Interactive Media for Higher Education

Google Analytics Presentation from the National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:28:00 +0000

As promised at this morning's session, here is the Google Analytics presentation:

Download the GA presentation (PDF)

Here are some more references as well:

Google Analytics - http://analytics.google.com
UNL's URL Shortening service: http://go.unl.edu
Great Smashing Magazine Post on GA: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/16/a-guide-to-google-analytics-and-useful-tools/
Noel-Levitz's GA consultations
Google Analytics on your YouTube Channel
Event Tracking in GA (use for AJAX, Videos, Flash, etc...)

As always, you can follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/smeranda

Use of search exponentially increasing

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:33:00 +0000

One of the difficult aspects of many higher ed websites is designing the navigation to function correctly. Multiple audiences, various departments and decentralized design and development make this a difficult, if not impossible, hurdle.

Fortunately, navigation is quickly becoming second-rate as users turn to search engines to find the content they are after. A report from eMarketer today (recaping a TNS report) shows that 89% of internet users are using search. 89%. Those with broadband are much more likely to use search: 95%. Searching is more popular than checking the weather, paying bills, watching YouTube or visiting a social network.

This quickly brings up the need for robust search capabilities on our sites. Are users forgoing the complicated navigational schemes created and massaged for years in design committees and using search to find what they are looking for? This report would indicate the trend moving in that direction.

This highlights the need for strategies around:

Search Engine Optimization - are your pages indexed correctly in the search engines?
Site search - Is this available, and if so without effort (don't hide a search box behind a click).
Site search analytics - a goldmine of data waiting to be discovered. How often are searches taking place, and what is being searched for? Most importantly, are users finding what they are looking for?

Track mentions of your Institution

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Perspctv is a tool that aggregates twitter, blog and news posts related to any topic. A great use is to find mentions of your school on the web:

http://www.perspctv.com/q/unl

A nice feature is too also compare number of mentions for various terms. So if you wanted to compare the competition, you could simply change your search to include multiple terms (separated by commas):

http://www.perspctv.com/q/university+of+colorado,university+of+kansas,university+of+nebraska

The graphs and data visualization pieces for the comparison tool are strong. Good site to bookmark!

HighEdWeb 2008 Session - Session Converstations happening on Plurk

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:21:00 +0000

UPDATE: More topics added on Tuesday @ 10:45AM
UPDATE: More topics and users added on Tuesday @ 9:30AM.
UPDATE: More topics and users added @ 2:00PM.

Many of the sessions from this year's conference have been tracked on Plurk. Cross conversations from various attendees have started contribute to these conversations. Take a look at these conversations here:

If you're here (or even if you're not), join in the conversations. Ask questions and we'll ask the speakers for you.

For those un-initiated into Plurk, it's similar to Twitter, but with threaded conversations. Therefore, it's suited for conference conversations on the fly. Check it out and get started at plurk.com. Conference attendees to follow and join in conversations with:

I'll try to add more as I see them come up. If you want on the list, add your plurk handle to this plurk thread.

HighEdWeb 2008 Session - Creating A College Style Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:44:00 +0000

Jesse Racine was the presenter, from a college outside of Chicago (didn't catch the name).

To prepare for this presentation, a survey was sent out to hundreds of institutions asking about use and existence of style guides:

64% have a style guide
49% have never updated

Web style guides are used to create consistency and uniformity for the user. Think about it, would you trust a document that was inconsistent with the expected online experience? The style guide creates the rules and regulations for campus developers to follow in order to protect user experiences and define standards. The style guide also helps deter dancing chickens from arriving on the homepage.

What is involved in the web style guide:

Editorial Style
Visual Style guide (college requirements)
Secret Web sauce

Many style guides exist online. For instance, here is our style guide.

How do you go about doing this?
Step 1 - Get managerial buy-in
Without it, your efforts will fall short. In our political world of higher ed institutions, without buy-in from above the style guide will be squashed by the first manager/dean with other interests.

Step 2 - Create a committee
Get help with this. Many different ideas and examples exist on campus. Find out what the common needs are, mash them up with the institution needs and filter the results.

