Colleges and universities that want to successfully engage their students need to reach them where they spend much of their time – online – and improve the quality of social media content.
This is according to Justin Nguyen, founder, Declassified Media. Nguyen spoke at the Tech Tips: Improving Student Engagement and Assessment session, part of Fierce Education’s Higher Education: Technology Profiles in Success – Fall virtual event held recently, along with session along with Sarah Jayne Boulton, Global Curriculum Lead at Labster. The event focused on showcasing some of the ways institutions can embrace technology to boost the student experience in this new blended-learning environment. This session explored various best practices and strategies to increase student engagement specifically by incorporating social media the right way as well as other technology tools.
Nguyen explained that his company’s platform – which has more than 300,000 students following its content – considers two essential components to better engage students. “If you’re looking to see how you can engage your student audience a little bit better, you should strive for a combination of education and entertainment,” he said.
Nguyen stressed that it’s very important for institutions to understand their competition. “Many may think that other universities are the competition. But if you’re creating content online and trying to increase your student engagement from online into on campus activities, your competition is actually the group of individuals who have the most popular videos on YouTube that garner more than 10 million views. You want to take the attention away from those individuals,” Nguyen points out. “When students get online, they go straight to Instagram and Tick-Tock and YouTube. And if you’re able to be a part of the students’ journey while they’re on an online space, that increases their engagement once they’re back on campus.”
Nguyen explained that Joy Ventures and Get Wise research found that 38 percent of Gen Z spends more than five hours daily on Tick-Tock or YouTube. “If you’re not on those platforms, you’re not going to get in front of these students, and that’s why it’s so important to be able to find engaging ways to create content on these platforms,” he added.
While universities understand the education part of content – posting resume tips, campus tours, announcing campus events, for instance – they need to concentrate more on the entertainment value of online content. It’s helpful to bring in experts in the space, Nguyen explained. “You might look within your own university. There may be students in your communications department who might understand social media who can help you make sense of concepts like influencers, collaborations, thumbnails and view duration time. And note that when you’re looking for students, consider those who may not be club presidents of have a 4.0 GPA because these students are typically too busy to learn on their own about social media.”
Nguyen offered some practical ideas for creating student engagement on campus. “Collaborate with influencers and creators on your campus and work with them to Vlog about a major sporting event, for instance. It will give your school brand equity,” he explained. “If you don’t have large sports teams, try creating your own creators by running a creator competition and perhaps throw some dollars behind it to help students get set up.”
Dealing with Digital Fatigue
Institutions and professors are still facing student engagement challenges in this new blended learning environment in which individuals want information how and when they want to receive it, according to Sarah Jayne Boulton, Global Curriculum Lead at Labster. “On the one hand, we have an excellent tool for understanding and creating access and listening in to provide better student equity through social media platforms, but we also have many educators reporting digital fatigue,” Boulton said. Students are also overloaded with screen time as well, she added.
“They’re engaging not only with social, but watching lectures, doing group projects, working remotely and maybe playing simulations. So along with the increase in learning flexibility and the ability to self-pace in the educational journey are traded off with the increased screen time and students seem to be positive about the experience, for the most part.”
In addition to the digital fatigue, Boulton notes that there are challenges associated with getting familiar with some of the new technologies. “That’s tricky, especially if you’ve been used to teaching in a certain way and you’ve got a methodology that works,” she said, adding that just like students, educators are beginning to set up communities of learning to share experiences and the different ways they’re implementing technologies. “Educators are taking a page out of the student’s book, engaging and putting themselves out there to see what they can learn from peers,” she said.
You can’t teach an instructor how to be a social media expert if you don’t have a social media expert on your team, according to Nguyen. “Either you need to bring on someone full time at the university to help bridge the gap between social content and educational content, or you can bring on consultants like myself,” he explained.
While some higher education administrators say they want to return to the old way of doing things, many are open to embracing the lessons of the past 18 months and incorporating them into their future teaching. Boulton pointed out that many educators are forward-thinking and listening to students. “The students have had a taste of a new teaching paradigm, and it’s encouraging that they’re speaking up about how they want to access their education and where the benefits have been,” she said. “I can see why some have an appetite for going back to how things were. It’s comforting because we know what we’re doing. But if we really want to develop ourselves and progress as educators, we’re going to have to embrace some of these technologies and listen to student feedback.”
For more articls from Fierce Education's event see:
Collaboration Critical to Technology Transformation in Higher Education