Using Twitter for Higher Ed

There have been a lot of posts lately about the uses of . Andrew Careaga asked Should Universities Tweet?, a University of Auburn student, Brett Pohlman posted about Twitter, Chris Brogan wrote about a company that Uses Social Media to Announce, and The Chronicle questioned whether it would take off with professors. Last week we brought in Shel Holtz, a consulting agent who spoke about social media in higher education, and he talked a lot about using Twitter. But I was really hoping that he would go into HOW to effectively use Twitter for Higher Ed. This is something that I have been running through my mind for some time now. I have been using Twitter for a good couple of months. The uses in my life are easy to track. I use it to keep up with not only my friends, but also people in higher education that I share similar interests with, etc. It gives me ideas and lets me keep up with what projects they are working on. Here’s an example…FJ Gaylor is an excellent Higher Ed photographer, Shel Holtz who I mentioned before, Matt Herzberger is a Web Rockstar at the University of Texas A&M, Brad J Ward is the Electronic Communications Coordinator (ie visionary) at Butler University, Heidi Cool is a web designer at Case Western Reserve University, and Seth Meranda is the Assistant Director of Interactive Media at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

I mention all this because these are all people that I follow (and who follow me) so that we can keep each other updated. We do it as friends and we do it as professionals.

However, I have been searching for a convincing manner in which to use Twitter for Higher Ed effectively. Amongst all the turmoil in my head lately (hence the lack of blog postings), I came up with an idea. The Admissions Department at UIS has been thinking about ditching the chat feature on our page for something much better. It is a very expensive service that doesn’t get used that often. So I thought, why not set up a UIS Admissions Twitter account and post that on our website? Most people in the chat use it like an IM and use very short sentences. Not only that, they don’t have to wait until a chat date to talk with someone. Our Student Ambassadors (as well as myself) can/will check the Twitter account during the day, and I will monitor it at night. It probably wouldn’t get that much use normally, but on days where we have advertised chat sessions, a group of ambassadors would be logged in and could post responses to it.

Now this may not be the best way to go about a live chat, but for all the time where the chat isn’t live, I think this would work well. Students have to log in to the chat anyway, so why not get them started on Twitter and build a community before they come to college. That way when they get here, they already have some connections.

If anyone has any good suggestions for a Live Chat service, let me know because the one we have now is not attractive and very expensive. This is definitely one area in which we could cut back costs since our governor keeps reducing our budget…that’s just my own personal insight and not necessarily shared by others.

I did want to mention one last thing though. Shel Holtz mentioned that the University of Michigan implemented Twitter as a FREE Emergency Notification System. There has been a lot of talk about ENS’s lately, and I know UIS has invested a lot of money into a cell phone notification system. The fact that someone at Michigan said why not use Twitter to send text messages to students is brilliant! I only wish I would have thought of that first…

Emergency Alert Notification System

In light of the NIU tragedy on February 14th, I wanted to give coverage to UIS’ Emergency Alert Notification System. Andrew Careaga posted a link to the CNN news story on his blog yesterday just after we both posted it on Twitter virtually at the same time. What’s crazy is that I heard from a student that something had happened at NIU, but it wasn’t until an hour later that I read anything about it anywhere, and Andrew was one of the first. Just goes to show you the power of blogs.

I was just talking about our emergency alert notification system with our Director of Marketing the other day. We both thought it was interesting how a Springfield news station aired a report about our larger sister campus unveiling their new emergency alert notification system the other night. Funny thing is that they unveiled that system around last September…funnier yet, my campus, the one located in Springfield has never been mentioned for implementing our own notification system. Anywho…just a little rant with a lack of coverage from our own hometown news station.

My main point is to express to people to sign up for our alerts. UIS is a very safe campus and I have never felt as if I was in any harm or danger. I have been in contact with our Web Team and they assured me that an extensive plan is in place.  Here is what the NIU homepage looked like.

Regardless of how safe any campus feels, they should have a Notification system in place. Details of the UIS policy can be found here. Do yourselves a favor and sign up. The tornado season is coming, and that is covered under the policy as well.