Serendipity35

This week I have been working with a new client on their social media strategy. More about them in future posts, but even though they are an educational non-profit, they are interested in their return on investment (ROI) from using social media.

Businesses have learned in the past five years that social networking is a powerful platform. Their market research shows that their customers are using social media and that it affects their buying. The problem has been showing the ROI from companies getting into the space. How does adding another 25,000 followers on twitter or Facebook impact sales? More importantly, DOES it impact sales at all? 

In phase one of the social media explosion, companies didn't really see why they needed to be in the space. It looked like a fad. In phase two, they saw their competitors moving into the space and figured they had better be there too or be seen as old-fashioned. In this phase there was (and still is for some companies) an “If we build it, they will come" attitude. But then they didn't come. Or the company wasn't sure if they had come because of the social media.

Once MySpace was big. Then Facebook overwhelmed it. Now, MySpace is trying to swim back up to the surface. They need to show people that they are something other than Facebook, not a replacement for it. Google Plus took that attitude too, saying "We're not Facebook and we don't want to be." Critics might say that's because neither of them can be Facebook at this point. Supporters would say that there is room for other networks as long as they serve different needs.

Yahoo was once Google, in that it was the place to search. But that was before google became Google. Now, with CEO Marissa Mayer calling the shots, they are looking at purchases like Tumblr which would add 107 million microblogs and another 15 billion pageviews a month to Yahoo. For companies like Yahoo, Google and Facebook (who are media and advertising companies now), that means a lot to ROI. But Yahoo is also looking at being cool again.   The marketing folks will look at the numbers and see that users stay longer on Tumblr than on Facebook and get excited. They will tell you that Yahoo users are an aging audience. That's not good for advertisers. It was said that Tumblr would cost a billion dollars. Facebook bought Instagram last year for about $715 million. Not chump change, so you better get some ROI from that.

Then there is the ROI of your personal social media. What do you get from being on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Connecting with old friends, keeping up with casual acquaintances, finding out what people are talking about, making professional connections, self-promotion, jobs, staying up on new things, trends, and just trying to stay cool as you age? 

I use a site called SlideShare to post presentations that I create and give. It's a way to archive them, share them (via links and embeds) with people at an event and with people who didn't attend the event, and it has social tools so that people can follow your work and you can follow people who interest you. There is a lot of backslapping and hat tipping in social media. You show me yours and I'll show you mine.

Slideshare sends me weekly stats about my uploads. It tells me that my slides have had 133,00 views. 150 have favorited them and 1000 people have downloaded them.  Several presentations on Moodle (that are now out of date) keep getting views and are up to almost 60,000. One on open textbooks had 40 views this past week added to its 2000 earlier ones. My most recent upload on engagement has almost 400 views. The site links to my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and I get followers and make contacts by way of those presentations.

So what is my return on this little social investment? As with companies, it's about building reputation, community and attention. Those are tough things to put a $ on, even though we know thay have value that is at least partially monetary.

One of the biggest changes in the MOOC movement the past two years that distinguishes it from the three earlier experimental years is the discussions on credit. Those early massive courses were open in several ways and obtaining credits for those taking the course at a distance for free was not a real concern.

Although much (too much?) talk these days is about how to ascertain achievement and how to pay for and award credit, it should be remembered that the vast majority of MOOC participants are NOT interested in credit. They are interested in furthering their knowledge for free.

San Jose State University is partnering with Udacity to offer some credit MOOCs. Thankfully, those not wanting credit can still take these classes for free. (I have heard this confusingly termed as a "blended" model. Blended should remain as meaning a course that meets both online and face to face.)

Empire State College (part of the SUNY system) announced that it wanted to bring all its online classes "under one umbrella" in order to encourage degree completion. ACE has approved five MOOCs for its credit recommendations. Two courses each come from Duke University, and the University of California at Irvine, and one is from the University of Pennsylvania. All are offered through Coursera.

I think that Robert Clougherty, acting vice provost for research, innovation, and open education at Empire State, rightly predicts that "MOOCs are not the salvation of education. They’re another means.” 


http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/Giving-MOOCs-Some-Credit.aspx

http://chronicle.com/article/American-Council-on-Education/137155/

Though MOOCs have been around for about five years in some limited forms, the past 18 months have been the real emergence of MOOCs in education. Everyone seems to have an opinion about them, but there is less formal research being done on them than many academics would like to see.

Those people may be happy to have read the announcement about the launch of the MOOC Research Initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a set of investments intended to "explore the potential of MOOCs to extend access to postsecondary credentials through more personalized, more affordable pathways."

Researchers, academics, administrators, learners, and policy makers have plenty of questions as to the effectiveness of the Massive Open Online Course format of teaching and learning. The MOOC Research Initiative (MRI) hopes to fill this research gap by evaluating MOOCs and how they impact teaching, learning, and education in general.

For now, MRI is a $400,000 investment offering grants in the range of $10,000 – $25,000 each. The MRI grant program is led and administered by Athabasca University and George Siemens with support from an advisory committee of experts in learning design and MOOCs.  Although MRI only launched recently, their schedule is aggressive and they want successful grantees (who will be announced by the end August) to begin immediately this fall semester and then give interim reports at a conference at the University of Texas, Arlington on December 5-6, 2013.

Information on MRI, including call for proposals and timelines, is available at: www.moocresearch.com.

I have yet to see educators settle on one way of having students produce and share video, especially for online courses. There is such a staggering amount of devices, tools, services and apps to produce and share video that I think most of us are as baffled as the tyranny of choices we confront in the supermarket aisles.

I was looking again this summer at some services I had not used before to see if there was a new FREE tool for students to produce video that could incorporate live action but also screen captures, images and maybe even desktop interactions. I wanted this for producing short "lectures" or presentations and for assignments, proposals, evaluations and portfolios.

In the past, I have used any commercial service that the school had purchased and I could offer my students. These products like WebEx, Echo260, Camtasia Relay etc. are not only costly but often too much of a tech hurdle for faculty and for students to use with any regularity.

Many people suggest that students use things like Voice Thread http://voicethread.com in online or F2F courses. Instructors can start a topic and students can all add comments, either voice or text, around it. Students can collaborate on a thread about a course topics. Images and videos made using other tools can be included too.

Animoto http://animoto.com is free for 30 second video (which might be useful for icebreaker introductions or other small assignments) but has costs otherwise.

Screencast-o-matic.com offers a maximum recording time of 15 minutes, no max free hosting for up to 15 minutes per upload and a variety of file and publishing options.

Similarly, I have had students use Jing which is free from techsmith.com/jing to create images and videos of what is on their computer screen, then share them instantly. The videos must be short, but I find it works well for proposals and elevator pitches for research topics.  It can also be a good icebreaker exercise to have them introduce themselves in a n online course. I have used it to give students my thoughts on their work in online courses. It's not difficult to use but it also can signal to me those students that are going to have issues with using technology.

I hear about more teachers using Google Hangouts in the classroom. Besides the video aspect, it offers commenting, messaging, and chat features so that students can ask questions while you lead the course, and they can interact with you and each other.