Category: Blog

Mobile Marketing and QR Codes: Some Key Tips

Last June, Ball State University released a study showing that of college students owning phones, 49 percent owned smartphones; the number had doubled since 2009. In the year since, many colleges and universities have launched mobile marketing initiatives or mobile apps for students and alumni, and a few admissions offices have begun experimenting with uses of Quick Response, or QR, codes, those black-and-white matrix barcodes that can be scanned into students’ smartphones to provide URLs to specific online content. Given the increasing use of smartphones among the college-aged, this year is an excellent time for your admissions staff to familiarize themselves with QR codes and with mobile marketing in general. In an interview with Academic Impressions this week, Web marketing guru Bob Johnson, president of Bob Johnson Consulting LLC, offered the following practical tips and caveats for experimenting with QR codes. AI. Bob, thanks for joining us for this interview. Recently, we’ve seen a few examples of fresh uses of QR codes in admissions and orientation. For example: Orientation staff at Washington and Lee this year welcomed new students while wearing T-shirts with QR codes; when scanned into students’ smartphones, these codes took students to mobile-friendly websites for a variety of campus services […]

Involving Off-Campus Constituencies When Planning Public/Private Partnerships

Successful P3 partnerships engage off-campus constituencies both early and deliberately. Here is advice from Dale McGirr on how. Increasing demands for capital expansion combined with a continued weak economy make partnerships with private entities an attractive option for financing new campus facilities. These partnerships are often fraught with complexity — and not only because of their legal and tax ramifications. There are also the ramifications of communicating and collaborating with a variety of off-campus constituents. Successful projects engage these constituents both early and deliberately. For advice on including off-campus constituencies in the project in constructive ways, we turned this week to Dale McGirr, senior planner with GBBN Architects, who also oversaw public/private partnerships during his 29 years at the University of Cincinnati (22 years as a cabinet officer). Being Clear on the Stakes “At most medium and large-sized public institutions,” McGirr remarks, “twice as many students live residentially near a campus as live on the campus. The era of treating housing for those students as someone else’s problem is over — developing an off-campus housing policy needs to be a top priority, and the quality of student life in that shadow campus district, as well as the quality of community relations in that district, […]

Practical Approaches to Information Literacy for the First-Year Student

As research on gaps in college preparedness continues to emerge, fueling debates in both academic and public forums, most postsecondary institutions have taken some measures to assist undergraduates in developing a higher degree of information and digital literacy, and to prepare students better for conducting academic research. To learn where you can see the highest return on these efforts, we turned this week to Anne-Marie Deitering, the Franklin McEdward Professor for Undergraduate Learning Initiatives at Oregon State University. A forward thinker on integrating information literacy into different stages in the student experience, Deitering offers the following tips for her peers at other colleges and universities. Integration Beyond Research-Based Coursework “A truism among our colleagues pursuing information literacy efforts is that the best place to integrate information literacy is in courses with research assignments,” Deitering notes, “and that the best place to embed concepts and content on information literacy throughout the curriculum is to embed it where students are already motivated to do research and access library resources.” In this model, academic libraries often hold an information literacy or library services tutorial for students, or — in the case of a few institutions — embed a librarian within the research course. However, Deitering […]

Occupy Colleges and Student Walkouts: Takeaways for Media Relations Professionals

This article looks back at lessons learned from the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many adjunct and part-time faculty, students at institutions across the US have been organized walkout days in support of the movement. Because of the public nature of the movement and the extent to which social media have been used to organize student walkouts and raise awareness of the movement, we turned this week to media relations and crisis communications expert Cindy Lawson, assistant to the chancellor for marketing and communications at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. We asked Lawson for practical tips on how media relations professionals in higher education can prepare for and respond to student walkouts. AI. Cindy, thank you for joining us again. In looking at student walkouts such as those that are related to the Occupy Wall Street movement, what do media relations professionals need to be most mindful of, going forward? Lawson. With all the social media tools at our disposal, there is really no reason why campus administrators should not be aware of a potential student walkout, including the issues that are causing the walkout in the first place. Not only is it critically important to monitor what is being […]

Doing Service Learning Right

At many institutions, service learning programs are pursued in an ad hoc manner. Here’s how to realize the full potential of a service learning initiative. Service learning programs have proliferated on college and university campuses over the past decade, leading in the best cases to measurable gains in student learning and engagement; yet at many institutions, these programs are still pursued in an ad hoc manner. Among the obstacles to realizing the full potential of a service learning initiative: To learn from the success of one of the more effective programs, we turned this week to Drew Stelljes, director of community engagement at the College of William and Mary. That institution has effectively scaled its interests in service learning up to a comprehensive civic engagement initiative with defined outcomes and structured collaboration across both the academic affairs and student affairs division. Here is Stelljes’ advice for colleagues at other institutions who may be looking to achieve more with their service learning efforts. Defining Your Outcomes First, Stelljes advises establishing clarity around the purpose of the initiative: “Tease out the objectives that are important to your school,” Stelljes advises, “and then articulate those to the faculty you hope to involve.” “We […]

