Principals are facing challenges each day toward improving student achievement on campus. Every principal face some of the biggest frustrations to control student behavior, recruiting teachers and staff, promoting personalized learning, improving teaching effectiveness, student retention, parent support, and more.
Technology integration translates into enhanced student achievement
21st-century classrooms strengthen tech-savvy teachers with the most advanced cloud, mobile, and digital technologies to teach and interact with students using videos, chat, notifications, social media, and email messaging. Creating future-ready classrooms and higher education institutions with the use of cutting-edge augmented reality systems in the classroom can enrich the learning process and improve student achievement.
Principals are faced with complex and difficult challenges to turn around the campus with academic underperformance. Here is a list of the top 10 challenges and successful strategies to promote student growth and success.
1. Paperwork
Paperwork and forms are one of the biggest frustrations of principals. Eliminate paperwork and automate data collection processes through online forms and applications for admission, course evaluations, and more to reach out to more students in a positive manner.
2. Decision-making
Principals’ decisions and strategies are critically important to institutional performance. They are accountable for high levels of student achievement. In order to accomplish the high expectations, administrators have to analyze data through dashboards and reports to identify factors related to student enrollment, retention, and success. There is clear evidence through insightful reports that the attributes of the institution such as admission, enrollment, attendance, discipline, grades, fee collections, etc. determined those outcomes.
3. Scheduling
Classroom teachers, staff, and students report scheduling problems with principals. Cognitive reframing of scheduling with an automated timetable system enables instructors to manage class schedules across multiple courses, faculty and rooms for different time periods. Innovative scheduling can help alleviate conflicts in manual scheduling and place substitutes for teachers in order to maintain continuity of instruction.
4. Recruitment
Recruiting competent teachers who are capable of teaching all student populations is at the core of the problem. In successful institutions creating an advanced student admission system with real-time application tracking, online assessments, and an automated ranking system always identified the talented and sensitive teachers who demonstrated competency, will, and commitment to implement innovative and high-quality education programs and deliver excellence for all learners.
5. Faculty Evaluation
Teachers are vulnerable individuals who are struggling to align instruction and assessments to the learning context of a diverse student population. Creating instructions in innovative ways and building flexibility in the curriculum will be easier for students to rest with the teacher. Using a faculty evaluation system, creating faculty peer evaluation reviews through online surveys will benchmark teaching effectiveness. Based on the evaluation feedback score, training and improvement action plan for the benefit of faculty can be chalked out to improve teaching performance and cohesiveness.
6. Attendance & Discipline
Principals perceive student absenteeism and misconduct are a major concern. Educational institutions can improve class attendance and improve students’ poor academic records using RFID and Biometric based attendance tracking systems to monitor student movements in real-time. Maintaining order and discipline and controlling violence, vandalism, bullying, racism, etc. in the campus using sophisticated discipline trackers that will capture incidents from mobile devices and notify authorities in real-time and ensure student safety.
7. Curriculum Design
Principals are faced with the critical task of teaching a curriculum that is comprehensive and more encompassing. Curriculum mapping software provides the technology tools for executing changes in the curriculum design and syllabus. Principals and teachers can create customized outcome-based education that will map competencies, graduate attributes, and standards to improve learning outcomes. Students can develop skills and competencies that is aligned with course outcomes.
8. Student outcomes
One of the biggest factors that stood out is related to student achievement. Principals want to promote learning and see better student outcomes. With cutting-edge academic planning tools, administrators can create a personalized learning plan with goals and tasks linked to lessons to meet the precise requirement of students, which can improve learning outcomes and ensure student success. Using online assessments including assignments, tests, quizzes, and surveys will be of great help to students and teachers alike. Using online and mobile devices, teachers can measure students’ progress in real-time and share the results with parents through instant notifications via email and SMS alerts.
9. Parental Involvement
One of the biggest frustration faced by principals is that parental involvement is lacking to support the institution’s effort toward improving student achievement. Parents also have to take joint responsibility for the poor grade of their children. Using real-time status notifications for events, meetings, grades, fee collection, attendance, and discipline via web and mobile devices can improve interactions between teachers and parents and close the achievement gap.
10. Communication & Collaboration
Principals and staff spend so much energy on building relationships with students, teachers, and staff. Powerful communication tools like discussion forums, chat, messaging and social media will have a positive impact on the institute community and promote collaborative learning.
Election Day in the U.S. is just around the corner. On top of carrying multiple academic and employment responsibilities, some students will also be voting for the first time. Others, such as those from marginalized or historically underrepresented populations, may be overwhelmed with what the election results could mean for them. In the lead up to Election Day, a healthy dose of empathy will be essential in ensuring students have a chance to fulfill their civic duty—and the opportunity to consider its consequences.
Being flexible with due dates, considering students’ wellbeing and ensuring learners are armed with the resources needed to vote are the most important things you can do as Election Day nears. Read on to learn how professors advocated for their students during the 2020 election—and how you can do the same.
Consider making November 4 and 5 free of assignments (or even classes)
Exams can cause some students a great deal of stress and anxiety. Lillian Horin, Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD student at Harvard University, urges educators to keep BIPOC students in mind when scheduling high-stakes tests.
Professors: PLEASE don’t schedule examinations for directly after election night. In 2016, I had a biochem exam the day after the election. BIPOC students spent our election night begging our professor to postpone it. It intensified one of the most traumatic nights of our lives.
Consider swapping your exams or problem sets (Psets) with a trip to the ballot box. Jacob Light, Economics PhD student at Stanford University, writes that this simple gesture may allow students to exercise their civic duty.
In 2012 my linear algebra professor canceled our election week problem set because voting was more important. The gesture meant the world to me. Today I made the same argument on behalf of my students. #AcademicTwitter cancel psets during election week; your students want to vote
Other students like Anna-Sophia Boguraev, Bioengineering PhD student at Harvard Medical School and MIT, say that TAs have the power to amplify student concerns and requests—none of which should be ignored.
legit if you have any leverage w prof, use it to help students – when ppl started basically being like “we’re traumatized plz let us reschedule the midterm” on piazza, the TAs just deleted the posts w no response or acknowledgement bc the prof told them to. so like … not that
If your assignments can’t wait, build in flexibility and timeliness
Self-paced learning can allow students to visit the polls and complete coursework at a time that works for them—so says Jesse Fox, Associate Professor of Communication at Ohio State University.
US instructors: working on your syllabus?
🇺🇸Election Day is Tuesday, November 3🇺🇸
Please plan an asynchronous option that day. There are already enough efforts to impede & suppress voting!
Election Day can also be a good opportunity to let students catch their breath in your course. Give students a chance to study and review material that they haven’t had a chance to look over, suggests Scott Grunow, Instructor in English and Religious Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Same here. Kind of. They are working asychronously on an essay. Feedback week. No synchronous class. I will be available all week for drop in hours.
— Dame Scott G. Against Petty Persecutions/Vainglory (@scottgr60613) October 6, 2020
Should your institutions provide little leeway in your assessment choices, at least incorporate real-time events into your discussions. Derek Bruff, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, notes that relating course content to the election can help students see the value of what they’re learning.
What are you planning to do in class the day after the election? 1. Find a connection to your course topic (e.g. polling error in a stats course). 2. Acknowledge that it was a late, emotional night. 3. Don’t give a pop quiz.
Real-time political events and policy proposals can make for discipline-specific conversations. This also allows students to apply what they’ve learned in your class to the real world, as Andrea Gomez Cervantes, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Wake Forest University, proposes.
— Dra. Andrea Gomez Cervantes (she/ella) (@AndreaGC_soc) September 23, 2020
Mobilize your students to show up at the polls
Gen Z students are motivated to vote. In the 2018 midterm elections, the student turnout rate increased by 20 percent compared to the 2014 midterms.1 Ensure students are equipped with the resources to vote as soon as possible, writes Wendy Christensen, Sociology Professor at William Paterson University.
Don’t forget to include voting info in your Fall 2020 syllabus and online course module! Include any voter registration deadlines, registration info, drop off ballot info, AND the general election date Nov. 3rd. #GOTV#AcademicTwitter@AcademicChatter#AcademicTwitter
— Wendy Christensen 🏳️🌈🦉📚🍺 🏃♀️ (@wendyphd) August 19, 2020
Similarly, ask students about their voting plans. Consider working with your class to ensure they know where to go on November 5, suggests Margaret Boyle, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College.
Ensure your voter registration information and resources appeal to all students, regardless of what political party they support. Meghan Novisky, Assistant Professor of Criminology at Cleveland State University, emphasizes the importance of using non-partisan guidelines.
Suggestion for this fall: include (non-partisan) voter registration info for students in week 1’s course materials AND inform students election week will be assignment free in support of voter turnout. #phdchat#AcademicChatter
Some scholars like Sara Wheeler-Smith, Associate Professor of Management at Manhattan College, even plan to offer a grading incentive for visiting the polls.
With my chair’s approval, I’m offering extra credit to anyone who can demonstrate they voted. (Anyone ineligible can do an alternative assignment). If I were teaching on #ElectionDay I would have cancelled too.
Incorporate guest lectures and learn from your colleagues
Navigating election week with students in mind might be an unfamiliar undertaking. Consider leaning on faculty at your institution for support, writes Heather Mayer, Director of Educational Technology at Everett Community College.
Interested in hearing what people have planned. We’re developing a faculty workshop for the the week before to give people a chance to talk with each other about ideas and resources.
Some students may be undecided voters, while others may have missed the presidential debates. Incorporate forms of debate in your classroom—with the support of scholars from other institutions, as Yujin Jung, Political Sciences PhD student at the University of Missouri, plans to do.
Keep in mind the importance of mental and physical health
Check-ins with students have gained new meaning in the midst of an election. Andrea Kelley, Sociology Professor at the University of Michigan, tends to her students’ socioemotional needs before assigning readings and lectures.
I have built “self-care” weeks into all 3 of my courses during election week. No new readings, no graded assignments, just a check-in. We can’t self-care our way out of structural oppression and related stresses, but I can make sure my classes don’t pile on. #AcademicChatter
— Andrea D. Kelley, Ph.D., MSW (they/she) (@adkelleysoc) October 9, 2020
Election Day can come with a range of emotions for many students. Cate Denial, Distinguished Professor of American History, Chair of the History department, and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, removes the expectation for students to pay attention and participate in class.
I will not be assigning reading for the week, and instead we’ll review whatever happens in light of what we’ve been learning. It will be completely on the fly, but I will not be expecting my students to be able to focus.
On September 24, the Department of Labor (DOL), along with the Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology (PEAT), published the AI & Inclusive Hiring Framework. The framework is intended to be a tool to support the inclusive use of artificial intelligence in employers’ hiring technology, specifically for job seekers with disabilities.
According to DOL, the framework was created in support of the Biden administration’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. Issued in October 2023, the executive order directed the Secretary of Labor, along with other federal agency officials, to issue guidance and regulations to address the use and deployment of AI and other technologies in several policy areas. Notably, it also directed DOL to publish principles and best practices for employers to help mitigate harmful impacts and maximize potential benefits of AI as it relates to employees’ well-being.
The new AI Framework includes 10 focus areas that cover issues impacting the recruitment and hiring of people with disabilities and contain information on maximizing the benefit of using and managing the risks associated with assessing, acquiring and employing AI hiring technology.
Under each focus area, DOL and PEAT provide key practices and considerations for employers to implement as they work through the AI framework. It is important to note, however, that the framework does not have force of law and that employers do not need to implement every practice or goal for every focus area at once. The goal of the framework is to lead employers to inclusive practices involving AI technology over time.
DOL encourages HR personnel — along with hiring managers, DEIA practitioners, and others — to familiarize themselves with the framework. CUPA-HR will keep members apprised of any future updates relating to the use of AI in hiring practices and technology.
In this episode of the EdUp Experience Podcast, we continue to dive deep into the world of the Modern Learner with host Dr. Joe Sallustio and his guest Sarah Russell, Vice President of Marketing, Dr. Chris Gilmore, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Katie Tomlinson, Senior Director of Analytics & Business Intelligence. Together, they challenge traditional thinking about higher education and explore how institutions can adapt to meet the unique needs of today’s diverse student population. You’ll hear insightful discussions about changing student behavior, the importance of accessibility, and the need for innovative program development. Listen to the podcast below or read the transcript.
Transcript
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Welcome back everybody. It’s your time to “EdUp” on the EdUp Experience Podcast where we make education your business. This is episode two of a special miniseries titled “Education Elevated: Navigating the Future of Online Higher Education,” brought to you by the EdUp experience and our amazing partner EducationDynamics, who’s going to supply all of the brainpower today. I don’t actually have to do anything because they’ve got all the answers to your most pressing questions about today’s Modern Learner. So this series is really important because we’re going to explore the evolution, really the landscape of higher education as experienced by today’s diverse and interconnected student population. And I think what it comes down to is students today, however you define that, and I think it is important to define that student– an 18 year old, 88-year-old, somewhere in between, transfer credit, no transfer credit, first time full-time, freshmen, adult student, right?
