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Mark Shay
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EducationDynamics

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Social Networking 101: Part of the Curriculum?

Social Networking is one of the most overworked phrases in the tech and business world. If you’ve been living under a rock and need the definition of a social network, click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking. MySpace, Facebook and now the British network Bebo (due to a $850 million buyout from AOL), are ubiquitous. These online communities have become extremely popular places for people to spend time—often many hours per day—but are these sites good for anything beyond games, chatter and superficial fun? Can they be utilized as tools with some level of academic value?

Many parents and educators have seen social networking sites as large distractions and overall, a waste of time. In the their opinion, emerging online communities are web-based spaces where today’s youth benignly pass time, posting silly pictures, playing mindless games and feverishly messaging back and forth on personal issues that were previously the subject of phone calls, chat rooms or sleepovers.

For those of you who have not experimented with the social network phenomenon, users create a profile, which becomes the basis for what is effectively their desktop/dashboard. There is a login process to keep the information private, and the user can select what information to share and what information to be kept private. Based on how this data matches to the system, options will be given for publishing and communicating with others. Photo/video/image galleries can be published, along with a ‘status’ feature, keeping friends up-to-speed on what participant is doing at that moment. Friends are invited to join your network, and the system constantly aggregates their status and info. Your information can be exchanged with all, only those on the system or only those in your network. The goal of these networks it to keep you informed, entertained and above all – connected.

There is no doubt that these online hot spots are the place to hang out and are supremely en-vogue. The challenge as educators is to harness this power and turn the topics of conversation toward education.

At a recent conference, representatives of the Scholar Ship, a relatively new entry to the study abroad market, described how they’ve used Facebook as part of their program. Students were required to create a Facebook profile and join a group with a Scholar Ship staff member as the group manager. Students used the profile pages to load photos, document their observations, feelings and reactions and through the group manager share those with the group. The manager would help coordinate student activities using Facebook as a contact manager, event planner and calendar tool. As presented at the session, this kept everyone connected and added more of a sense of community to the group. The Facebook group was closed, meaning participation was limited members only, and was managed though a moderator. Students could also choose to have a second profile that they would use to communicate with folks back at home.

After the international journey ends, the students are viewed as alumni and the moderator turns control of the group over to the group members themselves, and after some cleanup, makes it open to the rest of the Facebook community. This enables the group to stay in contact with each other and with the study abroad provider. It also becomes a great marketing tool through which alumni become a premier resource and reference to prospective students. Such alumni have demonstrated an eagerness to share their experiences with prospective students, and these curious find this interaction to be an ideal way to explore the program as they are able to interact with past program participants in a trusted, convenient medium.

It is undoubtedly a leap of faith to foster such visibility and candor. In the case of the Scholar Ship, the provider anticipated participating students would utilize social networks to keep in touch both during and after the program. Rather than try to manage this communication after the fact, Scholar Ship felt it best to address the issue up front, and facilitating these online interactions and leveraging them in their favor.

Using this medium, the Scholar Ship took risks. They empowered their entire class to become spokespeople, and they exposed themselves to greater transparency through the creation of a large amount of uncontrolled messaging about the program. The benefits of this endeavor can be enormous, as it unleashes the power of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing "viral marketing," which is among the most fruitful benefits of embracing social networking in higher education. The question becomes: Can your program afford such exposure?

Apart from the post-completion benefits of social networking, another upside is the engagement that this form of group management cultivates. A growing number of commercial products are delivering the social networking concept to students. One such tool called UPeers promises to deliver "a safe, secure and fun interactive environment in which prospects, current students and alumni can learn more about their peers, share interests, build relationships, form study groups, communicate with mentors and more." UPeers draws people together, opening the door to deeper engagement within a school’s community, and attempts to improve student retention, alumni involvement, recruiting yield and facilitate communication across a wide variety of constituencies.

Social networking is not just a means for enhancing student life and student recruiting. It can also be a very effective extension of the classroom. Blackboard, the largest vendor of Learning Management Systems is looking to extend its platform through what the company calls "its own free social bookmarking service, called Scholar®. Scholar is part of the Blackboard Beyond™ Initiative which was formed over a year ago to find ways to connect faculty and students in the Blackboard network across institutions and across the globe."

Social networking is also not limited to use by young people. Business folks have found LinkedIn to be a great way to connect with other professionals and expand your network, while researchers and scientists have built an online community around http://www.2collab.com/about, and medical doctors through Sermo.com. More and more smaller, focused communities are developing each day.

Social networking is more than a fad—it is now a direction for creating and managing communities of all types. It is becoming a necessary component for successful enterprises across the board, providing the next step in our technical evolution. Those of us in the higher education sector are advised to get on board with the social networking craze, embracing the use of this powerful new concept to enhance education. We should incorporate online communities into our daily routines and curricula, and push the concept to that of an educational platform, not just a place to play.

Bebo has UK equivalent of BlogAbroad.com with its chronicle of Gap Year abroad: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4832408676

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Mark Shay is the founder of EDU - a leading academic advertising provider, - part of Halyard Education Partners, a leader in student lead generation and enrollment management services.