Speechwriting for Your Institution’s Leaders: Why Speeches Fail

It’s likely that at some point we have all seen a convocation, state-of-the-university, or other speech by an institutional leader fall flat — even when the subject matter of the speech was not itself intrinsically dull. Yet it has rarely been more important for presidents and cabinet members to be able to speak compellingly and directly to a wide array of constituents, as institutions are increasingly called upon in the public sphere to make strong cases for funding, for their impact and outcomes, and even for their relevance. To learn why well-intentioned speeches by campus leaders sometimes fail — and how to help your academic leaders prepare better for them — we turned this week to speechwriter and policy analyst Chuck Toney, who serves as assistant to the president of the University of Georgia. He offers these tips in avoiding three common pitfalls: Lack of structure Lack of research into one’s audience Failing to engage one’s audience in the subject matter from the start Structure “Audiences want speakers to succeed,” Toney notes. “Think about it — a bad speech is a very awkward experience for the audience, too, so they are invested in your success. They’re willing to go where the speaker is […]

Recruiting and Admitting Adult Students

Because enrollment policies and practices have long been tailored to traditional-aged students (especially at four-year institutions), efforts to recruit and enroll adults offer special challenges. To learn more about key actions at each stage of the admissions funnel that can have an impact on the enrollment of adult students, we reached out to adult-recruiting veteran Mike Barzacchini, director of marketing services for Harper College, who has seen considerable success in this area. Here are his practical tips for increasing inquiries, applications, and admits. Increasing Inquiries from Adults First, Barzacchini suggests a two-pronged approach to generating leads: Mine your historical data to identify past stop-outs and other cohorts that have shown interest in a degree at your institution Create an adult-friendly website RE-ENROLLING STOPOUTS Stop-outs are those who did not attain their degree — not for reasons of low academic performance, but because of the intervention of life circumstances. An audit of your records can tell you which past students stopped a few classes shy of a degree. Many of these students may not even realize how close they would be to completing if they were to re-enroll. To learn more about the barriers faced, read our July 2010 article “Re-enrolling Stop-Outs: Overcoming the Barriers.” Institutional […]

Building Affinity and Planting the Seeds for Giving

Because adult students represent a growing demographic and one largely untapped in terms of the donor pipeline, advancement shops with a long-term view need to act now to begin planning how to move alumni who were adult students into the pipeline. For advice on how to start, we turned to Don Fellows, president and CEO of Marts and Lundy; Fellows’ clients include institutions that have seen early gains in building affinity with nontraditional students and alumni. “There are real challenges here,” Fellows acknowledges. “Adult students often hold full-time jobs and have families; their time is at a premium and their encounter with the institution tends to be a more transactional experience. They come prepared, they pay money out of their own pockets for tuition, and they have their eyes set on the outcome. It’s a different experience than the traditional student’s. You will need to really invest in getting to know this population well.” Here is Fellows’ advice. Two Obstacles to Overcome Fellows suggests two common obstacles to cultivating affinity with adults. First, “because they paid out of pocket, they have a high appreciation for what they received, but they also feel that they have already paid for it.” Student philanthropy messages […]

Offering a More Flexible Curriculum

Your efforts to both attract and retain the growing population of adult students have to begin at the curricular level. No amount of investment in marketing or student support will make up for a curriculum and an academic calendar that does not meet adult learner needs. When asked about key influencing factors on college choice for adult students, Bob Sevier, senior vice president of strategy at STAMATS, notes: “If there’s one thing you need to stress, it’s flexibility.” It’s key to understand that adult students have more demands on their time. Sevier suggests that adult students are also more likely than traditional students to perceive their college education as a means to an end. “For many traditional students, the campus experience and the process of gaining education is an event, a rite of passage. For adult learners, it is more likely a step to getting something else — a better degree, a better job.” Adult students are likely to be focused on that end outcome and will search for the quickest and most convenient way to get to it. The flexibility that attracts adult students includes: Courses offered at different times (evenings, weekends) Accelerated programming Prior learning assessment For adult students who […]

The Changing Student Demographic: What You Need to Rethink

Increasingly, academic leaders are becoming aware that the traditional, 18-year-old high school graduate enrolling as a freshman at a four-year institution is a shrinking demographic. According to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES): Three -fourths of today’s college students are nontraditional 49 percent are enrolled part-time 38 percent work full-time 27 percent have dependents of their own at home These adult learners interact with your institution — from admission to commencement and beyond — in ways markedly different from traditional students. A diverse, heterogeneous demographic, adult students comprise working mothers, career-aged adults seeking a career change or a safe harbor amid a troubled economy, military veterans, and adults of all ages returning to complete a degree. These nontraditional learners are often both hard-working and determined. Unless compensated by an employer, most are paying for their tuition out of their own pocket, and many are allocating time to their education that could be devoted to family, commitments within their community, or other career-building activities. In other words, it’s likely that most adult students enrolling at your institution have the will to achieve and the will to complete a degree. Yet many unintentional barriers persist to a positive student experience at your institution — barriers that represent […]