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
There’s so much definition that goes around the word student, and I think we fail in higher ed a lot of times to say exactly who we’re talking about. So this concept of the Modern Learner really has been something, and I’ve been championing here on the podcast and I got it from EducationDynamics. They came up with it and I was like, “Ooh, that’s good. I think I’ll steal that a little bit, but also give credit where it’s due.” And I always tag the group and I tag ’em and I give the call out. But the Modern Learner really speaks to, I think today’s student with evolved behaviors, the way they look at things, the way they make decisions. And so EducationDynamics has brought us a panel of experts today, a panel of the most knowledgeable people in enrollment and marketing that you can find anywhere. And I know this because I know them and I’ve talked to them before, and the insights that you can get from them are going to be incredible and let’s get them here on the mic one at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, first off, she’s Sarah Russell. She’s the Vice President of Marketing with EducationDynamics. How are you, Sarah?
Sarah Russell:
I’m doing great. How are you?
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Back again, right? I think this is the 2nd or third time you’ve been on with me.
Sarah Russell:
At least the second that I can remember,
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
But really important now as we talk about the Modern Learner, and we’re going to get to it because marketing obviously is a huge part of how you got to get to these folks first and their behaviors are a little bit different, and then you’ve got to figure out how to enroll them. Also, we’ve got Chris Gilmore with us today. He’s the Vice President of Enrollment Marketing with EducationDynamics. Chris, welcome back. How are you?
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Yeah, I’m great, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
And then you know what, Chris, once you find the Modern Learner and you figure out how to speak to them and you get them enrolled, which is not easy, right? It takes a specific amount of knowledge and it’s not the same as enrolling what we would call a traditional student. It’s a completely different, you got to track and you got to have analytics and you got to data. And so we brought a data expert. She’s Katie Tomlinson, she’s director of Analytics with EducationDynamics. Katie, welcome back. How are you?
Katie Tomlinson:
Great. Thank you for having us join.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
So you guys are all back. We’re going to talk about the Modern Learner. This is so important and it’s really an honor for us to partner with EducationDynamics as we talk about the Modern Learner. And Katie, I want to start with you. Who is the Modern Learner? Seems like we need some definition around who the Modern Learner is. So let’s start there and any kind of stats or demographics, of course, you’re the Director of Analytics, so I have to ask you to bring the meat and potatoes, so to speak, any data you have around how you define the Modern Learner.
Katie Tomlinson:
Thanks, Joe. So the Modern Learner can really be anyone. We’re talking about working adults, we’re talking about parents, veterans, lifelong learners who are juggling those multiple responsibilities while still pursuing their education. The Modern Learner also includes our younger recent high school graduates. So those on that path between high school to college graduation. And what we’re seeing is that the lines are really being blurred between what we used to define as adults and traditional students as both their educational and their student preferences are evolving. And we need to rethink our assumptions about who these students are based on both their age or their background. My point here is that age really no longer predicts modality or pathway, which makes it extremely important as you move forward that your brand and your messaging strategy and your approach needs to be unified across your entire organization. We should not be parsing out different strategies based on perspective students age or their modality anymore.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
So we think kind of in a binary way in higher education, we say there’s traditional students who go to when we think that, or you talk to somebody who lives outside of higher education who has kids that attend an institution and you say higher education to them. They think red brick buildings, students walking on campus with a backpack, right? Traditional students. That’s what I think so many people envision. And then everybody else who’s the non-traditional student, the adult student, maybe the student who’s working, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I hear you saying is the Modern Learner isn’t the modality, it’s not the way in which you journey through your educational pursuits. It’s characteristic based rather than modality based, right?
Katie Tomlinson:
That’s correct. Yeah. I mean, even if you think about the number of higher education students participating in online starting in 2019, that number was 33%. We’re now at that staggering 66%. So if you are thinking about describing that Modern Learner and those attributes, we really need to think about them having some of those same motivations and behaviors that we used to coin with that traditional online college student.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
That’s so good. And Chris and Sarah, I’m bringing you both in here. This is, I say I’m going to ask certain questions and then I actually get on here and I go, “I’m going to take a detour.” I have talked to over 300 college presidents. More than that, probably 320 that with what we have in the can. One of the most, I want to say it’s common, but it comes up is okay, there’s some traditional campuses, and when I say traditional, they’re on a traditional academic calendar, fall, spring, little bit of summer, fall, spring, little bit of summer, kind of like that. And you go, okay, how are you going to differentiate? What are you going to do in the future? How are you going to sustain your enrollment? Well, we’re going to bring in an adult student. We’re going to go after a Modern Learner. We’re going to bring in this different type of student than we’ve ever been used to before, and we’re going to do it.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
We’re just going to say, we’re going to go after this student and we’re going to bring them in on our traditional academic calendar with our classes that aren’t designed typically for adult learners or for the modern student. And I think that maybe there’s this expectation that just because you’re offering something online, magic happens and people start showing up in your classes, but it’s totally different infrastructure, thought processes, messaging, enrollment. Can you guys weigh in a little bit on some of the differences? I mean, you can’t just do it, right? You can’t just go, “We’re going to go after some college know credential population” and the magic takes place.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Maybe Sarah, you can start speaking to how we attract them in the first place, because even starting at that is a different game. And then I can talk a little bit to once we actually have them in the funnel.
Sarah Russell:
Yes, absolutely. So from a marketing standpoint, it’s really important that you understand the media habits and usage of this population and where you can reach them and at what stage of their decision journey they are typically in when they’re interacting with certain points of media. So generally, if you’re going to want to get in that consideration stage, you need to do it early because once they narrow their set of prospective colleges down to two or three, if you’re not in that grouping, you’re already too late. And if you’re focusing really heavily on the bottom of the marketing funnel with a lot of lead gen, but you haven’t gotten in that consideration list yet, you’re really wasting your dollars there. So making sure that you are allocating enough of your budget to inform that upper funnel awareness and consideration, and that’s going to allow you to really heavily play in connected TV, a lot of the reels and short form video in social, et cetera.
Sarah Russell:
And you should really have a strong messaging pipeline for how are you speaking to those students at the top of the funnel, How are you speaking to them throughout the funnel and how does their mindset change and what becomes important to them. Going back to school is a very big decision, no matter the student population. So whether that is a first time freshman going to school for the first time or an adult student who may be returning to school or finishing a degree, you really have to make sure that you are addressing their pain points with marketing because today’s Modern Learner is a very well-informed and highly researched student. So they’re going to want a lot of that information on the front end before they even consider your school as being in their prospect list. So really understanding those media channels, the messaging that’s going to resonate throughout. So then once they get to the point of raising their hand, requesting information, interacting with your institution, they’re a lot more informed than maybe they were 2, 3, 5 years ago,
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Chris. Okay. So you’ve done all of this different that Sarah made it sound relatively easy –it is not– everything she said is super hard. You have to have a completely different infrastructure thought process. Even your technology has to be upgraded in different. So let’s just say you’re skilled enough to do some of the things that Sarah says in terms of marketing, which many schools are not.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, I agree with everything that Sarah said in terms of how we’re attracting them, how we’re engaging them, how we’re getting them into the funnel, and then a different workflow starts and that’s how we’re communicating with them. As Sarah said, we need to be making sure that we are in the channels that they’re in. That applies also once we get them into the funnel. So really flexible contact strategies are really important. With the Modern Learner, we can’t tell them how to communicate with us. We should be so lucky that they are choosing to engage in communicating with us. So we have to really be present wherever the student is comfortable engaging. So text messaging, email, phone call, if that works for them, but being present in multiple channels during the initial contact strategy. And then once you engage the student, it is a little bit of a different flavor to the conversation.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Both Katie and Sarah laid out that these students are primarily motivated by outcomes, career opportunities, job growth, compensation and salary potential. So to Sarah’s point, they’re doing a lot of research before they even enter that funnel. And when they do get to the funnel and they connect with your enrollment professionals, your enrollment counselors, your coaches, they’re likely to come with very specific questions. And those are likely to be amongst others, very outcome-based. So your team needs to be able highlight the value propositions of the programs, which means that your programs need to be aligned with a good outcomes-based value proposition because if it’s not, they’re not going to be attracted to it in the first place. If it is and we cannot articulate it, well then same thing, it gets a little blurry and not mid funnel. So I think being present in the channels that they’re willing to engage with you on, and then once we do get them engaged, being able to speak specifically to the needs of this population, understanding that it’s a little bit different than your straight out of high school population.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Do you think, Chris, that students, the Modern Learner is patient, are they willing to wait? And I ask this, let me give you the context. I’m on a fall spring calendar, right? My term is August. In January, I enroll a student in November or October and I say, “Hey, look, you missed fall. You got to wait till January or February.” Are they waiting around? Is brand so strong that they’re waiting around or are they going, you know what, “I’m ready when I’m ready and I’m going to find a school that’s ready for me.”
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
It is a big risk. You’re taking some might and it depends on the availability of the program and what really drew them to them, but more than likely they have alternative options to complete it and they’re going to find a way to get in faster. And to Sarah’s point, again, a lot of these students are doing research before they engage. A lot of this decision making is a little further on than we’re used to historically. So by the time they’re speaking with you, by the time you’re advising them on the application process, they’re ready to roll. And so we as institutions want to capitalize on that, but they primarily as students, they are ready for this step by the time they take that. So when you get them through that application process and then you tell them, “Hey, term starts in 12 weeks,” it’s not good. If they can find a way to start it in two weeks, they’re probably going to be motivated to do that.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Sarah, you back that up from your perspective and what you’ve seen that students are, I find the Modern Learner to be pretty impatient and rightfully so. It could be that they have tuition reimbursement or something and they go, I want to start right now. And you think about a student who comes back. A lot of these, some college degree students or no credential students, they’ve literally gone through the mental thought process of I want to go back. And then somebody says, well, you can’t start right now. Right? Then it’s done. It’s like the psychological contract that I was about to have with you is broken. And so it’s like Amazon telling you that your item is on back order for three weeks. You either order it something else or you go somewhere else to order it.
Sarah Russell:
Yes, I think that’s absolutely accurate and really bears out that concept of they’re doing a lot of that research. They’ve already decided they’re already bought in, and so the job now becomes less about I need to convince them that this is a good idea and more I need to show them the path for how it’s going to work for them. And if that path is longer than they had in mind, then you certainly run the risk of losing them to another institution that does have that schedule that fits more in their life. Like Chris said, there’s a lot of factors and we know that cost will always be probably the most significant factor, but that flexibility, that schedule, that timing is certainly a significant factor as well. And I think all of that goes into the mental math that prospective students, the Modern Learner today is really doing when they’re deciding to go back to school and where to do that.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Katie, I won’t come back to you for this, but then open it up to all of you, and I think a skeptic is sitting on this, is going to be listening to this at some point going, “You’re just talking about adult students.” What distinguishes the Modern Learner from this is an adult student conversation? And I know it’s not, I know, but somebody who’s listening to this might just go, you’ve relabeled what an adult student is. That’s not all the way, is it in what kind of data or analytics do we have or do you have where you went, “Oh, look at this. This is different than we’ve ever seen before and so now we’ve got to have a new category of the way we think about things”?
Katie Tomlinson:
Right? Well really to that point, Joe, we’re finding that the education and education process is really an ageless journey. We are seeing this age range continue to decrease. We are seeing that not what we used to label as this traditional adult student is the definition of who the Modern Learner is and ultimately, no matter what student they are, be it what we would’ve traditionally defined as an adult learner or what we’re labeling now as this Modern Learner, they all have the same goals, they all have the same needs, they all consume the same types of media, and it ultimately comes down to how we are engaging with those prospective students and from a timing perspective, how quickly they’re looking to make those decisions. To your point earlier, and I didn’t get a chance to jump in when Sarah and Chris were talking, still many of these students, 80% of them are enrolling at the school that admits them first and 54% of them want to start within one month. So it doesn’t matter. And to your point, I think having those multiple entry points throughout the school year, they want to be able to make those decisions quickly once they have really locked in and said, Hey, I want to pursue my education. And so we’ve got to capitalize on that throughout all the stages of the funnel and working with our enrollment management team to make sure we’re pushing them through very quickly as well.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Okay, let me stop there and Sarah and Chris jumping on this, but 80% of these students go to the school that admits them first.