Step 3 - Determine the audience
Find out who you are building this for. Who will be building the pages and adding to content? What information do you need to give to them, how should you send it, etc... Different users demand different levels of detail.

Step 4 - Defining Content
Branding, grammer and punctuation and helpful. This goes back to the initial steps, find out what is needed, what your audience needs and create. You also need to apply the web-specific layer.

Step 5 - Distribute and get feedback
Find out what you did great, and what others probably don't like. Don't sweat the unlikes as long as you have supporting arguments for each case. Revolve these arguments around standards and user experience.

The presenter showed their style guide, which was a large pdf. I'll have a reply on this later, but I'll just say this seems like a failure to finish the project.

HighEdWeb 2008 Session - Social Networking [The Game Changer]

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:26:00 +0000

This session is presented by OmniUpdate. To be honest, had I known before selecting the session, I wouldn't have attended. I'm not a fan of vendor "solutions," but nonetheless they have filled a need in the market in one way or another, so let's see what they have to say.

Lance Merker, the CEO of OmniUpdate is the presenter.

In theory, Social Network started when man first existed. The campfire created the first social stickiness by giving many something in common to discuss and create groups around (physically). Throughout history, many inventions added to the social grouping; with none greater than the internet. "The greatest single platform ever created to allow to allow for social networking," Lance Merker.

Three Killer Apps on the Internet:

Email
The Web
Social Network (goes beyond just the web)

Social networks are more than just the websites, they are the defining identities. The groups and like-mindedness extend beyond what is displayed in the browser.

How did we get to this realm when social networking is the primary focus of our prospective and current students?
Our students have grown up with technology - cell phones, email, text messaging, personal laptop. Check out the Pew Internet report on Teens and Social Media.

What do social networks replace?
Email: a new messaging system is fundamental to social networking.
Chats: same as email.
Blogs: status is updates are quicker/easier.
Photo & Video albums/sharing: Why do you need a youtube/flickr account? If your purpose is to share with your friends, then why not use Facebook?

Public vs. Private Social Networks
With public networks, all content is open to the world (unless steps are taken to create private content). Facebook, MySpace are public social networks. They allow institutions to create pages for your public information.

Private Social Networks
Ning is the best example. Lance discussed examples like HighEd and UWEBD. Only a small portion were members of both networks. Only a handful have a private social network for their institution.

What can you do right now?

Assign responsibilities - You need a social network manager. The tools are easy to use, they don't require a significant amount of resources to begin. You need to funnel through a person/group with the responsibility to oversee the connections.
Participate - Figure out how all this works. Don't read about it, do it. There isn't a magic bullet out there, but many clues. The only way to find out is to participate.
Connect everything - Use the easy and available tools first. With RSS you can add news/events to each of the networks.

To wrap up the presentation, Lance walked through some quick how-tos for signing up and creating social networks.

Lance did a great job presenting social networks. He tied back the theories and philosophies of social network back to real-life throughout history. In actualtity, social networks have been around since the begining of time, however the digital existence has brought it to mainstream reality. He spent five minutes creating a Facebook page and a Ning site. These tasks are simple.

The best item to take away from this presentation is the idea of connecting all areas. In other words, use the content you already have to fill out the social network. You might have news, events, photos available on RSS or iCal feeds. Leverage these to add to the social networks. Before you start, assign responsibility. Find out who will be in charge of this and give him/her the resources needed to get started and participate.

On my way to Springfield, MO

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:09:00 +0000

Off to the HighEdWed 2008 conference. If you are heading there as well, I look forward to meeting with you. We'll have some great chats.

I'll post interesting and new things on the blog as they come up through the conference. Last year, CMS and portals were the unofficial themes. I'm looking forward to seeing what the themes will be this year.

