Engaging without invading
Stuart Johnson*, Matthew Mobbs*, David Morgan†
* Student Support and Development Service, University of Leicester
† Students Union, University of Leicester
Abstract
This paper will share our experiences of using social media (specifically Facebook and Twitter) to engage with students about issues important to Student Development and the Students' Union at the University of Leicester. The key issue has been how to engage with students without causing them to feel like we have invaded their social spaces. This paper will outline how we are seeking to do this.
1 Introduction
Up until early 2009 the websites of both Student Development (www.le.ac.uk/studentdevelopment) and the Students' Union (http://leicesterunion.com) at the University of Leicester had consisted mostly of static content; made up of pages of information that changed infrequently and which facilitated little interaction beyond basic form submission. Both Student Development (SD) and the Students' Union (SU) have independently been working to develop their respective websites to encourage more engagement with students and better communication of information. One of the main strategies employed, and the aspect this paper is concerned with, has been the use of so called 'social media' to encourage engagement. Static pages require users come to us whereas the use of social media has enabled us to go to them.
2 Background
The uptake of Facebook and Twitter has grown enormously in the last 12 months and whilst it is difficult to pinpoint student usage, or even UK usage, easily, there have been some interesting figures in the media relating to the increase in uptake of these services in 2009. For example:
"Compete’s numbers for April show that Facebook has grown from 91,000,000 to 104,000,000 unique visitors, a healthy 14.35% increase from March. [...] The number of unique visitors [on Twitter] has grown from 14,000,000 to 19,000,000, which is 38.56% growth."
(Schroeder, 2009)
and
"Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service."
(Fox et al.., 2009)
The reason for both SD and SU using Facebook and Twitter, therefore, is simply because this is where many of our students are resident when they are online, so it makes sense for us to have a presence there too.
SD and the SU have developed a significant presence on Facebook and Twitter (see Table 1). As of 11 December 2009 SD has more than 650 fans on its Facebook page and more than 250 on Twitter, whilst the SU on the other hand has more than 2,500 followers on its Facebook page and more than 400 on Twitter. Clearly SD and the SU have slightly different intentions in using these accounts; SD's is, on the whole, aimed at encouraging students to develop their academic and career skills whereas SU is largely about promoting campaigns, social events and student community.
Student Development / Students' UnionFacebook address / http://tinyurl.com/uolsd-facebook / http://www.facebook.com/StudentsUnion
Facebook page active since / 1 September 2009 / 11 February 2008
Fans on Facebook / 665 / 2,629
Twitter address / http://twitter.com/uolsd / http://twitter.com/percygee
Twitter account active since / 1 September 2009 / 18 March 2009
Followers on Twitter / 279 / 418
Purpose / Development of academic and career skills / Promoting campaigns, social events and student community
Table 1: SD and SU Facebook and Twitter figures as of 11 December 2009
It is important to not e that both SD and SU are using Facebook pages rather than Facebook groups. Facebook pages, which are a more recent addition to the Facebook infrastructure, have much more functionality than Facebook groups. People who become a 'fan' of a page receive updates in their news feeds from that page in the same way that they receive updates from their friends, thereby integrating information much better than groups.
3 Methods
Data was gathered from the Facebook accounts using the fan page insights data (http://www.facebook.com/help/search.php?hq=insights&ref=hq). The Twitter accounts were analysed using the following services:
· http://tweetstats.com/
· http://www.twitteranalyzer.com/
· http://twittercounter.com/
In order to assess users' experience of the Facebook and Twitter accounts a survey of users was conducted (see http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ssds/sd/facebook-twitter-survey). A total of 36 responses were received during the period 3-13 December 2009. 31 of the respondents identified themselves as University of Leicester students, 3 were staff and 2 described themselves as "Other". Figure 1 shows the accounts the respondents follow, unsurprisingly, due to the numbers following the accounts shown in Table 1, more of the respondents were following SU accounts than SD accounts.
Figure 1: The accounts followed by the survey respondents
4 Findings
The daily subscription figures show that on Facebook SD have seen a constant increase in user numbers at the rate of 10 new subscribers per day since the beginning of the academic year 2009/10, as shown in Figure 2. The Facebook statistics show that SD have an equal split between male and female, with the majority (45%) being age 18-24, with followers in all age groups from 18 to 55+. SU have a much greater number of followers and also have an almost equal split of male (45%) and female (55%). The majority of the SU demographic is aged between 18-24 (88%), however the SU have no followers over the age of 44.
Figure 2: Facebook fan page growth since 01/09/09
A similar pattern has emerged with the followers of the Twitter accounts, as can be seen in Figure 3; the SU Twitter account has seen a linear increase in followers between August and November whereas SD, although having fewer followers, has seen a more rapid increase in followers during the same period.
Figure 3: Growth of Twitter followers
One of the main benefits of using social networks has been the engagement with international and distance learning students, with 44% of SD Facebook subscribers' country of origin being external to the UK. The SU has much smaller percentage of non-UK subscriber (8%), however the service is still appreciated with one distance learning response to the survey stating it gives them a "sense of belonging to LUSU".
The users of both SD and SU are very positive about our use of social media, the vast majority of respondents describing the services as being "Informative", "Useful" and "Interesting" according to our survey, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: How the survey respondents described the SU and SD accounts they followed
Additionally, many respondents explained why they followed the accounts, including:
"Its easy to get to know about events, programmes that being organised at ssds through daily uploads. its saves time as you don't have to search for the information in web pages. Just click on the link provided with upload, its convenient than searching info on website."
and
"Easy way to find out what's going on, given that I don't usually go into the Union."