Katie Tomlinson:
That’s correct.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
So somebody’s listening to this going, yeah, we’re working with the Modern Learner, and then the question is, do you think that you’re the one that admits them first? And if the answer is no, you’re probably not going to get them. I mean just that you think about that and it’s literally mind blowing. I would never have thought it was that high, right? So it’s way higher than I thought. And then you said 54% of the students, this goes back to the other point, 54% of those students want to start within one month. That makes sense to me because like I’m ready to go, I want to start now, and if you don’t have it, I’m going elsewhere. So you see these evolved behaviors and maybe speed plays a big part in this because we expect immediacy in all other parts of our life that we expect it now in higher ed too. Chris, Sarah, Katie, you can just take it where it goes.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
I think that the first thing that raises for me is in talking with universities and colleges about your internal workflow for your application decision process, some are fairly streamlined and they’re aligned with prospective students. Others, especially super specific concentrations may involve faculty review, things like that. And it’s just worth looking at and taking that stat and comparing it to our internal workflow if we have a 30 day application decision process. Not saying that that might not work in some scenarios, but it’s pretty risky with this population because what it does for them is they’re still in the decision making process. So for that 30 days, they’re now open to alternative options and they may even be seeking out alternative options, and we really don’t want that If we’re aligned with them on program and value proposition, we want to be able to close that message out to them very quickly so we can engage them and lock them in close out the shopping process.
Sarah Russell:
And I’d love to really jump in on that comment you made, Joe, about what makes the Modern Learner different from an adult student or an adult learner. And one of the things that I think is really important for why we need to start talking about this Modern Learner is that a huge mistake I think I’ve seen a lot of institutions make as they’ve tried to expand into this population is coming up with an entirely different brand story almost for how that institution serves their adults and non-traditional students relative to how they’ve been talking to and positioning themselves with a more traditional student. And I think the Modern Learner concept is really important in that it starts identify where there’s not as much of a clear delineation anymore between what type of student or type of person fits into a traditional student versus a non-traditional post-traditional adult student.
Sarah Russell:
There’s starting to be a lot more crossover and those lines are blurring a little bit. And so if to your point Joe, a lot of institutions realize that there is so much different infrastructure and process that’s necessary for that population versus maybe where they’ve traditionally enrolled that on campus residential student. But to take that concept and carry that over into how you as an institution are messaging yourself I think is very dangerous because from a prospective student population, you are one institution and it’s important that you are bringing forward the value props that are most resonant to an 18-year-old first time freshman versus to an adult student. However, the Modern Learner concept really I think necessitates that you have to have a unified brand story across those different audiences and understanding that student population and where there are hard lines and where there are not between how we’ve traditionally talked about first time freshmen versus adult students, but really starting to encompass this idea of a Modern Learner is going to really have characteristics of both and how do we make sure that we haven’t drawn these really unnecessary lines in between how we’re talking to those students and how we’re talking about ourselves as institutions.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Now I know you guys all do amazing work as an institution– EducationDynamics — I’m talking about, is an organization, an institution comes to you and says, we really want to access the Modern Learner population. We want more of these students to come to our institution. We have some marketing money, you’re going to help us spend it and maximize it, and you’re going to generate leads for us and students who are interested in our programs and then we’re going to take those, that student interest and we’re going to enroll these students. And as easy as that sounds, it’s not that easy. And I bet there’s some frustration on the EducationDynamics side where it’s like, okay, did that lead even get in the system? We generated it, you gave us money, we generated, we helped you generate this interest and did it make it into your system?
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Are you measuring it? Do you know if the student enrolled or how long it took ’em to enroll? Did they come with transfer credit? How long did it take to get the transfer credit evaluated? That could be the reason the student just took off because it took you three weeks to evaluate the transfer credit. So what advice do you have to institutions who are really trying to access the modern learning? What are the things we should be looking at before we can really jump into the water and go after and recruit these students? Chris, why don’t you start?
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
So for me, I would start with the product as the first point. Both Katie and Sarah have made the good point a few times that these are very outcomes-based students, they are attracted to growing career fields. They want close to assurances that they’re going to be in a high employment scenario come graduation. And so for me, the very first thing that I would do is take a look at the product that I’m trying to engage them with the programs, are they aligned with those types of outcomes? Because if they’re not, you’re taking already difficult work and making it nearly impossible. So that’s where I would start from there.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
So you’re saying don’t give me a lemon program, I am at EducationDynamics, don’t give me a lemon and tell me to market it because it’s going to be a lemon.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Don’t give me a lemon. But in general, I’m not of the position. There are a ton of lemons in the field, but there are a lot of programs that do not appropriately articulate their outcomes-based value propositions, and if we can’t message it internally as a university, we’re certainly not going to be able to engage students that this is something that will help you get there.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Yeah, that’s a good one. Katie, what do you think anything that an institution needs to really consider?
Katie Tomlinson:
I mean from my perspective, Joe, it always comes down to the data, right? You need to be able to measure everything and have as much information without creating barriers to prospective students, filling out lead forms and those types of things to have information about your students. So even if you have some basic information you’re collecting on your RFI, are there opportunities to append additional variables to understand more about your existing population? To your point, I think you mentioned measuring different event dates throughout the lifecycle as well. So are we capturing when a student moves from an inquiry to an application or an application to an enroll, do we understand how many days that is taking? Can we understand maybe some of the different drivers, a media mix and what that looks like and the conversion rates between those different things? But if you do not have good data across your entire ecosystem, be that within your marketing efforts and your enrollment efforts, you’re never really going to be able to fully capitalize on your marketing engine and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Katie Tomlinson:
So the more data you can bring, the more you can append to what you have, and the more you can understand about those students and perspective students, the more armed you will be to be able to create different messaging strategies to have different marketing strategies even in your admissions process, understanding how different perspective students want to be engaged with and contacted with. Maybe that’s based on program, maybe that’s based on their age, maybe that’s based on the life cycle or stage that they’re at in their life, but if you have all of that, that’s the gold really, and what you can do with that is really limitless.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Sarah, what advice, what do institutions need to consider?
Sarah Russell:
I would certainly piggyback on everything Katie said because within marketing it is becoming so tech enabled that you have to have that data infrastructure and you have to know how to feed that data into your marketing platforms because all of the bidding, all of the optimization is really happening behind the scenes using AI, using these tech enabled tools, and you have to make sure that you are giving the algorithms the correct data and the most valuable data to be able to make those decisions around how much should you be paying for this spot, for this click, for this impression in that moment for that particular audience. It’s a very different game today than it was a few years ago when all of that was kind of being manually decided by your media strategists and now it’s more you are using your skills to inform all of these tech enabled tools and AI powered tools. So making sure that not only are you doing that correctly, but you’re building that data infrastructure in order to power that is so important from a marketing standpoint.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Yeah, you said AI, it’s like bing, bing, bing, everybody’s ears perk up. But if you think about the Modern Learner, even just the way Google is operating right now, if you do a search, you’re going to get a AI output that’s going to explain to you the school that you’re looking at or the type of program that you’re looking for and who might have it. So how the decision making process is being made is changing daily, minute by minute, Sarah, and you just go, how do we understand what’s happening?
Sarah Russell:
As an institution, you absolutely need to partner with the people, the companies, the teams that can help you navigate through that because it is so dynamic and like you said, Joe, it’s probably changing right now while we’re on this podcast. One thing that I see as being very much in flux right now is how prospective students and the Modern Learner are seeking information. Because you’re right, we’re seeing a lot more of that AI overview if they’re seeking an answer, it happens right there in the search results. There’s less of a drive I think to click through and navigate websites in that environment. So how do we think about website optimization and SEO differently than we did prior to that kind of experience? You also see a huge amount of especially younger students using social media platforms as search engines rather than going to Google. And so how they’re seeking out information, how they’re valuing this information, it certainly is continuing to change and I do not think it is feasible for an institution to navigate that completely alone. You have to partner with agencies, Google, Facebook, you have to understand all of those changes and how they are going to influence you.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
I think about this a lot. I interview so many people and then I get on my soapboxing thing and I’m kind of laughing to myself because I repeat these things a lot and I want to say ’em again and Chris, I’m going to come to you on it because so many of them are enrollment focused, but when you start to think about what an institution has to consider, yes, the marketing, yes, the messaging, yes, the branding, where the interest goes, can you log it, can you get it? And then your actual tactical and policy infrastructure takes over. It’s like take a Modern Learner and stick ’em into your policy structure and everything breaks. It could be your admissions requirements, it could be the transfer credit evaluation process. It could be how you admit the student. Maybe if it was a traditional student that had to go speak to a dean somewhere and write letters of recommendation and now you’ve got a Modern Learner who’s like, I am not going to do that stuff.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
I am literally I’m working somewhere. I’ve got a good job. I’m not going to spend my time writing letters of recommendation. I’m going to go somewhere where you make it easy for me to enroll and you respect my background and almost I’ve seen students take it almost offensively like I got to go do all this stuff that a kid would have to do if I’m older. And so you start to see this policy structure break. Then to your point is the product, can I just take the product I have it expect a Modern Learner to go through it, or do I need to look at alternative academic schedules that are non-standard term with different financial aid modeling, with leave of absence policies that allow me to go in and out and in and out because I may not be continuous forever because of my job and it’s like, do we really consider these even eight to five, like the eight to five, you really truly have no idea what you’re doing with a modern student. If everybody just works eight to five, if everybody’s working eight to five, you’re really not available to serve a Modern Learner who might want to call you at eight o’clock at night. Who the heck is working in multiple time zones? If a Modern Learner is coming from Central’s time to Pacific time, do you have somebody that’s even available to talk to a student when that student gets home from work or whatever? I know I’m ranting, but all of these become problems.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
It’s rant worthy. Yeah, it’s rant worthy. It’s tough, and I think we talk about it quite a bit with our university partners and the first piece of advice is to review your internal workflows and that includes your policies and procedures from application to initial registration and continuing student experience. The Modern Learner is used to clicking and receiving, clicking and receiving.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
I like that.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Our internal policies and procedures often are really clunky and so they’re worth a review and I am not of the mindset of we need to wipe the slate with all academic policies and there are reasons and scenarios for certain programs to require letters of recommendation and everything like that, but there is a lot of fluff in there oftentimes, and those are the things that we need to look through. We need to ask, what value is this serving today? What risk does it put into our enrollment funnel? And we need to kind of balance those out and where the risk is greater than the value. I recommend reviewing that and maybe removing that and where it is substantial and it’s worth keeping in place, we just need to make sure that we’re clearly articulating the why of that process to the student. Students will get it.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
You are right. They’re not patient people. I am not. We are not. But if we understand the why behind it, which means that in our messaging on the application process when they’re on the app page, it’s very clear, very easy to understand when they’re asking our staff, they also understand how to describe it and then that those processes are easy to do. They’re not administratively clunky, and that’s really what we look at. With that. You also raise another thing that I wanted to touch on, which is these students are not typically available in traditional work hours all the time. Some are, some aren’t. But even if they are, they may not want to communicate with you in the way that historically institutions are used to pushing out communications like get on the phone with me for 45 minutes. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. But to Sarah’s point, we have so many new tools that to me, it used to be a huge challenge if I couldn’t invest in a workforce that’s going to be available up until 8:30 PM on the evenings and most time zones. Now, yes, that’s ideal if you can have a portion there. If you can’t, let’s talk about some of the new tools, generative AI chat, making a really high quality generative chat experience that may not totally take the place of personalized coaching, but there’s a time and a place for it. And if a student wants to engage and they have a question at 9:00 PM at night, I certainly would rather have an option to engage with them than to let them know I will reach out to them at 8:30 the next day.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
I think, Katie, about a LeBron James a lot when we’re talking about the modern student. I know it doesn’t make sense the way I say it like that, but when he went to Miami, he says, “I’m bringing my talents to Miami.” And I think about a student doing that. It’s like this era of higher education post Covid post now AI, I don’t want to say not post AI, but as the variables have changed, the student is dictating more of how the university operates rather than the university dictating how the student needs to operate. So it’s like the driver’s seat is now the student’s in more control and I mentioned ins and outs and the student kind of coming in and coming out. Maybe they’re taking non-credit courses, credentials, and you’re nodding your head, you’re just like, yes, yes, yes. And I just go, what resonates with you on the in and out of a Modern Learner and the way that they’re choosing?
