a safe space is about coming together as a community, being mutually supportive, and enjoying each other's qualities.

Also consider adding:

Step up and step back: This is a tool for thinking about the ways that our participation in classes is often shaped by how we benefit from (or do not benefit from) social relations of power. This asks us to pay attention to how frequently, how long, and how quickly we participate, so that we can check our own (over participation) and step back, or we can notice how we don't take up space, and make an attempt to step up and make our voices heard, especially when we may not often do that.

Respect each other's personal space: Ask for consent before touching another person, ensure that you are giving people their desired space.

How can you enforce a community agreement?

Sometimes participants do not abide by the community agreements they lay out for themselves and others. When that happens, having the agreements that everyone has actively consented to makes it easier to address a particular behaviour. As the tutorial leader or instructor, you can point out the lack of adherence and ask the class collectively how they would like to address it. Or you can point to the agreement and ask the person to change their behaviour so that it aligns with the agreements. Both are useful, and what you do will depend on how much time you have available and how pervasive the problem is. The more you can democratize the enforcement, the more buy-in you are likely to have, so think of this as an exercise in building shared accountability rather than in exercizing your authority.

Interested in exploring further resources?

Guide to Implementing TAP: A Peer Education Program to Prevent HIV and STI (2nd edition), © 2002, Advocates for Youth, Washington, DC.

Seeds for Change Guide to Group Agreements: https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/groupagree

For more information about group work contracts:

Hesterman, S. (2016). The digital handshake: A group contract for authentic elearning in higher education. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 13(3), 1-24.

Oakley, B., Felder, R. M., Brent, R., & Elhaji, I. (2004). Turning student groups into effective teams. Journal of Student Centered Learning, 2(1), 9-34.

Making Group Contracts, Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/group-work/making-group-contracts

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Community Agreements - Teaching Assistants' Training Program

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What is a community agreement? A community agreement (also known as a group contract, a learning agreement, or a classroom agreement) is a shared agreement between learners about how we want to work together over the course of our time together. This can include guidelines for what it means to be respectful, expectations about turn-taking, [...]

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Online education success with netiquette

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Are you planning on taking an online course? Make sure you check out these netiquette rules before jumping in.

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Using a Backchannel in In Person Classes

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Affinity diagrams are a great method to help you make sense of all your information when you have a lot of mixed data, such as facts, ethnographic research, ideas from brainstorms, user opinions, user needs, insights, and design issues. Affinity diagrams or clustering exercises are all about bundling and grouping information, and this method can be one of the most valuable methods to employ. For this reason, it is used in many phases of Design Thinking, as well as outside of the design context.

Why?

The Affinity Diagram is a method which can help you gather large amounts of data and organise them into groups or themes based on their relationships. The affinity process is great for grouping data gathered during research or ideas generated during Brainstorms.

The method is also called "Space Saturate and Group". The term " saturate" relates to the method in which everyone covers or saturates the " space" with images and notes, in order to create a wall of information, to inform, and start " grouping" the following problem-defining process. You then draw connections between these individual elements to join the dots and develop new and deeper insights. They will help define the problem(s) and develop potential ideas for solutions. In other words, you go from analysis to synthesis.

Author/Copyright holder: Josh Evnin. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

Seeing the data coming to life and moving data on post-its around on the wall helps the design team to immerse themselves in not only their own findings from field work and research, but sharing and communicating the findings with other team members in order to get a broader scope of the problem space being investigated.

Best Practice

1. Put pieces of data, small documented facts, drawings, ideas, and observations onto post-it notes, cards, or pieces of paper and put them up on wall charts, white boards or chalk boards. This is where the associated imagery of walls filled with post-it notes comes from. The sticky notes allow the design team to easily stick up and move pieces of data around in order to create clusters of similar themes, groups and patterns.

2. Take one post-it and make it the first post-it in the first group.

3. Take the next post-it and ask, "Is this similar to the first one or is it different?". Then, you will place it in the first group or into its own group.

4. You continue post-it by post-it as you place similar ideas together and create new groups when ideas do not fit into an existing cluster.

5. You should now have 3-10 groups, so it's time to talk about the best elements of those clusters.

6. Name the clusters to help you create an information structure and discover themes.

7. Rank the most important clusters over less important clusters. Be aware which values, motives, and priorities you use as foundation ideas before you start ranking: Is this your user's priorities, your company's, the market's, the stakeholder's, or your own? Which ones should you put most emphasis on?

8. Sometimes it make sense to create connections with other clusters using lines or other devices between individual bits of data or clusters of data.

9. Describe what you have synthesised, for example, insights, user needs, pain points, or look for gaps you haven't addressed yet.

10. Focus on translating what you've organised and understood into practice, rather than just identifying similar ideas.

You can download and print the Affinity Diagram (i.e. Space Saturate and Group) template which you and your team can use as a guide.

