Social media helps universities attract the right students

Facebook photo albums, online clips and video briefings for international students are among examples of best practice highlighted in a new report aimed at helping universities and colleges better inform their first-years about life at university.

As part of the JISC-funded Student Expectations of University project, aimed at enhancing applicants’ understanding of university experiences, the 1994 Group have produced this report to illustrate innovative and excellent practice in the areas of: communicating with prospective students; providing information, advice and guidance (IAG) to applicants; and managing student expectations of university.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2010/11/expectations.aspx

HE in a web 2.0 world

The Higher Education Academy and JISC welcomed the publication of the HE in a Web 2.0 World report, which looks at the projected future trends in the use of technology in higher education.

Findings from the report show that students typically spend four hours a day online, a figure that looks set to rise as teenagers make increasing use of Web 2.0 technology in their daily lives. One of the challenges for the higher education sector is therefore to ensure that staff can keep pace with the advancing technology which many of their students rely on every day, using the technology to enhance the student learning experience.

Read the full report at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/heweb2.aspx

Listen to a podcast with members of the Committee of Inquiry http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/05/podcast80heinaweb20world.aspx

Your experiences with Web 2.0

If you’re already using tools like Twitter, YouTube and Google Apps, Netskills would like to hear about your experiences with them and would value any advice you have for new users.

Netskills is writing a series of JISC guides to emergent web technologies for researchers, teachers and administrators. These guides are being written for new users, perhaps considering using web 2.0 tools for the first time.  

To help make this guide as relevant to the community as possible, please share your thoughts via this form: http://twurl.cc/ebb