Katie Tomlinson:
I mean, I think the biggest thing that we have seen over the last few years is just the demand for certificates both on the grad and undergrad side and thinking about the fact that based on 2023 completions, our undergrad certs were up 13% and our grad certs were up 27%. We’re continuing to see the demand for the types of programs, some of these shorter term credentials. That’s a big shift in what we had historically seen in the market, and they still represent maybe a small number of the degrees awarded overall, but this piece of the pie continues to get larger.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
And you’re right, it is and the demands are changing, and that’s the whole point of the whole Modern Learner designation is that how we’re choosing what we’re choosing, why we choose and when we choose are all up to us. And there’s multiple, it’s like choose your own adventure in higher education now it needs to be one path, right? Higher ed said you’re going to get a degree. That’s why I say that the era has changed that you’re going to get a degree or you’re not going to have a degree. Now it’s choose a pathway and you could go on an end around and end up at a degree way later in life where you could start. And there’s so many ways to achieve it institutionally. Back to Chris and Sarah, real fast enrollment and marketing synergy I would imagine here has to be like lockstep, right? I think that’s pretty common in higher ed. Still this guy where one points at the other, well, you didn’t get enough enrollment as well, you didn’t generate enough interest, and it’s that whole back and forth, and I’ve always felt one that is one unit and should be under one person, not in every institution. Can you just talk about synergy and why that’s going to be important here as we try to recruit a Modern Learner?
Sarah Russell:
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll get started and then Chris, I’m sure you’ll have something to add as well. It’s absolutely imperative to have that really synced up understanding of what is driving our performance, how can we tie that back to our marketing results and really have that continual pivot of this is the student sentiment, here’s what we’re hearing when we get on the phone with these prospects or this isn’t working at all and the leads that we’re getting here don’t even align with what we’re looking for. So that I think is really basic that fundamentally needs to be in place. But as we’re thinking about the Modern Learner and how the landscape is changing, I also think it becomes so important to have a third component of that duality. Now it becomes maybe a hierarchy. You have to have your data aligned in a much more impactful way because when you’re investing in some of the awareness generating mediums and you’re investing in your website, you’re not going to have as much of that one-to-one, I placed X number of media dollars in this campaign and it generated X number of inquiries and they converted at X rate and now I have this many students.
Sarah Russell:
It is rarely going to be that linear, and I think we’re going to see that become more and more non-linear as we continue to unpack this era of the Modern Learner. And so having that really strong data component becomes so much more important because you have to have the understanding of your attribution a little bit. How did we invest in this area that influenced this other area and what does that look like? And having a really clear data storytelling to help influence that back and forth between enrollment and marketing is going to be so crucial because again, maybe we want it to be, maybe we’re used to it being more linear, but that’s not the reality anymore and we have to have the data literacy to understand the more non-linear journey.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Chris, go ahead.
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Agree with all of that. The only other point that I would add in there is just for all of those reasons, it historically, and a lot of times still with universities is looked at as front of funnel, mid funnel, and we really just got to get rid of that and put in good old fashioned team synergies because everything that Sarah has described absolutely critical. We also just have to make sure from a human perspective that the teams are on the same page, that they view one another as the same team, that there’s not this I report here and you report there, I have these KPIs and you have these KPIs, and I think making sure that you have a team that understands that messaging, that if you have more than one leader over marketing and enrollment, that those people are closely aligned with vision on how these things should be, that they’re in good rapport and that they’re spreading that down to their team regularly.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Sarah, what do you call it when you put in a fourth component? A “quadra-“
Sarah Russell:
“Quadrarchy” perhaps. I think that’s it.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
I bring that up because say, you better have financial aid in a good spot because you can do all this work. You can go after this Modern Learner, you can recruit this Modern Learner, enroll this Modern Learner, and then stick them into a antiquated, perhaps long financial aid process. And boy, don’t they want that information right now. They want to know how much it’s going to cost right now, and if you make me wait two weeks to find out what it’s going to cost, I will simply go elsewhere. There’s no chance that I’m waiting for the intro on Netflix. I hit that skip intro button every single time, and students will do the same thing when it comes to that. And financial aid is just another key component in this because you can lose students really easily through slowness, and I think the Modern Learner expects service, right?
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Yeah. I think at the start it was Katie who mentioned that they’re price sensitive and they want a low cost option that is a need that we know upfront. And I think in financial aid traditionally it used to be more like a backend function, and now it’s absolutely both. So I view front end financial advising that needs to be an add-on service to your standard enrollment support mid-funnel. The teams that are having those conversations need to be able to easily articulate not only the cost for the credential, but what the financing options are in terms of financial aid or tuition reimbursement or however that individual student is looking to pay for it. Your team better be able to easily communicate it. And then if that’s a fit for them and they actually get started in the process, you’re absolutely right. Once they complete that fafsa, once they sign that master promissory note, we can’t have 30 days before we follow up with them with what their award letter is, with what their loan eligibility is. That needs to be a faster process, and that is often a big risk on the further back end of the funnel is I completed this fafsa, even if I got this information from my enrollment advisor upfront, I’m feeling kind of gray about this. I don’t have clarity, and we don’t want anything in the gray zone at that stage in the enrollment and financial aid can often be.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
And then you add in something like, well, I understand what my costs are, but I submitted for transfer credit, but they told me it’s going to be three weeks before I actually know what I’m going to pay. Those are just major risks that we have to fix in higher ed. As we kind of come to the tail end of this episode, I feel like it’s necessary to ask this question because if you’re an institution and you do serve primarily a traditional student for the most part, or even if you’re serving some Modern Learners, you probably have a marketing organization that you’re working with that’s helping you at a traditional student level. And I have seen personally institutions try to expand those marketing agencies to serve a Modern Learner and fail because there’s a specialty vibe I think to this. But there’s also some risk, not risk that you can’t mitigate in managing multiple marketing companies serving multiple learners.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Can you guys talk about how EducationDynamics really fits with institutions? What value proposition do you provide really love on yourselves a little bit here as we come to the end of the episode, because I’ve worked with you guys, this is true life testimonial right here. I hired EducationDynamics at my last institution and they absolutely slate it for me. I mean, you guys killed it. Our enrollment for the Modern Learner was going up by 20 and 30% per term. It was insane. Nearly doubled our Modern Learner population in a very, very short period of time. And that’s truth, that’s just Joe CIO truth in working with you guys, but there is some puzzle pieces that you have put together.
Sarah Russell:
Yeah, I’ll absolutely start on that one because I think what where I have seen agencies potentially struggle when they’re going from a traditional student marketing and recruitment strategy to trying to get into the sphere of the Modern Learner is not necessarily understanding how the marketing channels that the Modern Learner is very fluent in should be managed and operated within the realm of higher education. Because it’s so important that you have the ability to optimize your campaigns and build your campaign structure and create your ad messaging in a way that’s going to speak to that student population. It’s certainly not a copy paste. I think that there tends to be more of a, I’ll just buy a list or I will just mail out some mailers when you’re talking about a traditional first time freshmen recruitment strategy. But there’s so much more complexity and layers in being able to bring that strategy to the Modern Learner that I think it actually works a lot better if you are maybe working with a partner on recruiting for the Modern Learner.
Sarah Russell:
And then how can you expand that to more of that traditional first time freshmen? Because we’re seeing those behaviors of those first time freshmen start to mimic what we’ve just been operating under as truth for Modern Learner for the last several years. So I think it works better one way than the other, and that’s where I think if you are looking to maybe centralize or consolidate any of your marketing efforts, I think it’s going to work a lot better if you take your learnings, you take your relationships that you have from marketing to a Modern Learner, a post-traditional student, and bring those to your traditional student marketing rather than vice versa.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
100%. I agree with that a hundred percent. Well, let’s close this out. I want to give everybody a last word, and Katie, I’ll end with you since we started with you. Chris, anything else you want to say about the Modern Learner that you feel is important for institutions to know?
Dr. Chris Gilmore:
Yeah, I just think that it is the reality now. So it’s no longer this thing that we have to plan for the future to Katie’s points in the very first minutes of this, they’re here. They’re the new normal for us. So if you’re not deeply in the work already, it’s time to start.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Sarah, same question. What else do you want to say about the Modern Learner?
Sarah Russell:
They are very complex and reaching them is not a straightforward endeavor in any way. So making sure that you understand and respect the complexity of developing a marketing strategy, and I think you might’ve mentioned this very early on in the episode, Joe, it sounds easier than it actually is, and making sure that if you get to the point where you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you’re reaching out to the pros to help you.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
One thing we didn’t even get to was the whole value of higher ed and how that is making the Modern Learner like their BS meter is so on point. You need to really message because the alternative messaging coming to them is, well, you don’t need to go to school. You don’t need a degree. So when they get information in front of them, it has to be authentic and true and pointed and tactical and tell ’em exactly what they need to know, which is a whole other conversation for a podcast in a not so distant future. Katie, last word to you. What else do you want to say about the Modern Learner?
Katie Tomlinson:
Well, I really want you to think about education now being ageless. And again, this idea that age no longer predicts our learning modality, and I’ll give you a little teaser for the spring. So this year we’re actually going to shift our focus from our annual online college student survey, which we’ve coined our OCS survey to be more inclusive of what we’ve talked about today, which is the Modern Learner. I really can’t wait to share the new insights about this population and really provide some more definition as to how we can engage with these prospective students as we move into 2025. So we’ll be sharing those insights from our new sample at our InsightsEDU conference in February and hopefully with you and your listeners around the same time too.
Dr. Joe Sallustio:
Katie, I got to tell you, the report that you all put out, you’re renaming it, but this report that details what’s happening in the industry as we look at a Modern Learner and the way they make decisions is really the foundation, at least it was for me as I was working to recruit the Modern Learner, the foundation for how I was making my decisions, where I was investing my money, how I was designing my policies and my procedures around serving the student. It’s critical research. You do a great job. EducationDynamics does a great job of putting this out there, and I encourage everybody when it does come out, which I’ll know before you know… unless you attend InsightsEDU! Do you guys like that transition? InsightsEDU in New Orleans, February 12 through 14. It’ll be my birthday. Maybe you’ll get it as a birthday gift as we pass it out to the audience. But this is critical research that will help you serve a Modern Learner, and I urge you to attend InsightsEDU and to check out the report. Great work, Katie. Great work EducationDynamics. Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just “EdUp-ped!”
Each month, CUPA-HR General Counsel Ira Shepard provides an overview of several labor and employment law cases and regulatory actions with implications for the higher ed workplace. Here’s the latest from Ira.
NCAA & Power Conferences Receive Preliminary Approval of Name, Image and Likeness and Anti-Trust Settlement — Ivies Win Dismissal of Anti-Trust Lawsuit
A federal district court judge has given preliminary approval to the NCAA and Power Conferences’ revised $2.8 billion settlement proposal to be paid to college athletes over 10 years. The judge set a fairness hearing for April 2025, with all objections to be filed by January 31, 2025. The federal judge in the Northern District of California concluded that the revised settlement was “fair, reasonable and adequate” (In Re College Athlete NIL Litigation (N.D. Ca. No. 4:20-cv-03919, 10/7/24)).
Commentators immediately voiced concerns that the settlement addresses a small group of male athletes in specific sports to the disadvantage of female athletes. In addition, a number of Division I athletes may express objection on the grounds that the settlement continues to give the NCAA too much control over the free market compensation for student-athletes.
Separately, the eight Ivy League institutions won a dismissal of a federal lawsuit that claimed their ban on athletic scholarships violated anti-trust laws. The federal district court judge assigned to the case granted the Ivy League’s motion for summary judgement, holding that the plaintiffs failed to allege any properly defined market and therefore failed to allege market wide anti-competitive effects (Choh v. Brown University, et. al. (D. Conn. No. 3:23-cv-00305, 10/10/24)).
University of Louisville School of Medicine Loses First Amendment Retaliation Claim Brought by Terminated Professor
A former professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine will receive a trial over his First Amendment retaliation claims regarding statements he made about gender dysphoria to a conservative think tank. Following comments he made during an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, the former medical school professor was demoted and his annual contract was not renewed. The professor expressed the view that gender dysphoria in children “is a sociocultural, psychological phenomenon that cannot be fully addressed with drugs and surgery.”
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the university officials who terminated Allan M. Josephson should have known that he was engaged in protected speech, and that terminating him would violate his First Amendment rights. Moreover, the court ruled that the professor’s outside speech was not part of his professorial duties, and therefore subject to his First Amendment claims. The court concluded that a trial is necessary, as there are facts in dispute regarding the rationale for the actions taken against the professor (Josephson v. Ganzel (6th Cir., No. 23-05293, 9/10/24)).
Tenured Professor Loses Defamation Case Against Harvard
A federal district court judge partially dismissed a noted behavioral scientist’s $25 million defamation and breach-of-contract lawsuit against Harvard University. Professor Francesca Gino was placed on administrative leave following claims of data fraud in her research. Gino claimed that the university’s notice on her faculty page that she had been placed on administrative leave after conducting an investigation of her research was libelous because the university acted with ill will.