If you're not going, you can stay updated through the many channels:

HighEdWeb Social Network: http://highedweb2008.ning.com
Twitter Back Channel: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=heweb08
Facebook: http://smsu.facebook.com/event.php?eid=16250620227
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/heweb08
Delicious: http://delicious.com/tag/heweb08
Conference Site: http://highedweb.org/2008

Social Networking amongst College Students

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:47:00 +0000

Emarketer.com just released some data on college students and their use of social networks. As higher ed enthusiasts, these numbers are not new, nor are they groundbreaking, but they do serve as more proof when making the arguments for the way the world wide web has changed from a push-driven marketing engine, to a community driven, CRM 2.0 realm.

For starters, here is the data, in a graphical format, comparing social network usage frequency for the last three years:

Notice how the majority indicated they use a social network for various tasks at least once a day. What sort of tasks are they doing?

The typical aspects of a social network: communication and interactivity. A key take away: less than 2% use a micro-blogging tool. While I enjoy Twitter, it has a long way to go before it can proves its usefulness and effectiveness in a college student's repertoire.

Online Traffic Levels Related to Sports?

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Early this morning I was checking out Google Insights to get some information on search terms and geographic location. I started to get sidetracked by my findings when I compared search terms to yearly cycles. What I found wasn't necessarily a revelation, but instead a reminder: collegiate sports drive a large portion of our traffic sources.

When reviewing search terms for major collegiate sport schools, the time graph shows spikes in the season related to the sport for which that school is most well known.

As an example, check out the time graphs for the following football power houses:

Notre Dame

Nebraska

LSU (notice the blue spike during the national championship game)

And for basketball:

Kansas

Gonzaga

Georgetown

And for baseball:

Rice

Fresno State

The legend:

What does this mean?
While most of this traffic is looking for the athletic site, it definitely fuels the increase in awareness of our schools. If you are looking to take advantage of high-traffic times, look at your school's sports schedule.

Walled Garden + Walled Garden = A Third Walled Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:14:00 +0000

Update: According to the recent TechCrunch post, Inigral will be charging institutions for the Facebook App. This will hinder the adoption (especially at large schools since they charge by the student).

A start-up company called Inigral has recently launched a beta product that connects Oracle's Campus Solutions Student Information System to Facebook. The product, called Schools on Facebook, brings student data (allegedly through secure methods) to a student's Facebook profile. This allows for social interactions based on class registrations, events, etc.. The tool will match classmates and professors together through their Facebook accounts.

In higher ed, we are notorious for the walled gardens and multiple silos of data. SIS, course management, CRM, portals, and multitudes of other data sources exist with little to no integration. This makes for a cumbersome interactive student experience. In attempts to leverage the latest trends, we have setup Facebook Pages and Groups -- creating another silo inside a walled garden.

Now, a start-up is building a way to "connect" two walled gardens. Unfortunately, this will create yet another silo of information that will cause inconsistent user experiences dependant on the ever-changing regulations of Facebook (think data based on the Facebook application usage, interactions, effectiveness).

Nonetheless I'm intrigued by this new development. I think it takes the focus away from the inadequates of many higher ed interactive experiences and instead focuses the institution on yet another bright and shiny object. It leverages the stability of Facebook and creates another tool to implement and maintain. Yet it does test the water for the effectiveness of social applications integrated with academics. I don't believe this how tool stands now will be the future; instead I see a more deeply integrated social application built into personalized experiences shared between the student and the institution.

Read more.

Focusing on the Bright and Shiny Object

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:14:00 +0000

When I started my current position, I was under the mindset that bright shiny objects were the goal. Creating the next revolutionary recruitment strategy was the way to go. Something that would attract the target audience, and still create efficiencies in the office was exactly what was needed to successfully attract high school students.

So I began to jump on board with every new tech tool and start-up available. I setup Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Zinch profiles. I started tinkering around with all the settings, exploring the APIs and posting various pieces of content, all while assessing the possibilities for recruitment.

I then bought into the hype of how Universities needed social media managers because the corporate website was going to be extinct. The future of recruiting is through Facebook, YouTube, and elsewhere. I began to prepare for the revolution.