It has already been discussed that one of the key reasons for using social networks is it gives the University a non-invasive presence within the networks that students are regularly using. Nonetheless, as the name of this technology suggest and as it frequently suggested in all the Facebook help services, the purpose and challenges of these services is to be social and interact with other users. Both the SD and SU services accomplish this by using the following features;
· in Facebook allowing students to 'post' to the 'wall', comment upon a post and suggest if they 'like'/'dislike' a post;
· on Twitter students interact directly with the accounts using @replies and, if a message is seen as relevant to others, re-tweet key messages;
· also, if a student wishes to discuss something without broadcasting the topic to the rest of the world, students sometimes send direct messages to the accounts.
Table 2 illustrates some of these more social interactions.
Facebook (Student Posts, comments, likes) / 49 / 1278
Number of tweets / 582 / 613
Twitter @replies / 158
(27.15% of total tweets) / 139
(22.68% of total tweets)
Twitter Retweets / 41
(7.04% of total tweets) / 23
(3.75% of total tweets)
Twitter Direct Messages / 7 / 10
Table 2: Number of subscriber interactions as of 1st September 2009
What is important to note in the behaviour of the subscribers is that they see a clear distinction between the two identities of SD and SU, which have very different purposes and context within the University of Leicester. Student Development is a University of Leicester core service whose purpose is to support and develop students’ academic skills and career opportunities. Whereas the Students' Union's purpose is to represent student rights and provide them with entertainment. The users understand this and consequently interact with them in very different ways. Students tend to use the SD services for advice and guidance and discuss educational/developmental issues. For example, the quote below is a Wall post from a distance learning student on the SD Facebook page seeking advice about the Blackboard virtual learning environment.
"My Dears, I'm new student in University of leicester by distanse learning Msc finance. I need to help from any one using blackboard . In fact I enrolled an outline course by mistake and I want to know how to delete it from my blackboard. I will not need this course to study it because it's not in my module . Ple...as if any one can help me because i don't know who's my tutor until now."
The following quote is also from the SD Facebook page and is a conversation about office suites.
SD: Could a kind #uol student confirm whether you can access these ms office tutorials http://ow.ly/FClR They're on Bb so need to login
User 1: Yes it works!! Thanks for that!!
User 2: Definitely it works properly. Anyway, personally, I prefer Open Source software instead. Nice to see you have a link to the Open Office suite! ;)
SD: Thanks for letting us know it works. And yes some v good (much better?!) MSOffice alternatives out there!
User 2: Yes, sure! Google Docs is reaching really good rates as well, though it's not open source :-/
User 1: Student Development's online MS Office tutorial will help lots of student to gain professional skills. We should thank the team for doing a fine job rather than introducing other software here!! :p
Conversely, the students often use the SU account to discuss political and University issues, campaigns and social events, including points to be raised at SU Council meetings. In the two Facebook conversions below the SU and subscribers discuss the two very different aspects of student life; the first is a discussion between the SU and a subscriber about tax legislation and the second a pub quiz in the Students' Union.
SU: Further correspondence from MP for Leicester South, Peter Soulsby, "I have generally taken the view that higher education is a benefit to society generally and therefore ought to be funded out of general taxation."
User 1: But general taxation is a regressive tax! I dont agree with raising the cap but the general taxation isn't a fair way of doing it IMO! Don't ask me for a fairer system though...
SU: He went on to pledge that he "will continue to press for fees to be capped and for the system to ensure that Universities are not enabled or encouraged to compete on 'price'."
User 1: We must not overlook that fact that those who now make the rules, and remove funding, are of the generation who enjoyed a very well funded university education. Taxation at the right level, barely touching those on lower incomes, increasing substantially for those in the extreme wealth category. Robin hood had a point. A well educated society is ... See Morethe ultimate goal of all, less crime, better civilisation, netter citizens, it's fairly obvious stuff. Naturally it doesn;t suit the media moguls purposes.
SU: Excellent points Paul. The first point you made was one that was continually reiterated by most of the MPs who turned up to support us in parliament on Wednesday.
And
SU: Think you're clever; who was the first man ever seen on Channel 4? Pub quiz tonight in the Scholar from 21:00.
User 1: Richard Whitely?
SU: Correct! :D Now, anyone know the capital of Latvia?
User 2: Riga??
SU:That's right. I think you're both clever enough to come to our Christmas Charity pub quiz tonight :D
User 3: not only do I know it was Richard Whiteley, I actually SAW it. That's how much older I am than anybody who is allowed in a student union pub quiz.
This conversational style is very powerful and probably one of the most important factors in getting students to engage with organisations via social networks, this is also one of the largest challenges. To tackle this challenge SD and SU have invested time in personalised and responsive updates. These interactions are evidenced in Table 2 where 27% of SD and 22% of SU tweets are @Replies directed at a specific user. These tweets can also be integrated into Facebook using the selective Twitter status, this enables messages directed at one person, if seen as important, to be shared with the masses.
Nevertheless, it is noticeable when looking at the frequency of these interactions over a period of time, that during the final two weeks of the academic term, when there are multiple assessment deadlines and exams are drawing near, the number of interactions is dramatically reduced. This would suggest that students are drawing a clear distinct between academic work and social network engagement, not allowing the later to interrupt formal assessment.
To achieve this personalised approach SD uses Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com) to enable multiple users to inhabit a single Twitter account. This configuration means the SD account can be covered throughout the working day by SD's helpdesk staff (PhD students employed on a casual basis) and on an ad hoc basis by other members of staff, who check and update the account as necessary (Figure 5).