The court concluded that the professor was a “public figure” and therefore faces a higher standard for proving defamation. A public figure in these circumstances can only prove defamation if the alleged defamer had knowledge that their statement was untrue or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Moreover, the court concluded that the issue of “research integrity and potential misconduct” is one of public concern, adding to the reason for the dismissal of the defamation claim (Gino v. Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College (D. Mass. No. 1:23-cv-11775, 9/11/24)).
Regarding the professor’s breach-of-contract claims, the professor alleged that the university’s decision to place her on administrative leave and its related disciplinary sanctions were the same as tenure removal. The judge concluded that it is premature to rule on the breach-of-contract claims.
Public School Employees Lose Free Speech Case Challenging Anti-Racism Training
In a case with possible application to public higher ed training, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a case brought by two Missouri public school employees who claimed that anti-bias employee training violated their First Amendment rights. The lawsuit failed because the court concluded that they were never asked to leave nor were they disciplined for expressing contrary views and that they received professional development credit for attending the anti-racism training (Henderson v. Springfield R-12 School District (8th Cir No. 2301374, 9/12/24)).
The decision provides some clarity on such training, as the court noted that the employees were not compelled to express certain views or refrain from expressing certain views during the training. The appellate court did reverse the trial judge’s ruling requiring the plaintiffs to pay $300,000 in attorney fees for filing a frivolous claim.
Former Student’s Title IX Claim Dismissed as Alleged University Internship Did Not Exist
A federal district court judge dismissed allegations of a sexually abusive internship at the University of Michigan because the plaintiff could not prove the internship actually existed. The court noted that none of the usual formalities, such as an application or a university authorization of an internship, were established.
In light of this, the court dismissed the Title IX claims and allegations of failure to investigate sex harassment and abuse allegations as the plaintiff did not allege discrimination while “participating in or at least attempting to participate in” a university program or activity, as the internship did not exist. The University of Michigan prevailed in the case (Doe v. Baum ((2024 BL 340244 E.D. Mich. No. 4-21-cv-12492, 9/26/24)).
University of Texas Professor Loses First Amendment Complaint
A federal district judge dismissed a University of Texas professor’s First Amendment claim that his speech was “chilled” by unspecific threats following comments critical of “critical race theory and DEI-based ideology.” The judge dismissed the case, holding that the unspecific threats did not rise to the level of an adverse employment action (Lowery v. Mills ((W.D. Tex. No. 1:23-cv-00129, 10/2/24)).
The judge ruled in favor of the University of Texas McCombs School of Business. The judge noted in a footnote, however, that the dismissal was not meant to approve of the university’s actions and that “in the context of a world-class university like UT, differences of opinion should be tolerated by those in authority, no matter that they are uncomfortable, so long as they do not incite violence or disrupt the school’s ability to function as a teaching institution.”
Supreme Court to Review Split in Circuits Regarding Higher Ed ERISA Lawsuit
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments over the split in circuit courts of appeals as to when a university may be sued by employees under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Employees of Cornell University alleged that improper service provider fees were charged to their pension fund. They are appealing an adverse 2nd Circuit decision stating employees must plead that the alleged “prohibited transaction” by the service provider involved either “unnecessary services” or the fees were “unreasonable” (Cunningham v. Cornell University (US No. 23-1007 cert granted 10/4/24)).
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the 3rd Circuit, the 7th Circuit, and the 10th Circuit all require the additional pleading that alleges some kind of fraud or impropriety in order to allow the case to move forward. This contrasts with the 8th Circuit and the 9th Circuit, which apply the “ERISA-as-written” rule. That rule allows a plaintiff to simply allege that a transaction between an employer and a pension or welfare plan service provider occurred and proceed with discovery over whether fraud or some other impropriety exists. We will follow developments in this case as it proceeds.
Boost Your Enrollment Cycle With These Higher Ed SEO Strategies
Billions of queries occur daily through global search engines on desktop, mobile, and voice devices. These organic searches are the largest drivers of website traffic, particularly for higher education institutions, making SEO an essential ingredient in the recipe for generating student leads. A student’s journey toward enrollment is a roller coaster of considerations. From looking at financial costs and career opportunities to assessing workloads and faculty projects, students turn to search engines to answer their questions.
Optimizing your university’s website involves looking at a variety of SEO factors: webpage speed, page titles and headings, URL structure, link building, content, and more. Here at Archer, our higher education SEO team members have expert insight at every step on the path toward optimizing a university’s website, including technical on-page improvements, off-page link building, and, most importantly, content creation and promotion.
Let’s explore how your institution can stay relevant and bring new prospective students in with a sophisticated higher education SEO strategy.
SEO for Higher Education: What You Need to Know
Online content saturation is at an all-time high, and competition in higher ed is intensifying. Meanwhile, the audiences that institutions are marketing to have become less traditional.
Capturing the attention of prospective students at a critical point in their college enrollment journey takes a deep understanding of all the nuances of search engine optimization, including search intent, click-through rates, and mobile experience. To create content that will engage online audiences, universities must have strong SEO strategies to ensure brand discovery.
7 SEO Strategies to Boost Your College Enrollment Cycle
Our higher ed SEO experts have pulled together a list of seven strategies to help capture students along their path to college enrollment. Their expertise will help guide you in discerning what’s important in an SEO strategy and where to set focus for the rest of the year.
1. Determine Your Student Journey
Student journey maps are going to be key in helping you guide the focus and intent of your content. How are you making students aware of your programs? At what point are they considering your programs? Where in the journey do they make a decision, and what do they need to get there?
Students looking to advance their academic and professional careers are at some point in the sales funnel, but they’re also at some stage in their search engine journey. If you’re doing it right, you’ve constructed this journey carefully and provided several different routes for the different kinds of prospective students you interact with.
For example, a student might be only tangentially familiar with the construction industry, so you can gain their interest by crafting a piece about construction careers that graduates can enter after receiving a construction management degree. On the other hand, a student might be further along in their journey and might be at the point of more serious consideration of an engineering degree. For this student, you can craft a post about stress management for engineering students.
If you want to get students to your website, finding blog topics is only half the game. Using keywords to optimize your content is how you push those posts to the finish line. Google’s latest algorithms emphasize value, so figure out what value you can provide your reader at every stage of inquiry.
By walking through the student’s college enrollment experience and differentiating content based on the needs of each stage, you can curate specific content to respond to their search intent, keep them engaged with your brand, and guide them down your content map to a post that encourages them to convert.
2. Satisfy Student Search Intent
Since search intent is Google’s ultimate goal, when it comes to SEO for higher education, keyword research and content creation that match the student’s search intent should be a primary focus.
The “How to Become a CEO” article above is a great example of a university-created piece of content that matches search intent and provides steps that show how the university program can help the searcher accomplish their goal. Content should discuss a range of topics that align with the university’s mission and program’s course curriculum while still keeping the searcher top of mind. With each piece of content, you’ll be able to attract a variety of students who are in different places in the student discovery process.
Each of these posts should have a strong call to action (CTA) that intrigues prospective students to learn more about the university’s program and how they can become more involved and apply. This CTA can include an aesthetically pleasing “learn more” button that directs readers to a “request more information” form.
In 2023, Google introduced a new helpful content algorithm intended to help searchers find relevant results. This update is intended to weed out nonhelpful search results, defined as content that lacks experience, expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
What does this mean for universities? Crafting high-quality content that meets student search intent is even more important. Instead of focusing solely on SEO keywords, university website pages and blogs need to meet Google’s quality standards in one or more E-E-A-T fields.
Experience: The content is created by someone with firsthand involvement in the subject matter.
Expertise: The content creator has formal knowledge of the subject matter.
Authoritativeness: The content contains credible information, and the website has a good reputation for providing quality content.
Trustworthiness: The content includes clear and transparent sourcing to verify the accuracy and reliability of the information.
Universities can meet these expectations by providing high-quality information that highlights faculty and student experiences and expertise.
4. Elevate Your Content Strategy
Searchers are no longer satisfied with traditional text-based content or boring images. This is especially true for millennials and Gen Zers, who account for 42% of the U.S. population, according to Statista, and the majority of a university’s target market.
To capture the attention of these easily distracted searchers, higher education SEO strategies should branch out beyond traditional articles and infographics to include visually captivating and psychologically intriguing content, such as interactive graphics or videos. This refreshed content strategy should aim to not only catch a searcher’s immediate attention but also leave a lasting brand imprint to intrigue searchers to come back for more.
Check out the following example of an engaging piece of content from Zippia.com that outlines the different career paths for cost accountants. The piece is interactive, allowing the user to move their mouse along the different career paths to reveal more detailed and relevant information.
This interactive map is fun and easy to use while still providing the quality and quantity of content the user is looking for. It illustrates the kind of memorable yet useful experience required to capture a student’s attention.
5. Occupy Google Search Results
Occupying more real estate on ever-evolving search engine results pages (SERPs) is more crucial than ever. A large number of Google searches do not result in a click. With the advent of more featured snippets, the importance of a technically sound website, structured data, and high-quality content grows.
While on-page SEO is still crucial for ranking on the SERP, off-page efforts and creating a user experience (UX) that expands past your website are the next wave of occupying internet real estate. Off-page citations, or references to your institution on websites such as U.S. News and Wikipedia, will push hints and signals to Google that validate your brand. Quality higher education SEO strategies should also include a UX that helps your site stand out in today’s saturated marketplace.
6. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
To enhance the college enrollment funnel experience, you need to maintain the health of your website for both desktop and mobile.
Since a majority of search engine visits come from mobile devices, there’s no question that higher education SEO teams should be focusing on the mobile user experience of their websites. Now that Google has mobile-first indexing best practices, your team has new factors to consider. If your website’s content differs between desktop and mobile, for example, then your site is at risk of having pages not indexed or crawled, which could result in a significant loss of traffic.
For starters, ensure that desktop and mobile versions of your website have identical content, as well as identical technical elements, such as structured data and meta tags. Whether you’re developing content or updating your website design, always be sure to consider both platforms in any updates you make.
7. Understand Your Competition
With Google ads for search terms like “online mba” generating a high cost per click (CPC), higher education is one of the most competitive segments of search engine rankings. Why? Simply put, graduate degree programs are expensive and have large marketing budgets. In addition, affiliate marketing is rampant in the higher education space. What’s affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketers in higher education essentially sell student leads to universities.
These affiliate sites often have large SEO budgets and benefit from degree ranking and badging tactics. Take a look at the density of non-edu sites in the search results by Googling “online mba.”
In addition to competing with a number of affiliate websites, traditional schools have to compete with for-profit institutions and institutions with powerful national and regional brands.
Despite the competitive market, a long-term higher education SEO strategy, with a nuanced understanding of the market, can yield tremendous results around student enrollments and thought leadership.
SEO for Higher Education: Boost Your Results with Archer
Here at Archer Education, we partner with accredited universities to help higher-ed leaders and marketers accelerate online learning growth and enrollment. We offer a variety of tech-enabled marketing, enrollment, and retention services, and our team of SEO experts is always up to date on strategies to help your program gain visibility in prospective students’ search results.
Our SEO tactics can help your university:
Increase its visibility in student-generating keywords
Grow the amount of organic traffic to the site
Ensure its site is optimized for organic search
Contact us or visit our SEO tactics page to learn more about how Archer can help you reach your enrollment goals.
Why Student Discipline Matters in Higher Education?
Good discipline is essential to a secure and encouraging campus environment. According to NCES, colleges can easily monitor and address problems as they come up by using behavior-tracking software. This has resulted in a 15% increase in campus safety and a 20% increase in student satisfaction. It takes more than just following the rules to create an environment where students can succeed. Behavior monitoring is directly linked to higher retention rates, as evidenced by students in well-managed environments being 25 percent more likely to finish their education.
Campus administrators will benefit from happier students, a safer and more encouraging environment, and continued vigilance about compliance standards.
The Changing Landscape of Student Behavior in Higher Education
Keeping an eye on student behavior gets harder as universities get bigger and more diverse. The days of having a few basic rules and occasionally checking in were long gone. Maintaining a courteous, secure, and welcoming campus community presents many challenges for today’s higher education institutions.
This is what adds to its complexity:
Handling Students from Diverse Populations: Managing Different Cultural Expectations.
Addressing plagiarism and cheating in the digital age is academic misconduct.
Behavioral Concerns: Dealing with disruptive behavior on the internet and in classrooms.
Campus Safety: Protecting students’ health from abuse and harassment.
Behavior tracking plays a critical role in helping institutions confront these challenges head-on in this dynamic environment. Maintaining documentation is not enough; you also need to build an environment of responsibility, encourage good behavior, and eventually make a contribution.
The Need for Efficient Behavior Tracking Software
These days, handling student discipline with just paper records and spreadsheets is not going to be sufficient. Colleges should reconsider their strategy for the following reasons:
Challenges of Outdated Practices: Paper trails and manual tracking can result in misplaced incidents and postponed actions, which makes it more difficult to provide students with timely support and responses.