What?! Wait, why would our corporate (or in higher ed's case, institution) site go extinct? It remains the primary source of information for prospective students, and current students must use it on a regular basis to check class notes, communicate with professors, register for classes and check out upcoming on-campus events. News agencies link to our press releases, library research at the very least starts on our sites, and faculty and staff default their start page to us. We have some of the highest trafficked, repeatedly visited sites of any industry.

We have a consumer goldmine. Our students are engaged in our brand for (usually) at least four years. Identities are created in our institutions that live on as alums. Life-changing decisions are made on our campuses, and networks are created. Our students stay loyal to our brand, and invest heavily in it. If our institution's website goes extinct it's because we gave up on it.

In reality, we should be extending our websites. All the time and energy focused on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the likes should be repackaged and applied toward the experiences created on our sites. So much work must be done to break down walled-gardens created by portals and disparate databases. User-experiences need to be consistent, with accessible, applied conventions; timely, personalized and accurate data needs to be presented appropriately; and enrollment processes need streamlined. There is so much foundational work to be done our institutions' sites.

Social networks are awesome, Facebook is not. Online video is great, YouTube channels aren't. Instant messaging is crucial, Twitter isn't.

Are Social Networks Drowning?

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Could we be at the beginning of the social network extinction? Are users beginning to realize the time-sink created by the likes of Friendster, Facebook, MySpace and Second Life? If you take this user-generated video as ultimate truth, then the answer is 'Yes' on both accounts.

Google Trends for Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:02:00 +0000

Google has just updated its Google Trends application to allow trend spotting by domain name. The new feature allows the same capabilities from the keyword trend search, but adds the ability to view trends by domain name.

The difference comes in the stats. When searching by keyword, the chart graphs search volume index. In the website section, it graphs daily unique visitors (a number I assume it grabs from search result clicks, not Google Analytics).

Under the graph, the extra stats show "Regions" of the search taking place (just as the keyword search does), but it replaces "city" and "languages" with "Also visited" and "Also searched for." So it is like a cross between Google Webmaster Tools and Google Trends.

Check it out at:
http://trends.google.com/

University of Iowa Flood Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:15:00 +0000

Just came across this yesterday. The University of Iowa has set up a blog to help with communication related to the tragic flooding in the area. Included in the site is a link to a Flickr account with aerial photos of the flooding.

U of I Flooding Blog: http://uiflood.blogspot.com
Flickr Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uinews/sets/72157605682402874

The Flash Intro/Splash Page is Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:14:00 +0000

Flash intros/splash pages are those annoying, meaningless "branding" strategies many companies and some higher ed sites have put in place before entering their site. They were more frequent five years ago, and have since trailed away. Unfortunately, many graphic designers still cling to them as a requirement (most likely it is a staple in their portfolio).

As if usability, multiple entry points to your site, and the lack of content wasn't enough to get rid of these web annoyances, Google is now offering a way to skip these splash screens from their search results by including a "skip intro" link next to the indexed sites.
[From Google Blogoscoped]

Learning to Change

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:30:00 +0000

I came across this video today. The video focuses on the education industry (specifically K-12, but adaptable for higher ed), and the need to shift the education model to a more advanced, modernized technology curriculum.

The best quote to take away:

So the coin of the realm is not about memorizing the facts they are going to need to know for the rest of their lives. The coin of the realm will be do you know how to find information, do you know how to validate it, do you know how to synthesis it, do you know how to leverage it, do you know how to communicate it, do you know how to collaborate with it, do you know how to problem solve it. That's the new 21st century civil literacies.

CAN-SPAM updates from the FTC

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:49:00 +0000

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just updated a few of the CAN-SPAM rule provisions. A few of the rules more likely to impact include:

(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;

In other words, the opt-out has to either be through an email reply or a one-page form (with limited information requested). You can't force a user to login to a site or to provide additional details in order to opt-out.

..and the Commission’s views on how CAN-SPAM applies to forward-to-a-“friend” e-mail marketing campaigns, in which someone either receives a commercial e-mail message and forwards the e-mail to another person, or uses a Web-based mechanism to forward a link to or copy of a Web page to another person. The SBP explains that, as a general matter, if the seller offers something of value in exchange for forwarding a commercial message, the seller must comply with the Act’s requirements, such as honoring opt-out requests.

