Social Media on CampusBack to School

Welcome to September, a month (here in the U.S. anyway) associated with football, fall foliage, and going back to school. For this year's 18.4 million U.S. college students the campus experience is much different than it was a 20 years ago. What makes the experience different in 2009? Social media of course.

But before we dive into the impact of social media on campus, let's take a quick look at three aspects of going to college that have not changed much in a generation:

1. Alcohol consumption. No surprise here. It is still a major problem on most college campuses. A recent study by Outside the Classroom, a Boston-based company specializing in alcohol awareness, shows that 49.4% of students spend more time drinking than they do studying in a typical week.


2. Stress About Success. A survey, conducted by retail giant Walmart, shows that 65% of parents say that "doing well in school" is their #1 concern when it comes to their campus-bound children. Interestingly, 52% of college students said that doing well was their #1 concern. Not the same students who spend more time drinking than studying--do you think?
   
3. The Cost of Tuition and Textbooks. This year the average cost of attending a private four-year school is $25,143, up 5.9 percent from last year. A public four-college will average $6,585 this year, up 6.5 percent from last year. For those attending two-year community colleges tuition costs are up 4.7 percent from last year, running just over $2,400. In general, the price of textbooks have increased as well, but publishers are offering some innovative options (including free books) that are making the cost of content more affordable.

To summarize: Some college students drink too much, parents still worry about their kid's success in school, and everything is more expensive than it used to be.

Social Media on Campus

So where does social media play a role here? Almost everywhere you'll discover, and throughout the month we'll take a closer look at social media on campus and how it is changing the college experience. A sampling of what we'll be covering:

1. Sleuthing parents (and educators) can track student behaviors via social networking sites like Facebook. Whether they're having a libation or an evening at the library, you can know about it ... and maybe even see pictures or video. You better be sitting down for this.
   
2. How are students using social media to select a college? Conversely, how are colleges using social media to recruit and select their students? It's an information buffet to be sure.


3. Want to see what your kid's college chemistry class is up to? You might just find that her instructor is posting some of the more explosive classroom demonstrations on YouTube.


4. Listen to a course podcast; more professors than ever before are podcasting their lectures. Some amazing stuff.


5. Explore the blogosphere to see what little Johnny's professor is saying about his students, his area of academic expertise, or the Obama administration.


6. Learn more about Johnny's professor at RateMyProfessors.com, an online opinion aggregator that allows students to see what other students think about college professors.

The Social Media Basics

Ever the avuncular one, here's an opportunity to share some basics about social media before we venture onto campus. (Apologies to the social media savvy among you.) Two years ago most people were hard-pressed to define social media, and while applications like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have become ubiquitous names in casual conversation, there's still a lot of people who don't have a firm grasp on this thing called social media. So here's a quick primer that, hopefully, will make this month's theme more meaningful:

1. Social media is about enabling conversations using web-based applications. Human beings like to talk to each other. They recommend, they refer, they complain, they warn, they tell stories, they interact. They've always done these things and probably always will. Technology has allowed them to do it faster, more efficiently, and often with greater impact.


2. There are four things that social media allows you to do. We call these the four pillars of social media: Communication, Collaboration, Education, and Entertainment.


3. Social media tools and applications can seem endless and overwhelming, but they can be categorized or classified, just as biologists have done with the plant and animal kingdoms. Social media is an ecosystem where applications compliment each other or compete in a Darwinian struggle for survival--or in this case, the mindshare of the user.


4. The social media ecosystem--as we define it--is comprised of the 15 categories highlighted below. To be certain, there is overlap, and some applications fit into more than one category, but if you keep these categories in mind it will be a bit easier to label an application by its primary function. For example, Twitter is a kind of Social Networking application, but it is first and foremost a Microblogging tool. The categories:
   

*Social Networking *Publishing *Photo *Audio *Video *Microblogging *Livecasting *Virtual Worlds *Gaming *Productivity Applications *Aggregators *RSS *Search *Mobile *Interpersonal

Join the Conversation

Please feel free to join the conversation by commenting on the blog posts you read here. Each week in September 2009 we'll have a drawing and give away two free copies of my book, The Social Media Bible (Wiley, 2009), to readers who become commentors. You don't have to agree. In fact, healthy conversation (especially among academics) often involves disagreement. Just join the conversation and collaborate ... or educate ... or entertain. You get the idea.

And don't forget to enjoy the fall foliage or the on-field conquests of your favorite college football team. (As for me, I'll be watching the leaves change on Arizona's Mogollon Rim and rooting for the BYU Cougars, remembering the national championship year of 1984. It's been 25 years. Time for another one.)