Consequences of Ineffective Discipline Oversight: Ineffective discipline management can drive away students and damage the institution’s reputation. Students who experience a lack of accountability may feel unsupported and insecure.
Modern Behavior Tracking Software Advantages
Improved Student Experience: Students can flourish in a more secure and caring environment when simplified discipline management is put into place.
Improved Policy Adherence: A strong system makes sure that institutional rules are followed, reducing the possibility of possible legal issues.
Data-Driven Insights: With the use of sophisticated tracking tools, organizations can examine patterns of behavior to make well-informed decisions and take preventative action.
Adopting behavior monitoring software can transform educational institutions’ approaches to managing student behavior and promote a campus climate that puts safety and support first.
Key Strategies for Improving Student Discipline
Establish the tone by making student conduct policies very apparent from the outset.
Give employees the tools they need to immediately report issues so that they can be addressed quickly.
Analyze behavior trends with analytics to adjust your strategy.
Highlight positive behavior because it inspires more of the same when it is acknowledged and rewarded.
Establish avenues for students to express their ideas and worries to promote a feeling of community.
Work together to present a unified front for discipline management with the staff, teachers, and parents.
Provide regular training to staff members on behavior management and conflict resolution techniques.
Put in place a system to keep an eye on incidents and their results so that changes and improvements can be made continuously.
How Technology Supports Discipline Management
When an incident occurs, you and your team can report it right away, focusing immediately on finding solutions. For example, a teacher could record a conflict in the hallway immediately rather than waiting for class to end.
You can quickly review and have educated discussions with ease when you have easy access to a student’s discipline history through a centralized system.
Parents and staff are kept informed about incidents instantly, allowing for timely action when necessary.
With the use of behavior tracking software, you can identify patterns over time and provide early interventions for students who consistently struggle.
Customized reports evaluate the success of disciplinary measures, enabling you to improve policies in light of actual outcomes.
Maintain open lines of communication among students, faculty, and parents as they work together to address discipline issues.
Use data insights to make informed decisions that improve behavior and campus safety. Institutions that implement technology solutions experience a 30% increase in compliance and satisfaction.
Introducing Creatrix Campus Student Conduct Management System
Log incidents quickly while on the go to simplify documentation.
Create customized reports with an emphasis on particular incident types, locations, and student demographics.
To inform parents, teachers, and students about significant incidents, send out automatic alerts.
Using your mobile device, you can view and edit incident records from anywhere on campus.
An integrated reward system that acknowledges and motivates students can help to promote positive behavior.
Benefits for Higher Education Institutions
Higher Ed Leaders, Take Action!
We feel you definitely deserve a utopian campus where monitoring student behavior is a breeze for you! You can now effectively replace your legacy procedures with a more effective approach to handling student behavior when you use Creatrix Campus behavior tracking software. Want to know how it operates? Set up a demo with Creatrix now to see how it can help you and your team have a more seamless experience on campus! Let’s talk!
As the higher education landscape continues to shift and evolve, the expectations and priorities of today’s students are shifting as well. To stay relevant, institutions are expanding their focus beyond traditional academic models to better meet the needs of a more discerning audience. Modern Learners are no longer bound by age or conventional learning modalities—today’s students are driven by different priorities, presenting a challenge for institutions relying on outdated methods to engage this demographic.
With primary motivators including career advancement and the need for flexibility, Modern Learners demand educational opportunities that offer accessibility, transparency and value. They are more selective, especially as the perceived value of a college degree has been questioned amid economic uncertainty. With rising student debt, these learners are looking for programs that provide a clear return on investment—an education that advances their careers while offering flexible options that meet their financial and personal needs. Success lies in striking a balance between value and cost-effectiveness, ensuring students feel seen, supported and equipped for the future.
Explore ten essential strategies for higher education institutions to expand their offerings and better engage Modern Learners. From improving strategies to leveraging resources and fostering deeper connections with students, these strategies aim to engage with Modern Learners based on their preferences and behavior rather than demographics by embracing a Unified Enrollment Strategy that fuels sustainable growth.
1. Build a Cohesive Brand
In a competitive landscape where a strong brand is essential, the increasingly selective nature of Modern Learners calls for an institution’s brand to resonate with prospective students.
Your institution’s brand identity should authentically reflect its values, mission and unique offerings. A compelling brand narrative not only showcases your unique selling proposition (USP), but also serves as an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with potential students, fostering trust and engagement.
Building a cohesive brand experience involves aligning visual elements, messaging and tone to create consistency across all touchpoints—from your website to social media, emails and beyond. This alignment strengthens students’ understanding of your value proposition, guiding them throughout their journey and ensuring they feel engaged at every stage.
At EducationDynamics, our in-house Creative team specializes in data-driven brand positioning and strategy. We take the time to understand your institution’s unique strengths and craft creative solutions that support the student journey, from initial discovery to enrollment. Discover how our creative services can help your institution’s brand thrive and successfully engage Modern Learners.
2. Adopt a Full-Funnel Marketing Approach
As Modern Learners increasingly seek personalized learning experiences that align with their needs, institutions need to elevate their marketing strategies to meet their growing expectations. By embracing a full-funnel approach, schools can more effectively engage with students at every stage of their journey, leading to stronger enrollment outcomes.
A holistic full-funnel marketing approach not only boosts engagement, but also augments long-term growth by nurturing students from awareness to decision. As students continue to research more throughout their journey and prioritize personalized content, institutions must adopt comprehensive approaches to effectively reach them.
With EducationDynamics’ multi-channel digital marketing expertise, schools can target students across various platforms, ensuring personalized messaging and an engaging experience across every touchpoint. If you want to learn more about how to build a successful full-funnel marketing approach, check out our Full-Funnel Marketing Guide for Higher Education.
3. Utilize Market Research to Identify High-Growth Programs
To effectively meet the evolving priorities of Modern Learners, institutions must develop programs that align with market trends and career opportunities. Leveraging market research allows schools to refine their offerings and better address students’ shifting needs and expectations.
Resources such as EducationDynamics’ eLearning Index Web App, serve as a powerful resource. The Web App, developed by EducationDynamics’ Market Research team, utilizes current National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, to showcase an accurate view of the current labor market and relevant trends regarding degree completions. Administrators can use the app’s interactive features to isolate the data by region, modality and program. By providing insights into the highest opportunity programs available for each educational level and a convenient user interface, the eLearning Index Web App tool empowers schools to optimize their program offerings, ensuring that they are offering degrees that are relevant to Modern Learners. Through aligning programs with high-growth career opportunities, institutions can not only boost retention but also empower students with the skills and support they need to thrive in the current job market.
4. Nurture Leads and Personalize the Journey
Modern Learners often research extensively before finalizing their enrollment decision, seeking personalized and relevant information at every stage. Building relationships early and maintaining engagement over time is essential, whether you’re connecting with prospective students for the first time, re-engaging stopped-out students, or reconnecting with dormant inquiries.
Effective lead nurturing helps institutions build these relationships through tailored content that addresses the specific needs and interests of each student. Consistent communication guides students through their decision-making journey, ensuring they feel supported.
Marketing automation can help streamline these efforts. Through automation of communication workflows, institutions can deliver timely and personalized messaging that resonates with students. This level of personalization and consideration throughout multiple touchpoints in the student journey improves overall engagement and student experiences.
At EducationDynamics, our Nurturing Services offer institutions multi-channel engagement, using best-in-class marketing automation technology. By delivering personalized communications across various platforms, we help schools strengthen connections with students at every stage of their journey.
5. Provide 24/7 Support with AI Chatbots
As institutions seek to attract and enroll the Modern Learner, implementing AI Chatbots serves as a key tool by delivering real-time assistance and tailored responses to common student inquiries. Prospective students frequently encounter obstacles when searching for relevant information during their enrollment journey. With Modern Learners expecting immediate access to information, these challenges can lead to a frustrating experience, potentially impeding their enrollment decision. Employing AI Chatbots can help address this, through instant responses that answer commonly asked questions regarding program details, financial aid and academic support at any time of day. These chatbots not only help manage routine tasks, but they also allow admissions staff to focus on the more complex, high-touch interactions. By incorporating AI Chatbots into your institution’s communication strategy, you enhance student support and ensure that every inquiry receives proper, timely attention.
6. Showcase Your Innovative Spirit
Standing out amid the competitive higher education landscape is vital for attracting Modern Learners, who seek educational opportunities that align with their evolving needs and aspirations. Today’s students are not merely seeking to fulfill degree requirements; they are looking for an education that resonates with their interests and provides long-term growth opportunities. This is where innovation can play a vital role. By highlighting your university’s unique offerings and distinct culture, you can offer Modern Learners attractive reasons to choose your school, while demonstrating how you are adapting to meet the growing demands of Modern Learners.
At EducationDynamics’ Higher Ed Marketing Agency, our team of experts understand the importance of showcasing each institution’s unique selling points and innovative approaches within the higher education space. Our services are designed to communicate the value of choosing your school, whether it’s through digital campaigns, social media content, or compelling copywriting. We empower you to emphasize your distinct strengths, enabling your institution to foster deeper connections with Modern Learners and guide them towards enrollment.
7. Create a Seamless Student Journey
The traditional, linear student journey no longer applies to today’s Modern Learners. With various commitments, such as family and work responsibilities, modern students engage with their educational environment in different ways than in years past. As a result, institutions need to adjust how they approach the student journey. By implementing student journey mapping, institutions can better understand the various stages of the student experience and refine it to reduce pain points.
EducationDynamics’ student journey mapping process provides institutions with actionable insights to optimize every stage of the student experience, from inquiry to enrollment. The process begins with a comprehensive analysis of your current student recruitment and services, including existing marketing materials, communication technology and student support systems. Using data-driven insights, we then create a visual student journey map that identifies key touch points and opportunities to enhance communication. From there, we develop a communication plan with targeted messaging and content designed to nurture, guide and support students across their enrollment journey. By integrating student journey mapping, institutions can better visualize the Modern Learner’s journey, while meeting their evolving needs.
8. Invest in Financial Aid Support
Financial aid is among the first pieces of information students seek and often plays a pivotal role in their enrollment decision. Equipping your institution’s advising team with the tools to engage in financial aid conversations early in the student journey is critical to meeting the expectations of Modern Learners and encouraging them to choose your institution over another.
EducationDynamics’ Financial Aid Advising services offer personalized support through dedicated coaches who manage student inquiries and provide individualized guidance. This streamlined approach allows your admissions team to focus on key priorities, while ensuring students receive the financial aid support they need. By delivering clear answers and a supportive experience, students are more likely to enroll, resulting in higher enrollment and retention rates.
9. Streamline Your CRM and Marketing Data Integration
A robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is essential for navigating the Modern Learner’s enrollment journey. By collecting and managing student data, CRMs promote personalized communication that resonates with students. To truly maximize their potential, CRM systems should be optimized through technology integration, data quality assessments and user adoption, ensuring they effectively reach Modern Learners while driving scalable enrollment growth.
EducationDynamics recognizes the importance of an integrated CRM system. Our team of integration experts specialize in implementing and maintaining clean, actionable data that supports a cohesive strategy, giving your institution a holistic overview of each student and ensuring your CRM is built for long-term success.
10. Optimize Your Enrollment Team
As the primary point of contact for prospective students, your enrollment team is one of the most critical investments you can make. The expertise and engagement of your enrollment staff directly influences prospective students’ decisions, making them essential to student success outcomes.
At EducationDynamics, we believe in empowering both institutions and students by investing in staff development. Through our The U School platform, institutions can access exclusive 8-week programs designed to equip your team with the skills needed to meet the unique demands of Modern Learners. By strengthening staff training, we help build more effective enrollment pathways, ultimately increasing student engagement, satisfaction and enrollment growth.
Empowering Your Institution to Engage Modern Learners
Attracting and enrolling Modern Learners requires a comprehensive approach that acknowledges their unique needs and preferences. By implementing the ten key strategies outlined in this article, higher education institutions can engage a new demographic of learners while nurturing meaningful connections with students. Embracing innovative solutions like student journey mapping and leveraging available resources allows institutions to transform the student experience. As the higher education environment continues to change and enrollment challenges arise due to shifting economic and demographic factors, institutions who proactively understand and cater to the unique needs of Modern Learners will differentiate themselves from the competition. As your strategic partner, EDDY is committed to empowering your institution to confidently navigate these challenges while collectively advancing our mission to expand opportunity through education.
Your online presence creates a legacy for your work and supports your professional goals for your research, teaching, and leadership. And yes, you probably have been putting it at the bottom of your to-do list… Join us and let’s change that!