If using this type of viral communication, it would best to abide by the regulations for these emails as well.

Google Reader Improves Social Aspect Through New Sharing Features

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:45:00 +0000

This evening, Google launched a new feature for the Reader users: enhanced sharing. This involves a few more tools that could help make Google Reader your information center:

Sharing with Notes. You can now add notes to each item you share. Anyone who subscribes to your shared items will see your notes. However, it is not known yet if these notes are searchable.
Sharing any page on the web. This is good stab at del.icio.us. Now you can use a bookmartlet to share any page as you stumble upon it. You can even add notes, just like a del.icio.us post.

I live by my Google Reader. I now have the ability to now track the same tags I use for RSS feeds with the tags I use for bookmarking. If only there was a way to import my del.icio.us links into Google Reader. Unfortunately, not everyone is loving the new updates.

If you are using Google Reader and you share links, add me as a GTalk user so I can see your shared items. For those interested in mine, you can find the feed at: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02512947381665535926?hl=en. You can also add me to your GTalk (seth007).

Higher Ed Crowd Status Update

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:24:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I started the Higher Ed Crowd Status Twitter group at crowdstatus.com. Since then, the crowd has grown to 32 higher ed Twitterers on board. The crowd has been a great way for new Higher Ed Twitter users to find other Higher Ed Twitter users, but it hasn't really gone beyond that.

Based on my uses of the site, I found a few items that would make it more useful and engaging:

Auto-refresh. By using AJAX to gather the latest tweets by the group, I could continually monitor and participate in the latest conversations.
Trimmed down interface. While the current interface is visually appealing, it would be nice to compact more in an attempt to get more tweets above the fold. In my browser, I see less than a quarter of the tweets for this group.
RSS. It would be nice to take the tweets from this group and be able to read and stay updated through my other RSS feeds.

As I added the latest user today (@LisaNAU), I noticed that the site has been updated to accommodate my first request. Near the bottom of the page, is a link to start/stop "Auto refresh." By turning starting this, the site will automatically refresh with the latest tweets on a regular interval (it appears to be every minute).

You can check it out at:
http://crowdstatus.com/HigherEdcrowd.aspx

And if you would like to be part of the group, simply leave me a comment.

Thanks!

Social Networking Usage Increase Amongst Teens

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:06:00 +0000

eMarketer.com is reporting on the growth of social networking usage by teens.

Though the data reported is for a slightly younger audience than most of us recruit, it begins to paint the picture of what to expect in a few years. Due to this, and combined with other research, eMarketer.com predicts a trend of increasing usage in social networks (as most of use have come to expect).

Your Users Don't Care About the Status Quo

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I was recently discussing a portal implementation with a small college. The portal "solution" was purchased so that current students could conform to institution business functions (pay tuition, graduation check-lists, grade summaries, etc...). The institution was excited about this new tool, however they had one problem: current students weren't using it. When the institution was asked why not, their response was: "The current students don't know that this is where they are supposed to be. We need to spend more time, money and energy on converting the students." (not verbatim, but the gist).

Wrong, they need to return the portal and reinvest time, money and energy into understanding what their students want.

Portals Aren't Solutions
Those of you that know me well, know that I hate portals. Portals are a poor excuse of bolting on a silo of political process to a university's website. Portals are not designed for the correct target audience (students), rather they are designed to enforce out-dated, non-user-centric workflows that appease [non]decision makers. Furthermore, portals fail to aggregate the student life experience. They do not combine all aspects of student interests (academic, residence life, involvement, advising, athletics), instead they primarily focus on only the academic side.

In addition, portals do not provide branding. Slapping your logo on the top and scheming the colors isn't branding. Branding is entrenched into user experience. Branding revolves around your students' experiences and expectations related to your institution. Portals cheapen brands by lowering user experiences and hindering expectations.

