Making Connections for Student Success: a Social Media Roadmap

Institutional Advancement: ggabriel@nvcc.edu Web Services & Digital Media: wsdm@nvcc.edu; csimpson@nvcc.edu

Objectives

• Share our social media roadmap

• Discuss our lessons learned

• Explore best practices to engage our students in variety of social media

• Reflect on social media as means to increase student engagement in their learning

Who We Are• Largest community college of 23 in Virginia

Community College System• Located in the Washington, D.C. suburbs• 6 campuses and 3 centers• 72,000 credit students annually (unduplicated)• 24,000 non-credit students annually

(unduplicated)• 10,000 students in distance learning courses• 43% of our students are 21 years or younger

Who Are You?

• How many of you are already engaged in using social media at your institution?

• What social media is your institution hosting?

• What are some of your questions about social media?

What is Social Media?

Social Media • is conversations.

• comes in many forms.

• is term for tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online.

The Ultimate Social Media Guide

Why Engage in Social Media?

Why Did NOVA Engage in Social Media?

• Inform our students about events, deadlines, processes and emergency info

• Spread NOVA’s messages quickly to multiple audiences

• Listen to our students’ suggestions, needs and concerns

• Interact with our students about their suggestions, needs and concerns

• Allow NOVA to engage in conversations with multiple audiences

• Provide means to encourage students to be active learners

• Develop learning communities

• Supplement other communication vehicles

• Improve NOVA’s internal and external communications

• Support NOVA’s Strategic Vision 2015

NOVA’s Social Media Roadmap

Listen

• Identify conversations currently taking place about NOVA– Blog posts, comments, video-tags, photo-

tags, podcasts, social network references, social bookmarking

• Note tone of conversations, perceptions, sources

• Target your audience

Develop

NOVA on iTunes U

Engage

• Establish objectives

• Post information and respond daily

• Include discussions, photos and events

• Offer “LIVE” help session and field questions

• Hold contests

• Select volunteer student correspondents from each campus

• Use images generously

Promote

• Develop brand

• Provide easy access on college homepage and major landing pages

• Email students and faculty

• Feature articles, posters & press releases

• Cross promote by connecting social media

• Include social media info in New Student Packets and student newspaper

• Incorporate ads in Schedule of Classes

Measure

• Site traffic metrics

• Online hits

• Link backs

• Friends/fans

• Profile visits

• Views generated Per video or image

• Interactions or content contributors

• RSS subscriptions

• Number of downloads

What Are Some Lessons Learned?

• A plan is required for success

• A portal page helps

• Promotion is ongoing

• Visuals are important

• Staying informed is a necessity

• Check out what others are doing

• Use of features constantly needs exploring

• Keeping discussions going is challenging

• Staff and time are required

• Measurement is messy

• Guidelines are a must

• Vendor assistance is a viable option

Procedures and Guidelines

www.nvcc.edu/wsdm/procedures

Is It Worth It?

• Creates comfortable environment to communicate, interact and engage with 40% of student population

• Meets students’ expectations to be engaged in media and technology (our students use media and technology over 9

hours a day)

• Connects students to important information on a daily basis

• Allows for quick feedback

• Helps to create learning communities

• Assists faculty to explore social media for teaching and learning

• Helps students through our processes in a cost effective way

• No cost for social media tools

Time to Reflect . . .

Identify one way that social media will be useful to your institution.

Questions?

www.nvcc.edu/wsdm

Dr. George Gabriel - ggabriel@nvcc.edu

Cathy Simpson - csimpson@nvcc.edu