This Q&A was hosted by Ana Pineda, PhD, of I Focus And Write on October 10, 2024.
Introduction
Ana: This happens a lot to me too. Just quickly for the rest of us watching the recording. I started the recording a bit late, but I was introducing you to Jennifer Van Alstyne, and she’s the expert on having an online presence, not only academic, but personal branding, especially for academics. Although I think your profile goes much further and you all should start following her, and I will send you some links later for her social media, her channels, her website.
I discovered [Jennifer] very early on in this business and something that I hope we are going to speak more about it, I was struggling with my, my online presence as an academic and also as a business. I thought, “Ah, Jennifer one day she, she should come and tell us more. I teach you, this is something I encourage you all when you want to connect with someone, send them an email, send them a message in social media, tell them what you would like to maybe have a coffee with them or organize something with them. And that’s it. This is how Jennifer and I contacted and now she’s here talking with all of you and I’m super excited. Thank you. Jennifer, do you want to tell us a bit about you to start?
Jennifer: Hi everyone. I’m so happy to be here and to talk with you all. Let’s see, I have been helping professors one-on-one with their online presence since 2018. And it really started off as, as thinking that I would help with websites specifically, but most of my clients needed help with more than just their website because being online isn’t just about having a website. You can actually be online without a website, too. And so really figuring out online presence wasn’t a one size fits all solution. A website wasn’t going to be the answer for everyone helped me evolve my business over time.
Now, it’s been like, what, six and a half years and I help people with websites, social media, and bio writing. And really I’d say our work is about confidence. Our work is about the confidence to be able to show up and to feel like you’re worthy enough, and that you deserve space online. I love getting to help people with that.
Ana: Oh, so nice. And I love that you linked to, to this, to the aspect of feeling confident because I was telling to Jennifer like, I think 90% of my audience, of you here, of our students suffer severe imposter syndrome, and this feeling that we are not good enough. And I see that for me, but also probably for many of you that here, this stops us from showing up online and sharing our words. We always feel, I sent an email today with some of those thoughts. The, “who am I to say this on LinkedIn,” or, “am I bragging if I’m sharing this paper that got published.” Something also like, “What is this person going to think when it says that I post this,” right? Something some of my students say is I think on that teacher I had once or something a supervisor said that you had 10 years ago. Sometimes you still have these thoughts of, “What is this specific person going to think? And this stops us. It truly stops us. I hope that also for all of you that you live with some ideas of how to stop these imposter thoughts when it comes to your online presence today. Love it. So for today, it’s a, Jennifer told me, I love interactive sessions and we need your help. Please, we need your help for the, of course I have questions here ready for Jennifer, but we would love to hear your questions.
Jennifer: I have a question if that’s okay for everyone who’s listening. This is one of the questions that I, I like to ask people when we start working together because it really is different for everyone, no matter where you are on feeling imposter syndrome, no matter where you are in your career.
How you feel about your online presence is, is very internal. It’s very personal. So I’m curious if 0 is like, “I don’t have an online presence at all,” and 10 is like, “I have a great online presence, I’m really confident in it. It’s the exact online presence I want.” Where are you on that range? From like zero of no online presence at all to 10, amazing online presence.
How would you rate yourself? 4, 2, 3. Yeah. Quite low. Good. This is very, very normal. Very normal to feel like maybe there’s a lot more you could do or maybe want to do to have a stronger online presence.
I’m curious, those of you who feel like you’re on the really lower end of the scale, 0, 1, 2, 3, I’m curious, have you done something for your online presence already or is this like, “There’s a bunch of things that I want to do that I know I’m not doing and I really don’t have an online presence at all.”
Where are you thinking when you’re at the lower numbers? Is it more about actions that I haven’t taken or actions that I’ve taken that don’t feel like enough?
‘I think I’ve tried a lot.’ Yeah. Oh my, ‘the university forces me to,’ I love that answer. For a lot of people that is perfect. Yeah. Okay.
I just wanted to show even though we’re all here and we’re all here together and there is a range for where people feel for your online presence, my hope is that by the end of this workshop you’ll feel like there’s at least one small step that you can take to improve that in a way that’s really meaningful to your life. If not more. My hope is for more, but at least one.
‘I haven’t done anything because I thought why do I have to be online?’ Well, we’ll chat about that. It’s different for different people. So, saying that you have to be online for your research, you have to be online for a job market or you have to be online for, you know, any specific reason. It’s not going to work for everyone. And finding the true reason (or reasons), it’s going to be helpful for you. Hopefully we can get closer to that today as well.
What are reasons scientists and academics should have an online presence?
Ana: Oh, I love that. And actually that is how I would like to start. So what are the main reasons, Jennifer, that you say why you should, everyone have an online presence? Maybe there are a few things that you think, oh this situation, these moments, you really need to, to work on this.
Jennifer: Well, I’ll tell you why I thought when I started people should have a stronger online presence. I really thought that if you put your publications online and you create a way to help people find them, that more people from your potentially really niche topic would be able to read them, engage with them, and share them.
And that’s true, but that’s not actually a motivating reason for the majority of people that I work with. I would say for most of the professors that I work with, they want to help more people.
They want to help more people. They want to invite opportunity for themselves, but not just any opportunity. They want to invite aligned opportunities aligned with their research, aligned with their values, aligned with what they want to be focusing their time on.
Attracting opportunities is all about finding the right people. It’s about making sure that people can see and engage with what you share. That can potentially lead to greater connection, collaboration, or a long-term working relationship. I would say it’s mostly about people and making sure that that connection is possible even when you’re not in the same space.
Ana: Oh, I love this. And actually, you know, I mainly started using as online presence, let’s say Twitter, on social media. And I don’t know if you, you also said this, but in the past there was some, they did some study and they saw that the more people tweeted about papers, than the more citations they have.
Jennifer: Yes, that is definitely true. It’s also a bit limited in how we think about it.
Ana: Yes.
Jennifer: Yes, more people will see your paper when you share it online. The question is, is it the right people? Is it the right timing? Are they still going to see it after your one post?
There’s so many ways that we can share publications, really thinking about who we want it to reach and how we want to be able to help people with the hard work we’ve already done makes a really big difference for how we show up online.
So yes, always sharing your work gets more citations, gets more readers, which is great. My hope is that it’s really engaged readers, aligned readers. Readers who could potentially cite and use your work.
Jennifer: So I’ve actually gotten more narrow in my focus for who I’m hoping to reach in my work with professors.
Ana: Yes, I love that. And actually, it was later on that I think there was another paper that also, like you said, it was like, “more citations, really, but what was then the impact of this effect?” But what they saw is that the big impact in the end, like you said in people, in networking, in collaborations, in relationships. And this is really beautiful.
Lenny says here, ‘they trying to build multidisciplinary approach of a problem, building a network is the only way and networks are so important, right?’ Networks of the right people, like you said. I love that. Yeah. So good.
Why do professors want a website, social media, or blog?
Ana: And continue with the why Jennifer. I would also like to know why your clients come to you. So do they come, do they want a website? Do they want social media? Do they want blog? What is it? Tell us more please.
Jennifer: I would say most people come to me because they want, or are thinking about a website. Oftentimes it’s something that they’ve wanted for a long time. Maybe they tried to do themselves or did do themselves, but it isn’t meeting their needs.
My most popular service is like a big website plan where we either redesign or create a website that really meets their long-term needs. That takes in-depth interviews, I mean we spent about five hours talking before I even start planning the website. That’s because for a lot of people, their needs are are so nuanced. And we really get to understand what’s going to be exciting for them, what’s going to be engaging for the people that they hope their research or their teaching research reaches.
And then some people also have different areas of their life that they want to be able to share on their website. A lot of people also come to me because they want to bring together multiple identities into one personal academic website.
Or, occasionally a website that works for both your personal website and your lab website.
The website that’s right for you doesn’t necessarily look like the website that was right for someone else. That’s why professors like to work with me, cause we find that together. They feel like they don’t have to do it alone and if they don’t want to. They don’t have to touch the website themselves, they can just have it done for them.
So especially the people a bit later in their career, like to be a little bit hands off. People who are early career researchers, we get more involved and do more things together. So yeah, it’s really fun. We customize it to what best meets the professors need.
Ana: Yes, I love that also that you said it. Every need will be different, right? And I think that’s the problem with university websites, that they are very standard first and you don’t have much there to say. So actually, if you have any questions about websites right now, please share it in the chat. So maybe we can go through there.
Holly has posted a a question, Jennifer. Maybe you can read it.
Professional website vs. Academic website vs. Lab website
Jennifer: [Holly]: ‘What are the main differences between a professional website vs. an academic website?’
I’d say there, there’s not really one. I mean it’s just the label that we’ve called the website that is meant to represent you. So, if you as a person feel like your professional identity is different from your academic identity, which is true for many people, sometimes those people actually prefer two websites.
Or they prefer to focus their website on just their professional identity vs. their academic identity. When I say that, it’s more about the audience that you hope comes to the website. If you’re hoping to mostly focus on other academics and researchers, you might have academic content there even if you have a separate professional life and maybe you’re picking and choosing what goes on there. But overall, they could be the exact same website. You could have the same label for it. It’s more how you think about your own identity, if that makes sense.
Ana: And yes, jumping in the to the effort example, I find something really useful of websites that you can attract like stakeholders, right? Like people more like maybe policy makers or companies who might be interested in applying what you are working on or, or the press, right? More for science communication. Do you then recommend to have like one single website but maybe with different sections or apps? How, how do you recommend people to deal with that?
Jennifer: I always recommend one website when possible. The websites I recommend separating out are if you have a research lab where you’re going to be highlighting your team, oftentimes the professional/academic website, the personal website version of that. It makes better sense when it’s separate.
That’s not to say that a research lab website can’t support a personal identity. It’s just that the website that you may want to build out for yourself, maybe as extensive as the research lab website, but highlighting different things. I often, often recommend separate personal website and research lab website.
In terms of consulting or like a professional identity that is separate from an academic one, I often don’t recommend dividing it. Now, if you have a business that is like officially registered, you may have to divide it for like legal reasons for. Maybe for a Terms and Conditions page or a Privacy Policy that is specific to your country.
But for most people I would say that that one website works. You can have two in one. Adding a Consulting page, adding a Services page to your academic website can really enhance how people who are at NGOs, at corporations, at other universities, at federal and foundation funders. All sorts of people like publishers, people that are outside of academia, or outside of your institution will be able to better understand you and your services and your consulting. How you approach those things from the academic pages on your website as well. I don’t typically recommend splitting your identities when possible.
It’s also easier to manage one website. So less less work overall.
Stories about opportunities from your online presence
Ana: Yeah. That’s great. And actually I was wondering, do you have any win story of people after making their websites for us? We love those.
Jennifer: I’ll be really honest and say that I’m bad at keeping up with professors that I’ve worked with after the fact. But when I have, I get really delightful stories. So one of them, this is just like a few weeks after we’d launched his website and we were adding something in. We were meeting again live. He told me this funny story that he was just at a conference in his field. This was someone who was on sabbatical this year, so he wasn’t engaging as much with the research community. He was working for the federal government at the time for the year so he hadn’t been super engaged in the research community.
When he was at this conference and someone came up to him, they recognized him, like they’d seen his photo. They said, ‘I’ve explored your whole website, I learned all about you. I would like to talk with you about a job offer.’ Now my client was not job searching, he was very happy in his position. He had his next few years very planned out. But just the fact that someone knew so much about him, about the things that he cared about and brought this actually quite aligned conversation into an actual meeting space in person so soon after the website was launched was shocking.
Also, a PhD student whose dissertation was requested by a national publication. Like they wanted them to do a writeup for a national publication just a week after launch. That’s another example of opportunities that can just come essentially as soon as you have a stronger online presence.
But those are really kind of short-term things. And the long-term things that I care more about are really about how you feel about sharing what you do.
Most of the professors that come to me, no matter where they are in their career, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily imposter syndrome, but there is a feeling that people might not care. Like, you can know that your research is really good, you can know that you’re respected, you can know that you have people who care about you and still feel like there’s not someone who will care when you celebrate something that might feel small in comparison to other things. Or, that might feel big but almost too overwhelming to share.
What I like about working with professors is that by the end of our work together, there is this transformation of, “I deserve to have this space.” Like, “I deserve to take up this space and when I take up this space, it helps more people. It helps more of the people that I’m already trying to reach with my research. It helps more people and more students that I’m teaching,” find maybe the network or connection that they’re hoping to. There are ways to help far more people than just yourself with your website or with your online presence.
Ana: Yes. This is so nice. Connecting how you can help others is a big thing. And you just pointed also to the students, it is said that many of my colleagues, especially those that have websites, they’re also very popular with students who want to do their master thesis with them.
Jennifer: Yeah.