Though I am very condescending of portals, I understand how they have become a major part of academia. Institutions have primarily been siloed beasts. Divisions, political turfs, and process-centered areas are the norm. The organizational chart of colleges and universities are long, vertical lines. This has benefits when it comes to student segmenting, decision making, accountability, and development. However, this organizational system will struggle to maintain stability and timeliness as our students become more complex, more entrenched in interactive channels and more demanding of service.

Portals are designed to accommodate processes, but our future interactive communication (primarily the web) needs to be designed to accommodate the user (student) experience. Students do not see our institutions as a collection of silos, rather they see us one brand. User experiences dominate silos. Why? Because a user experience involves many areas that from a user's point of view should be one seamless entity. Students want to be able to join a club, register for classes, buy books, read profiles on professors and sign up for yoga without having to relearn navigation structures, processes, or workflows. Students don't care that the IT department runs the e-commerce section and the registrar handles the schedule of classes. To them, it is all one entity. Our job is not to educate the student on our silos, rather to design based on their expectations.

Experience Architects Needed
We need to start navigating towards a more holistic, user-experience-centric approach. "Experience Architects" need to work with students (current and prospective) to determine online content and design. Student input needs to become the dominating impact on our future realignment strategies. The marketing team is no more in charge than the IT team, nor does registrar's office have more clout than the housing department. The "Experience Architects" will hold the conversations with students, and both will work collaboratively.

In the end, our sites are for the students - they are the user's who have a need to accomplish a task (the degree). By taking their perspective, we can eliminate the friction that so often accompanies academic processes.

Web Design Rap

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:07:00 +0000

Loopholes in the .edu Domain Exploited

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:23:00 +0000

The Conversation Marketing blog has discovered that Pickering Institute is allowing anonymous users to register for-profit blogs on their .edu domain. This would allow any potential blogger to take advantage of the trust and goodwill created by real institutions.

The article does a great job of outlining the reasons why this is a bad idea, and how it could affect the SEO, value, and success of our legitimate operations.

As a higher ed professional, I agree with the author (Ian Lurie). There is a higher purpose attributed to .edu domain name. By allowing non-institutions to take advantage of the domain, it reduces taints the water. I would support a solution to fix these loopholes.

Pickering Institute doesn't visually appear to be a reputable institution, but it did grab hold of a .edu domain and is now exploiting the loopholes.

HigherEd Twitter Crowds

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:08:00 +0000

As of recently, we have experienced an explosion of higher ed Twitter users. At the same time, twitter has become a crucial social media tool. Therefore, many of our twitter streams have become overwhelmed with multiple discussions. At times, I have wished for a way to only "listen" to select groups of individuals

Enter CrowdStatus.com. This tool allows you to create groups of Twitter users. The nice feature is that I can create a group, and then share the URL so everyone can take advantage of the same group.

On one page, you can see the latest updates from everyone in your group. It's a great way to get a snapshot of what is going on. It would be nice if the service refreshed each user as new tweets happened; however functionality is limited for the alpha release.

My first group: Higher Ed. I captured all the users from the UWEBD discussion, and added a few Twitterers I have been following to the list. You can check it out at: http://crowdstatus.com/HigherEdcrowd.aspx. Use the comments of this post to let me know if I missed you; I'll put you on there right away. Hopefully this will be useful.

(BTW, anyone with protected updates [Brad, FJ] can't be added to the stream)

Canadian Conversation Conversions

noreply@blogger.com (Seth Meranda) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:50:00 +0000

Last week I was up in Canada beginning a consultation on the school's web strategy for recruitment and retention. It was a couple of days filled with great discussions, ideas and experiences. Part of the consultation involved focus groups with students and faculty. The students were very refreshing - the passion and zeal they had for their school and education were outstanding.

As we worked through the focus groups, a few terms, words and phrases caused me to pause and explore their meaning. Though subtle, if ever working with Canadian schools/students it is best to understand the lingo:

Mark = grade
GPA is calculated on a percentage scale 85% ~ 3.5
College is a community college. Any institution above this is only a university (college and university are not interchangeable).
Enroll is spelled enrol

I'll add more as I come across them.