Author/Copyright holder: Open.Michigan. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

Affinity Diagrams can help you go from complete chaos and no overview of your information to creating groups of information, which you have named and organised into hierarchies that make sense.

The Take Away

Affinity Diagrams can help you bundle and cluster large bodies of information, facts, ethnographic research, ideas from brainstorms, user opinions, user needs, insights, design issues, etc. This method will help you name, rank and understand relations between groups of information. For this reason, this method is also known as "Space Saturate and Group" by d.school. This is a great method which can, if you follow the step-by-step process which we've described, surprisingly and straightforwardly create an overview and synthesise your findings. It's important that you remember to sum up the major insights, user needs, pain points, gaps, etc. Once you've done that you can focus on translating what you've organised and understood and put it into practice.

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

References & Where to Learn More

IDEO.org, Bundle Ideas:
http://www.designkit.org/methods/30

Chris Gielow, Affinity Mapping Timelapse: This video by Chris Gielow gives a good sense of how the process plays itself out:
https://vimeo.com/47189546

AFFINITY CLUSTERING, The Catalyst Program provides the following Affinity Clustering Video Guide which gives a good overview:
http://www.wearecatalysts.org/toolkit/5

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: star5112. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

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Affinity Diagrams - Learn How to Cluster and Bundle Ideas and Facts

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Affinity diagrams are a great method to help you make sense of all your information when you have a lot of mixed data, such as facts, ethnographic research, ideas from brainstorms, user opinions, user needs, insights, and design issues.

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What is the most important difference between how you express yourself personally vs professionally?

Add your thoughts below.

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Padlet For Teachers: The Best Tips, Tricks, and Ideas For Your Classroom

An online bulletin board tool that makes collaboration a breeze.

Example - Blog with Padlet
https://myfest.equityunbound.org/month/may/padlets-for-myfest22/

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Meaningful ways for teachers and students to collaborate online are more important than ever. That's why so many educators love Padlet, a digital bulletin board tool. It gives teachers, students, and even parents an easy way to share ideas, review work, and a whole lot more. Wondering what it's all about? Here's our guide to Padlet for teachers, including plenty of clever ways to use it with your students.

What is Padlet?

Think of Padlet as an online bulletin board, but with a lot of things a regular bulletin board could never do. Users can post text, images, videos, files, links ... basically anything digital. Others can see the postings, as well as comment or vote on them if the board owner allows. You can customize each Padlet by changing the background, layout, font, and color scheme.

One of the best things about Padlet for teachers is how very easy it is to use, even for young students. It works on computers and laptops, plus devices like Chromebooks, iPads, or smartphones. Perhaps most importantly, teachers can control whether contributions have students' names on them or are made anonymously. This empowers students who might otherwise feel too timid to share. You can also decide whether or not to allow comments or ratings and even require approval before posting or filter out profanity.

Is Padlet free?

Padlet's free version for all users allows you to create up to three Padlet boards at a time. You can erase and create new ones to stay under the limit. This is a good option for teachers who only plan to use it occasionally or who want to give it a try to see if it works for them.

If you decide you're willing to pay for an upgrade, there are two options. You can sign up for a Pro account, which offers unlimited Padlets and removes upload limits. Individual Pro accounts currently cost $8/month.

Padlet also offers Backpack for Schools, a bulk pricing plan that gives schools more privacy options, extra security, student portfolios, and more. Learn more about Backpack here.

15 Cool Ways to Use Padlet for Teachers

Ready to give it a try? There are so many ways to use Padlet for teachers and students. Here are some of the best ideas we've found to inspire you.

1. Remake existing Padlets as templates

If you come across a Padlet made by someone else that you really like, you can copy it to your own account and use it as a template. You can choose to copy the posts too, or just grab the layout to get you started. It's as simple as clicking the Remake button, then choosing what you want to copy over. The new Padlet will appear on your account, and you're ready to go! Want to make your own templates? Visit Guiding on the Side for a walk-through.

2. Collaborate and organize

Imagine you've asked your class to research a topic, with each student contributing several facts. In a hands-on classroom, you might have each student write their fact on a sticky note and add it to a whiteboard. Then, together with your class, you could organize those facts by moving the notes into columns. You can do the same with Padlet, but your "sticky notes" can contain photos, graphs, videos and audio, article links, and anything else that might be useful.

On the board above, students have contributed facts about E.T.A. Hoffman, author of The Nutcracker story, as well as information about the ballet. Here's the same board organized into columns, with posts sorted by subject. Learn how to change Padlet layouts here.

You can organize information in other ways, too, like timelines and flowcharts. The Techie Teacher has free graphic organizer Padlet templates you can re-make for your students here.

3. Get to know each other

Padlet is perfect for icebreaker activities. Ask students to share what they have in common or share an image of their favorite study space. You could even ask each student to create their own Padlet, sharing some of their favorite things. Learn how one teacher uses Padlet for a Selfie Icebreaker at Dr. Catlin Tucker.

