In a 2011 interview with Academic Impressions, Brad Ward, CEO of BlueFuego Inc., cited his organization’s research into the impact of university Facebook pages. After a 25-month study of nearly 400,000 Facebook updates across more than 1,200 university Facebook pages, Ward concluded that most institutions offer too much content via social media channels, leading to […]
Marianne Pelletier, CFRE, the director of research and data support for Cornell University and author of the recent Academic Impressions monograph Prospecting Using Social Media, has embarked on some extensive experimentation with integrating social media into prospecting and prospect research. We interviewed her this week to ask why prospect researchers need to be moving on […]
With students bringing smartphones and tablets to campus — and expecting to access information and course content via mobile devices — it continues to be urgent for faculty developers and instructional technologists to explore the affordances of these devices and the opportunities for using them to enhance teaching and learning. In our past article, “Piloting […]
In a July 2012 survey of facilities managers in higher education, Academic Impressions found that 73% of facilities managers cite optimizing space utilization as either “high priority” or “highest priority” among initiatives for the next year. When asked about challenges faced in achieving this, facilities managers expressed concern over buy-in, both from senior leadership (for […]
In Academic Impressions’ recent free webcast Rethinking Campaign and Major Gift Strategies, we put together a snapshot of data culled from a series of recent surveys and reports. While many institutions responded a fear years ago to the recession by focusing increasingly on cultivating top donors, the snapshot we presented documents the extent to which […]
As demand for college education rises among lower-income families amid a troubled economy, and as the pressure mounts on completion rates, more institutions are beginning to assess their strategies for recruiting and retaining first-gen students. We’ve addressed the issue before in Higher Ed Impact, offering tips from various experts in enrollment management. This week, we […]
Recent intellectual property rights lawsuits against institutions of higher education — such as the lawsuit over video streaming at UCLA or the lawsuit against Georgia State University over e-reserves — make two things clear: how little is understood on campus about what “fair use” entails, and how critical it is to plan for risk mitigation as […]
Amid growing pressure on student retention and completion rates, much of the current research on factors in student success emphasizes both the importance of early intervention with at-risk students and increased attention to obstacles that confront students in the first weeks of their first term, including academic underpreparedness and the transition from the rigor, study […]
A few years ago, we interviewed W. Kent Barnds at Augustana College because we noticed his college had an especially proactive plan for talking with applicants, admits, and their families about both the value of attending that specific institution and about the return on their investment. While the national conversation about completion and outcomes has […]
Often, institutions miss opportunities to invite the investment of local business and community leaders by not doing enough to invite and cultivate that investment before the campaign even begins. Mark Jones, vice president of external relations at Hollins University, frames the issue in this way: “There are two ways to approach to business and community […]
