Moneycontrol.com points out some of the drawbacks of the Pearson/Apple/iPod/Student Information System initiative, namely that materials for the iPod may be limited to what’s available through Pearson, and that most schools already have administration sytems. To my mind, these are beside the point. The real news here is that a major education publisher is embracing the iPod in a strategic fashion.
The BBC reports that UK microbiology lecturer Dr. Bill Ashraf has switched to podcasting from conventional lecturing expecting to “free up time for more small group teaching.” The prof takes questions via text message and answers them in a blog.
A relatively high-efficiency, completely transparent way to record Skypecasts just dawned on me. I’m going to set up another Skype account called something like dan.karleen.is.recording, and log into Skypecasts with this account on my secondary machine, which is a PowerBook. I’ll grab the Skype stream and record it in Audio Hijack Pro. I’ll sign into the Skypecast as myself on my Dell laptop. This way, I don’t have to worry about taxing my main machine with recording and participating in the call on top of whatever else I’m doing on the machine. I also don’t have to worry about figuring out how to capture my own voice in addition to the conversation. Also, the name “dan.karleen.is.recording” will let people on the call know that I’m recording. I was a bit irked a couple weeks ago when someone announced late in a call that they had been recording. We’ve gotta move towards transparency, people!!!
Each time I check back, Johns Hopkins seems to have expanded their RSS offerings. The Bloomberg School of Public Health has a bunch of text, audio, and video feeds, and Medicine has a weekly news roundup podcast. Last I checked, they were all available through iTunes. What a great way to promote the school’s expertise. I’m going to use them as an example next month at GMAC annual conference where I’m on a podcast panel. There just aren’t a lot of business schools doing podcasts. I know that Drexel is talking about launching one. Right now Drexel is pumping alumni news through RSS, but so far nothing on the admissions side.
By the way, iTunes also has a “Listeners also subscribed to” feature, and you can see that Hopkins podcasts are right in the mix with shows that originate somewhere other than an institution.
Four Franklin and Marshall students are video blogging for the admissions department. “No scripts, no rehearsals–see it firsthand through their video blog (vlog). They’ll take you through the good times and the bad in the life on and F&M student.”
There’ll be another Skypecast on Friday, this time led by Bob Robertson-Boyd from Capital University. Why not join us?
We had a lively Skypecast today with Karine Joly, Rob Pongsajapan, Bob Robertson-Boyd, Kim Gregson, and Brendon Connelly, talkin’ blogs, wikis, and admission communities. Brendon updated us on George Fox University’s use of wikis for internal communications and their efforts at launching student blogs as part of MBA admissions. Bob and Karine talked about options for making email exchanges more permanent, e.g. in the form of a blog. We talked about Karine’s upcoming University Business article on admissions blogging, plus the blogging study that Rob and I are launching.
The sound quality on today’s call was much better than last week’s. In fact it was nearly as clean as a land line conference call, to the point where the sound quality wasn’t interfering with the conversation. I forgot I was on Skype, which is exactly the way it should be.
Bob’s on the hook to moderate next Friday’s 1pm ET session and has offered to invite some guests. Will update you with the URL and further details as they become available.
Blogging studies are really gaining steam. At Society for New Communications Research I’m helping with a blogging study that’s looking at how well corporate blogging policies are working. Just a few days ago, I was contacted by a researcher in Massachusetts to participate in a blogging survey. Researchers from Michigan State University published findings from their blogging study as part of HigherEd BlogCon.
It looks like both Peterson’s and SNCR (I’m a research fellow there) are on board as collaborators in the new study on admissions and recruiting blogging that Rob Pongsajapan and I are launching shortly. We have a solid questionnaire draft that we’ll be launching in web-based form shortly. Below is our working description of the study. I hope your institution will take part.
—–
Best Practices Study on Blogging in University Admissions and Recruiting
New communication tools such as blogs and podcasts are expanding the range of options for creating meaningful connections with prospective students. In the past year alone, many institutions have launched blogging initiatives involving both student and administrator bloggers. The goal of this study is to illuminate the efforts of these institutions in the interest of developing shareable best practices and case study stories addressing such aspects as the relevance of institutional communications culture, blogging policy, expectations versus outcomes, authorship and review, and compensation.
By surveying institutions about their current and planned blogging efforts, we aim to formulate recommendations that can benefit institutions seeking to launch or enhance their own blogging initiatives, as well as those in parallel communities seeking to learn from the experience of university professionals. We invite all post-secondary institutions to participate in this study by completing a web-based questionnaire.
Results and recommendations will be shared formally by study leaders and be made available through channels provided by organizations cooperating in this study, namely Thomson Peterson’s and Society for New Communications Research.
—–
Rob and I will be sharing an update on our study as part of the eduWeb conference on July 31 which Karine Joly kindly highlighted.
No Skypecast today. I’m hoping to launch a planned mini-series, perhaps based around several live interviews, kinda like radio, except everyone can participate. 
Got something interesting to talk about? Trying out social media at your institution? Let me hear from you!