4. Create a timeline

Padlet has a timeline feature built right in as one of their organizational options. How cool is that? Use it for history class, tracing scientific eras or evolutions, or even to map out the order of events in a book for English class. Wherever a timeline comes in handy, Padlet has you covered. Learn more about timelines here.

5. Get feedback with exit tickets

Exit tickets are a fantastic way to find out what your students learned in class and where they may still need some help. Lots of teachers have kids write their answers to a reflection question on a sticky note and post it by the door on the way out. If you're teaching online, or want to incorporate some technology, use Padlet instead.

6. Display student work

Teachers are no longer limited to displaying student work on a classroom bulletin board or in the hallway nearby. Since Padlets are easy to share, parents can drop in and see what their kids have been working on. See how The Techie Playground does it here.

7. Keep track of who needs help

One teacher likes to use Padlet to see who needs help during independent work. Kids simply add their name to the list to indicate they need a minute of the teacher's time. They can see how many kids are ahead of them, and no one is forgotten in the shuffle. Learn more at Stefbub's Classroom.

8. Hold a debate

Classroom discussion and debate can be difficult when you're teaching online. Even in person, there's rarely enough time for everyone's opinion to be heard. Try taking the debate online instead, like this Padlet from Teach Every Day. Post a question, then have students choose a side and gather resources about it. As students review the information posted by others, they can share their own thoughts and ask further questions. This is also an excellent way to help kids learn to have civil conversations online, even when they don't agree on the subject.

9. Have a scavenger hunt

Everyone loves a scavenger hunt! Set up a Padlet with columns, titling each with something your students need to find. Use a scavenger hunt for team building, or create a hunt that helps students learn more about a class subject. Make a field trip more meaningful (even a virtual one!) by asking kids to post pictures that meet certain criteria. Learning the alphabet with your littles? Have them take photos of items around them that start with each letter. There's so much you can do with this smart Padlet for teachers idea!

10. Set up a bookshelf

Use Padlet to make book recommendations or keep track of what students are reading. Recommendations by teachers or other students will help parents and kids find new reads to love. Ask kids to rate and comment on the books they're reading for class and include their own personal choices too.

11. Make a map

Padlet's map feature makes it a breeze to create a collaborative map for your students to use. Choose from a variety of styles, including satellite views. Add points to the map, along with information like links, photos, and more. Learn more about the map function from Free Technology For Teachers.

12. Conduct a writers' workshop

Writers' workshops help students develop their own skills and learn from others. One teacher has taken her writing workshops online, using Padlet to help her young writers see strong examples from their classmates while improving their own efforts. See how it's done at Mud and Ink Teaching.

13. Use Padlet Backchannel for discussions

Padlet's Backchannel feature makes it easy to have a discussion during another activity, like watching a film or listening to a presentation. It works just like a regular Padlet, but a text box at the bottom simplifies the process, allowing users to quickly type and send, just like in other chat programs. You can still add other items like links, images, or videos, too. Learn more about Backchannel from Richard Byrne on YouTube.

14. Assign lessons or homework

Use Padlet to keep all of your homework assignments for the week in one place, or lay out the daily lessons for a virtual classroom. You can link to videos, online games, and other resources, or create assignments directly in Padlet, like responding to reading questions. Students or parents can post questions to the assignments as needed, too. Learn how one teacher does it at Elementary Grapevine.

15. Take a poll

By enabling the voting feature, you can easily take a poll or survey for just about anything. Choose your next class reward, find out which book your students loved the most, or ask them which problem was the most difficult on last night's math homework. There are so many possibilities!

How do you use Padlet? Share in the comments!

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Padlet For Teachers: The Best Tips, Tricks, and Ideas For Your Classroom

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Meaningful ways for teachers and students to collaborate online are more important than ever. That's why so many educators love Padlet, a digital bulletin board tool. It gives teachers, students, and even parents an easy way to share ideas, review work, and a whole lot more. Wondering what it's all about?

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Introductions

Digital Citizenship:

Visitors and Residents

Facilitating Literacies

Netiquette Agreement

Session Feedback

Outcome: By the end of this activity, learners will be able to create a class netiquette agreement for the use of digital technology and media that outlines the guidelines and expectations for respectful and responsible online behaviour

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Digital Citizenship Means Character Education for the Digital Age (2)

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Hello Instructors!

Please REMAKE (button on the right) to make a copy and adapt this Padlet for your use.

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Are you allowing students to use

cognitive offloading tools for learning actitivites and assessments?

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Handout _Ethical Uses of Artificial Intelligence

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1. What is a fact you already knew that connects with something from this Digital Citizenship toolkit?
2. Did you find the activities engaging and helpful?

Add your feedback below.

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This Padlet was developed by Jessica Gemella, Curriculum Teaching and Learning Specialist, Vancouver Island University

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This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge the creator and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

About Creative Commons
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/#:~:text=Attribution&text=This%20license%20lets%20others%20distribute,and%20use%20of%20licensed%20materials.