Social Media and Network Technology benefits for the College community and Students

Social Media and Network Technology benefits for the College community and Students
BIS/220
November 27, 2013
Social Media and Network Technology benefits for the College community and Students
Technology is constantly changing and the younger generation is interacting and embracing this new technology at an accelerated rate. The younger generation enjoys having the world information at their fingertips and the immediate gratification of information. Colleges will need to embrace these new communities in order to keep up with recruitment of the younger generations, student to student interaction, student to professor interaction. Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the internet communities that we will need to embrace to encourage our recruitment and student interaction.
Facebook has been around since 2004 and is still growing in popularity. Facebook gives you the availability to send an instant message, an email, post discussions, provide media, and provide detail information. Colleges that have a Facebook page and interact with Facebook has the ability to recruit sophomores and juniors in high schools not only in the surrounding areas but worldwide. This ability provides an advantage to have a more diverse student body. For young college students Facebook is a mean they utilize to communicate with other students about the activities going on in the campus. They also use this communication tool to converse about class assignments, organization functions, sports, and daily activities. Students who do not live on campus, Facebook allows them to still experience college life and the inclusion of student activities. College professors can also utilize this communication tool to correspond and interact with all students, including students who participate at satellite campuses. The surrounding community will also have the availability to interact with the students because they will be able to show the students the history of the area, and support the college with financial scholarships and the sports arenas. Most of the surrounding community makes up the professors, educators, the educator families and friends. Professors will have the accessibility to be active not only with the students but with the students families as well. As a parent of a college student, I enjoy being able to see what the students are doing, what classes are troublesome, the activities the students are participating in, and when parents can interact with the student at school. The disadvantages of Facebook include cyberbullying, lack of personable interaction, lack of social interaction, non-clarifying answers, misunderstandings of context of messages and pictures, invasion of privacy, and possible compromise of security information. Yet, these disadvantages can be kept down to a minimum by the college handbook and the student conduct codes by the students themselves. Most college’s network security will keep secure information safe from any breaches or hacking.
LinkedIn will be very beneficial for our graduating students, faculty and local business. This social network will allow for the local and national business to see the types of students we are producing in the workforce. LinkedIn will allow the students to make contacts with others in the corporate field of their choice and possibly encourage the company to reach an agreement with the college on training of their current staff. Our faculty will be able to utilize this social network by seeing what the other colleges are teaching and producing in the coming work force and learn what skills the companies are looking for, and provide those skills to our students. The only down side to LinkedIn will be headhunters from other colleges recruiting our faculty to come and work for them. But we can counter offer our faculty, pay retainer fees, and sign binding contracts with the faculty to keep them from leaving our facility.
We will be using the waterfall model for the implementation of a Facebook page and LinkedIn page. The system development life cycle for this process we will need to make sure that all students will have access to the college Wi-Fi on campus, which we currently have in place all over the campus. Our second phase will include making sure that students and faculty will have accessibility to a computer, which currently we already have in place in the library and common areas. Our third phase of the process will require the college to set up a Facebook and LinkedIn account and have our IT department to maintain the accounts. Fourth phase of the process will require the college to get the word out to the students about both pages on the internet and require all of our faculty to friend us on each site. The final phase will be having our IT department to hire someone to maintain both pages for content on the page, the context of the messages on the page and be a monitor for any violation of student conduct codes. The only disadvantage for using these websites, we will not be able to modify the systems. The advantages outweigh the disadvantage immensely because startup cost will be at a bare minimum, and we will still be able to get an idea of how many of our students are using to communicate with one another by the amount of friend request we receive and the amount of conversation context on the page.
As you can see with the data that has been provided, this would be a very beneficial and effective tool that we can utilize for our facility. We want to be enticing for the upcoming youth to really consider the opportunities that we have here. This will help to ensure more diversity not only to the school, local business and the surrounding communities. This also has the potential for more donors and sponsors for our facility

References

Getting Connected - Social Media and Community Colleges. (2012, May 3). YouTube. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9OxaMinHfE

Harnisch, T. (n.d.). Aascu.org. Boosting Financial Literacy in America: A Role. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://www.aascu.org/uploadedFiles/AASCU/Content/Root/PolicyAndAdvocacy/PolicyPublications/AASCU_Perspectives_Boosting_Financial_Literacy (3).pdf

Klamm, D. (n.d.). Mashable. Mashable. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://mashable.com/2011/07/08/college-social-media/

Lederer, K. (n.d.). Campus Technology. Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom --. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2012/01/19/Pros-and-Cons-of-Social-Media-in-the-Classroom.aspx?Page=1

Rainer, R. K. & Cegielski, C. G. (2011). Introduction to information systems: Supporting and transforming business (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

The Relationship Between College Students and Social Media: What Makes it So Influential?. (n.d.). Effective Student Marketing. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://effectivestudentmarketing.com/press/the-relationship-between-college-students-and-social-media/

References: Getting Connected - Social Media and Community Colleges. (2012, May 3). YouTube. Retrieved November 26, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9OxaMinHfE Harnisch, T. (n.d.). Aascu.org. Boosting Financial Literacy in America: A Role. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://www.aascu.org/uploadedFiles/AASCU/Content/Root/PolicyAndAdvocacy/PolicyPublications/AASCU_Perspectives_Boosting_Financial_Literacy (3).pdf Klamm, D. (n.d.). Mashable. Mashable. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://mashable.com/2011/07/08/college-social-media/ Lederer, K. (n.d.). Campus Technology. Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom --. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2012/01/19/Pros-and-Cons-of-Social-Media-in-the-Classroom.aspx?Page=1 Rainer, R. K. & Cegielski, C. G. (2011). Introduction to information systems: Supporting and transforming business (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. The Relationship Between College Students and Social Media: What Makes it So Influential?. (n.d.). Effective Student Marketing. Retrieved November 24, 2013, from http://effectivestudentmarketing.com/press/the-relationship-between-college-students-and-social-media/