Faculty Website vs. Blackboard: Beyond Instructional Benefits (TIE3)
Faculty Website and Blackboard can both be used as effective tools to facilitate instructional activities in higher education. They overlap with each other partly in content, yet a closer look into these systems reveals that the benefits of Faculty Web pages have gone beyond just learning and teaching management. Easy access to detailed information about the instructors and courses without login requirements has made Faculty Website a valuable recruiting asset for prospective students and effective tools for retaining and engaging current students. The enhanced features of WCJC’s Content Management System allow instructors to create well-designed, user-friendly Faculty Web pages that are more appealing and relevant to students. In this session, a comparative analysis of WCJC’s Faculty Website and Blackboard will be conducted, and the new CMS functionalities behind WCJC’s Faculty Website will be demonstrated to justify the maintenance of both systems.
One Size Fits None: Remaking a College Site for a Content Hungry Generation (UAD4)
From Netflix to Spotify to Amazon, prospective students are accustomed to personalized websites that offer recommendations to help them discover new content or products. When they arrive at most college and university websites the experience is very different. It can feel static and generic by comparison. The culprit? In order to tame the massive amount of content and competing priorities of college websites, a one-size-fits-all home and landing page approach has proliferated. When North Central College decided to redesign its website they wanted to break that one-size-fits-all mold and engage tech-savvy prospects with an experience that felt different from other school sites. With agency partner Spark451, North Central took cues from non-higher ed sites to develop a concept called “stacks.” Stacks are topically bundled content cards. For example, a photo of a faculty member, a video, a student quote, career facts, all related to a particular major. Stacks allow for things like curated categories, and can be embedded into landing pages, news articles and other types of content. They help North Central repurpose and surface content in strategic ways that support admissions efforts. Attendees will learn how North Central took a radical approach to organizing its content to create a user experience that’s different for higher-ed but feels familiar (in a good way) to prospective students.
E-Expectations 2016: Online Behaviors for College-Bound Students from Junior to Senior Year (TIE5)
Each year, the E-Expectations report summarizes the online behaviors of college-bound high school students in order to inform and improve e-recruitment strategies. For the first time, a fall survey was administered to learn about behavior variances that occur when high school students transition from junior to senior year. Attend this session and be the first to learn about trends and behaviors among juniors and seniors as they use digital marketing resources to explore their college enrollment options. Stephanie and Lance will discuss prospective students’ use of websites, email, texting, paid marketing, social media, forms, and more. Additionally, they will compare the spring and fall survey data and explain how the results should influence your own e-recruitment practices. By the end of the session, attendees will: 1. Understand what campuses need to do to meet the online expectations of college-bound high school students at all stages of their college search. 2. Know how to manage their institution’s digital presence across multiple channels, including the campus website, email, and social media. 3. Learn how mobile device usage is changing how students browse websites, complete forms, and interact with campuses online.
Effective Academic Program Pages That Attract and Convert (TIE6)
Academic program pages are dollar for dollar the most important pages on your institutions site. Why are we not treating them like it? Learn how to craft a user experience and SEO informed content strategy to gain more organic search traffic and better answer the questions of your prospects to generate interest in your schools academics programs.
"No, YOU'RE Crying": How Two Schools Turned a Cinderella Experience into Social Media Gold (MCS7)
Getting into "The Big Dance" is one thing. But what do you do once you're there, and how can you make sure you get the most out of it? University of Arkansas at Little Rock & Stony Brook University were two Cinderella stories in the NCAA basketball tournament this spring, and Meaghan Milliorn Fikes and Chris D'Orso helped tell their schools' stories through social media. They will discuss how best to collaborate across departments and mobilize campus resources quickly and efficiently, and will provide examples of how they capitalized on the excitement of being suddenly thrust into the national spotlight.
“Mike’s an Idiot” And Other Ways a Responsive Shop Changed Recruitment in 2016 (MCS8)
What happens when you send prospective students an email with the subject line “Mike’s an Idiot," linked to an "un-marketing" video? How do you build an audience of 4,000 in nine months on Snapchat, on a campus with only 1,200 students? Why do millennials love dashcam videos and what happens when you put your baseball team in a van? Can movie trailers double as recruitment videos? Get answers to these questions and more at our session. Last year we said, "go bold, or go home’." This year? We went even bolder and saw huge returns on the risk. Hear from both the marketing and the enrollment sides of the team about why partnering together and taking bigger risks is working well for Beloit. We’ll even share details on why we plan to send blank postcards in 2017. Just kidding. Maybe.