Social Media on Campus#1 Out of a Million on RateMyProfessor.Com:A Podcast Interview with BYU's Randy Bott

There are over a million college professors listed on RateMyProfessors.com, and he's ranked #1. In this candid interview, Randy Bott of Brigham Young University, talks about the downside of fame and how this particular social media tool has affected his life. Seems popularity has a price.

Bott talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly of RateMyProfessor.com, discusses the correlation between RateMyProfessor.com ratings and those conducted by the university, and offers some practical advice on how to reach your students. He even wrestles with the question “How do you rate RateMyProfessor.com as a tool for students and educators?” His answers may surprise you. (24 minutes)

Powered by Podbean.com

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.)

Tweets on the Streets of Le Tour on Bastille Day

Why is Lance Armstrong, a guy who rides a bike, the most social media-savvy athlete in the world? We’ll answer that in a moment, but first …

Yesterday was Bastille Day in France, a national holiday commemorating the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. It was also Stage 10 of the Tour De France, a relatively flat, uneventful ride from the town of Limoges to Issoudon, won in a sprint finish by Mark Cavendish, a Brit. You would have known about this if you’re one of the 1.4 million people who follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter. Let’s take a peek at some of yesterday's tweets from the master pedaler:

Driving to the start. Slight drizzle. Bastille Day. A Brit will win tho.

Shot a video with @ghincapie and Mark Cavendish this morning. Good fun altho Cav was too well behaved.

St10 done. Probably one of the more relaxed days I have experienced in 10+ tours. Got roling at the end tho and we were going! Good legs.

Kept going @ the finish and did a 10 min cool down. I reckon it makes no sense to sprint to the line, stop cold, then sit in the bus.

As it turned out, a Brit (Cavendish) did win the stage, just as Armstrong predicted.

Later in the day, Armstrong introduces us (via a CNN link) to the Chalkbot, a street-writing robot that transcribes water-soluble messages of hope and inspiration to riders, fans and a world-wide television audience that includes legions of cancer survivors. The Chalkbot is a towed, two-wheeled device that converts the tweets and text messages of ordinary fans into bright yellow comments that get painted on the streets of the Tour for all to see. Thus, a fortunate fan from Philly can write a message on a boulevard in France and receive a photo of that message, presumably to share with friends via social media. (Is it any wonder that Nike and Armstrong are working with the company that invented the Chalkbot, bringing a new form of user generated content to a street near you.)

The Chalkbot isn’t the only one writing on the streets of the Tour, however. We learn from Chris Brewer, reporting on the LiveStrong website:

At the beginning and end of each stage Nike has a “street team” of 12 super-motivated young people patrolling the fans along the rail. Each of them has a roller bag chock full of chalk(!) and LIVESTRONG yellow wristbands. They give out the chalk for free, encouraging people to write messages of hope on the roads of the Tour, and sell the wristbands for one Euro with all proceeds staying in France to benefit those affected by cancer.

A little later we get another tweet from Lance about the video he, Hincapie, and Cavendish shot in the morning:

Pre-stage video with @ghincapie, Cav, and myself.

And speaking of videos, on Sunday morning Robin Williams was on the Team Astana bus, doing what Robin Williams does best, being funny. Where did we learn about this? From one of Armstrong’s tweets, of course.

Robin Williams stopped by the bus after the finish. He's doing great and got his health back 100%. We made a vid I'll post later. Too funny.

So, what makes Armstrong the most social media-savvy athlete in the world? He understands that social media is about engaging your audience in conversation. The Armstrong you get to know via his tweets, blogs, vlogs and Livestrong.com is endearing and real, everything you would want in a friend. In fact, the Armstrong you get to know via social media is a much more compelling persona than the Armstrong you see in a Charlie Rose interview, for example. Why? Because mass media doesn't always capture the Lance you want to have a beer with. The mass media Lance is awe-inspiring and iconic yet packaged and controlled. That's not a bad thing--that's just how mass media sells our stars to us. The social media Armstrong, by contrast, is a multi-dimensional Armstrong.

And then there is his strategic side. You don't win the Tour De France seven times without being strategic. Not surprisingly, Armstrong has mastered a social media strategy that taps into the Four Pillars of Social Media:

1. Communication


2. Collaboration


3. Education


4. Entertainment
   

He employs a number of different social media tools to establish all four pillars as the foundation for his brand-enhancing self. Let us not forget that he is one of the world's most effective pitchmen. Check out some of the sponsors and advertisements on his website, and you'll see that his cancer-crusading foundation is making money, over $250 million in the last 12 years. (Armstrong's personal net worth is well over $100 million, according to Forbes.)

Clearly, social media didn't make Lance Armstrong. His talent on a bicycle and his backstory as a cancer survivor have given Armstrong an opportunity to be in the public spotlight. But it is his use of social media that has given all of us an opportunity to ride along with him ... and feel good about it.