Goals of Presentation: • To share our experiences of rolling out a social media initiative for Boston University's fully online degree and certificate programs. • To examine data showing the impact of our social media initiative over a 6-month time period. • To discuss lessons learned and provide recommendations to other distance education faculty and staff on strategic approaches to social networking with students. Goals of our Social Media Initiative: 1. Develop a stronger sense of community among our students. Our students spend so much time on their school work, but often feel isolated from one another. 2. Increase identification and affiliation with BU. We were concerned that without being on campus, our students don't get the "BU experience." We wanted to find ways to replicate that experience online. 3. Help our students network with each other. Our online degree and certificate programs are at the graduate level. Our students need to network to build their careers and open up new job opportunities beyond their time at BU. 4. Increase retention in our online programs. We are operating under the assumption that if the students feel more connected, they will be less likely to drop their classes or withdraw from their programs. Description of Initiative: In the online world, it's rare that you visit a page that doesn't have some link out to a social networking tool of some sort or another. Everyone is trying to take advantage of all that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs of all shapes, sizes, and purposes have to offer. But very few of us really know how to go about using these tools and media strategically and deliberately. At BU's Office of Distance Education, the Student Services team realized we had a problem and an opportunity, both of which could be addressed with social media. The problem was that with enrollments in our 20+ fully online graduate-level degree and certificate programs growing rapidly, we were seeing less and less intimacy among students, facilitators, and faculty. We felt as if we were getting too big too fast. The opportunity was that we were coming up with more and more ways to connect to our students and to connect our students to one another. We began to study the different social media available to us. We identified the avenues that seemed to be mentioned most frequently by our students, and studied the characteristics and strengths of each one. Attending webinars and workshops, we learned from experts that we didn't want to rush in to the world of social media with no sense of direction or purpose. We started our discussions in November of 2009, during National Distance Learning Week and finally fully rolled out our social media presence in February 2010. So as you can see, we took our time developing a clear and solid strategy and implementation plan. The following steps, each of which will be discussed in our presentation, were taken to address these concerns: 1. We saw that in Facebook people seemed to desire to be connected to one another and social non-academic interests and to be able to share their experiences and discoveries with one another. With LinkedIn, there was a very strong desire to network professionally and affiliate oneself with specific areas of expertise. And with Twitter, there was simply a desire to stay informed, to be at the forefront of what was happening. 2. In the office, we began to develop a mantra: stay connected with Facebook; expand your network with LinkedIn; stay informed with Twitter. In addition, and before even creating a presence in any of the social media environments, we created a blog, envisioning it as a jumping-off point and a home base that would connect to each social networking site while also offering opportunities to delve more deeply into the stories and experiences of students, faculty, and staff. Overall, the idea was to enrich our students' experience, increase their level of interconnectedness, and help them feel more a part of BU—even at a distance. 3. We assembled a social media task force, comprised of students and staff, to develop our action plan. We brainstormed about content, identity, messaging, and timing. We developed a brand identity for the different sites and a rollout plan, including a schedule for updating our messaging and what types of messages and information it made sense to include in which medium. Conclusion: Since February, we have seen a tremendous response to our efforts. The number of members in each group (Facebook and Twitter followers, LinkedIn group members, blog visitors) continues to grow daily. And we will soon be conducting a survey to collect data from our students to help us analyze the initiative and its impact. We have found a way to manage the initiative that feels natural, not forced, and that has even had the added benefit of making us feel more connected to our students. We set out to connect them more to one another, and have achieved much more.