You can have a website for your teaching (even when research isn’t your focus)
Ana: And and that’s really nice, right? That you are also sharing your work and students can find their passions thanks to that too. Eh, love it. Oh, there are some questions.
Jennifer: Before we jump into questions, I just wanted to say that I’ve had clients who are very research focused with their website and I’ve had clients who are very teaching focused with their website.
And you can be both, but some people who are more teaching focused in life sometimes feel like they don’t deserve that same space online. But teaching resources are so valuable for students, for other faculty, for other graduate students or PhD students who might be starting to teach in your field.
Oftentimes when we get into those interviews about: What can we create with your website? How can it change and impact your life? We find really nuanced ways that it’s going to be meaningful for you. Whether it’s creating a Recruiting page or sharing a Student Internships list. There’s just so many options for how to talk with and connect with your students through your online presence. If you want to.
Having an online presence when your research is about sensitive topics
Ana: Yes. So nice. Yes. So there are some questions coming in. So, something that was asked, “How can we deal with being out there online when we research sensitive topics such as police violence?”
Jennifer: Ah, that’s a great question. Actually, one of the examples that we can look at today with Dr. Cheryl L. Johnson, she’s an early career researcher who works with violence and weapons and guns, especially juveniles who carry weapons.
Sensitive topics is something that makes a lot of people stop in whatever actions they’re taking to have a stronger online presence. Part of that is for self-protection. Part of that is also knowing the reactions that people might have based on what you share.
Whenever you have a sensitive topic, I really want you to think about the people that you want to help. Think about the people who really you do need to reach rather than thinking about all the people you want to avoid focusing on who needs to see your research to make that difference. That’s the introspective part that I recommend starting with.
For many of the professors I work with who have a sensitive topic, I would say that is another reason why people come to me to work together. We have found that sometimes posting on social media feels less safe. There are some spaces online that feel less safe and that maybe they don’t want to explore at this time.
Whereas having a stronger online presence, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to be on social media. And so we found what they felt and we felt together were safer options was through having their personal website and through having a LinkedIn profile that was filled out to a point where it would show up in Google quite easily and people would be able to find them based on that particular research topic online. But, they wouldn’t feel like they had to post about their topic specifically inviting potential negative reactions in order to help people find them.
If you’re someone who has a sensitive topic and you’d like to be talking about that online, I also want you to consider your safety, your personal safety, but also your emotional and mental safety and think about how you’d like to respond to things and come up with kind of like worse, like what you’re going to do in a worst case scenario. Like, let’s say you do post about a sensitive topic and it goes viral and you know, this is really bad. You’re getting, you know, messages and comments and it just feels so overwhelming. What are the steps you’re going to take at that time to make yourself feel safe to, to help yourself move past this hopefully momentary situation? Yeah.
Ana: Yes. And just for everyone also to realize that indeed in social media, people comment, but on your website you don’t need to activate any comments, eh?
Jennifer: Yes.
Ana: So that is, it’s a way of keeping yourself safe and it, so social media platforms, you can deactivate comments too, right? That nobody can comment on your posts.
Jennifer: You can, but I do want to say that deactivating comments, having, having a website, like not inviting comments doesn’t mean that you won’t get comments. People who feel really strongly about things may still email you.
Ana: Yes.
Jennifer: People will report you to your university. I just want you to know that anything you do or say online, it can be screenshotted, it can be shared, it may be reported.
This isn’t to create fear in you. It’s to let you know that universities typically do not do anything on the other end of that. They get reported to all the time and oftentimes, there’s not a lot that happens.
Ana: Okay, thank you. Thank you for that Jennifer.
When social media doesn’t feel authentic to your personal values
Ana: Now actually, you are making recommendations about social media. So indeed we have another question from Vidal: “What to do when our online presence does not feel authentic to our personal values, especially in social media, but our field is very much dependent on that?” Do you have any advice for this?
Jennifer: I wouldn’t recommend anyone be on social media unless they want to. There have been scientists and researchers for decades who have not used social media and still found connection.
But then you’d want to potentially be intentional about how you are connecting with people and keeping those long-term relationships in some other way.
I like social media because it means I can connect with those people and I can still message them or communicate with them at some point in the future, even if we haven’t talked in years. And so if you’re someone who’s open to being on social media but not posting, that could be a good way to still get that kind of interaction online.
But if it goes against your values, like I’m not going to ask you to change your values and your university shouldn’t ask you that either. In fact, universities sometimes come and ask me to do workshops and I have said no depending on what they’re asking because I won’t force any professor to accept the terms and conditions of a social media platform. You know, there are, there are some things that they just don’t agree with.
I’m also not going to force any professor to have a website if they don’t want one. I really think that it is a personal choice and there are other ways to create connection lasting networking in your field beyond social media, even if that’s the norm in your field.
Ana: Yes, thank you so much. And actually a couple of comments about that that I only realized later, right? That social media is a type of marketing, social media marketing, but it’s not the only one. Actually something very common with scientists is to do PR, public relations and speaking and going to conferences. This is also a powerful way of marketing that you are doing. I don’t know if in, if it is required for social media, but maybe what is required is to do more of this marketing. So you could also consider to, well go to conferences which are more scientific, but maybe also work more with the press in journals, interviews with the radio, maybe block platforms that publish blog posts. There are indeed, definitely there are other ways.
What is your online presence for professors and scientists?
Jennifer: Now when I say online presence, what I mean is that when someone goes to Google or another search engine, if they put in your name (or maybe your name + the area of your research), are you going to come up?
And when you do appear in search results, can they find what you hope for them to find quickly? What you hope for them to find is probably a bit about you, potentially a photo of you, contact information, your areas of research.
Now when you’re hoping to communicate with journalists in the press, you want to come up pretty high. Like you want to come up high in those search results. You want to make sure that they’re able to find you for topics that you actually want to speak about. You don’t have to have a website, you don’t have to have social media profiles in order to attract media attention. But you do have to, if you go to Google, you have to be findable with your name and also with your areas of research.
Ana: And actually I want to drop there a little tip for everyone. If you don’t have Google Scholar, activate it. Please do so because Google Scholar is from Google. So if you search your name in Google and you have a Google Scholar account, that will pop up, often quite high. And when we do this, actually if you, I hope you all know how to add Incognito window in your browser. Maybe just now do this exercise. Open an Incognito window if you know how to do it. Otherwise just open a browser window and Google your name and research and see where do you appear.
Tell us in the chat, I’m curious. Count the number of position and are you the number one, are you the number 10, you are not on the first page. We’d love to see how that is because if-
Jennifer: Yeah, let’s do that.
Ana: Yeah, if you are not high, definitely there is more there to do. But if not, indeed Google Scholar, please be sure everyone has it with a picture, it’s really with the papers that are yours because otherwise Google Scholar puts random papers. So have a, an updated Google Scholar profile. We would love to see that.
Ana: In the meantime Jennifer, we can see more of the questions that came in. Jacqueline asks, ‘Are there specific website hosts domain you can recommend? I’m always a bit concerned about hidden costs with publishing a website.’
Jennifer: Yeah. Easiest way to make a website for free or very low cost is Owlstown.
Ana: Love that.
Jennifer: Owlstown is run by my friend Dr. Ian Li. He wanted to help more professors and scientists be able to create a website with ease.
And when I tell you it can go up in as little as 15 minutes, like if you start it now, it could be done by the end of our workshop. That is true. We have done it together live on a demo. So I really recommend that for a lot of people.
If you don’t care deeply about how your website looks and feels in terms of having control over all of the parts of it, Owlstown is an excellent option for you. I recommend it to a lot of people.
For professors who do want more control over the look and feel of your website, you want to be able to change all of the colors and have different types of pages and formats and layouts. I love WordPress.com.
WordPress.com has great customer service. It’s more affordable than some of the other hosts and it has built-in security and protection. If something goes wrong with your website because someone’s trying to attack it, they have a whole office that will deal with that.
If your website goes down like mine has twice, they have resolved that for me within an hour. I really like WordPress.com. That’s what I set up most of my clients on.
I also like Squarespace.
I do not like Wix. Wix is very buggy and glitchy. In fact, most of the people who’ve come to me for website redesigns have been quite unhappy with their experience on Wix. And so we’re migrating their site to typically WordPress.com.
If you like WordPress, but you don’t want WordPress.com, you want more control over your WordPress, Reclaim Hosting has really great prices for academics and they focus on the academic community. Yeah, Reclaim Hosting is my recommendation for a managed WordPress host where you have full control.
WordPress.com is my number one recommendation.
No Wix, no Weebly.Does that answer your questions?
Oh, Google Sites. I should mention that because my friend Brittany Trinh, who does websites for scientists, she likes Google Sites for people who are just starting out.
But if you like that personalization, WordPress.com or Squarespace is probably going to be a better fit.
Oh, for people who are trying to decide between WordPress.com and Squarespace ’cause they’re both very trusted, highly recommended companies? Squarespace is a little bit more sleek, but its features are a little bit more geared towards ecommerce and selling products. So, in the future you’ll see that some of the changes are more geared towards that.
Whereas WordPress has been a blogging platform for so long that it’s never going to lose all of those capabilities and it’s going to continue to improve them. I like WordPress if you ever plan to have a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel in the future ’cause it’ll give you more, like backend options for the structure of your website that helps Google better understand it. So if you think, “I don’t want to blog now, but I want one in like six years,” start your website on a WordPress site.
Ana: I just want to add something really funny. I have your worst recommendation that is Wix.
Jennifer: Sorry, sorry, If you have a Wix website and you like it, please keep it. Don’t worry.
Ana: No, but I recognize if I were to start over for what I do, which indeed I need much more capabilities, I would definitely do WordPress.
But I always recommend also Owlstown for academics who wants a simple solution because you can also do quite a lot and they show examples and they are really nice actually. Maria Jose, yes. Did hers and really enjoyed the process. Yeah, she was very fast in making it. It was amazing. This also is great. How funny. Okay, so I see Jennifer a lot of people are ranking number one. Amazing! But they had a very nice point, which links to another question we had.
Website, LinkedIn, X, or ResearchGate for scientists?
Ana: Natalia actually was asking also, “What is the difference between the website being active in LinkedIn, X, or ResearchGate? Do they have similar impacts? What’s your opinion?
Jennifer: Academic social media platforms are mostly for academics. And by that I mean that if you’re hoping to reach people in policy, if you’re hoping to reach practitioners, if you’re hoping to reach maybe researchers outside of the academy, if you’re hoping to reach nonprofits, NGOs or foundation or fellowship funding, all of these people like may not have access to or may not regularly use those academic social media platforms.
And that’s one of the reasons why having Google Scholar set up, making sure that when you Google yourself people can find you is really beneficial because there’s so many people beyond the researchers who like to read peer reviewed research who would benefit from finding and connecting with you and who you would benefit from finding and connecting with as well.
Because of that, I really like LinkedIn profiles because it’s where most of those professionals outside of academia do at least have a presence, even if they’re not actively spending time there. Google Scholar because it helps you better show up in Google search results.
And having any of the places that show up at the top of those search results. So maybe your faculty profile, maybe you have a bio on another website of some kind. Making sure those places that do show up at the top of Google search results are updated when possible. That’s going to help.
Anything else you do is going to enhance that. So like if you create a website that’s then going to show up at the top of search results, so it’s going to be an even better and more engaging experience where people can learn even more. But if, when you Google your name, you’re finding the search results that you want, you probably don’t need to increase your online presence in that kind of way unless it’s something that you want for yourself. Did that make sense?
Ana: Yes. We have Natalia there. I also always recommend, in terms of social media, for those of you who want to do social media, to do either LinkedIn or X, Twitter, is through, you hear and see in Twitter and X that there’s quite some haters, but at least in my experience in the academic world, no. And again, not in my academic world, but maybe indeed if you work in sensitive topics, you might get more of these haters. In my world, not really.
Jennifer: I would also say if you are a minority, if you are a person of color, again, yeah, sensitive topics, if you identify as LGBTQ+, there are haters on every platform.
So it’s not like if you go to Instagram over X, it’s going to drastically improve your experience. The people that I’ve interviewed on The Social Academic who’ve experienced really negative reactions experience them everywhere they go.
So I just want you to know that it’s not like you can avoid everything just by being on one, you know, the, the one platform where that doesn’t happen. People thought that Mastodon was going to be like that and it wasn’t. There was just as much hate people thought that Bluesky was going to be like that and it wasn’t.
There’s just as much negative reaction everywhere you go. I just want to put that out there. Like if you are feeling unsafe, it may not be the platform. It may be how you’re interacting with it. It may be that how you feel means that you shouldn’t be there at all.
And as someone who survived domestic violence and had to escape an abusive ex-husband, there have been points in my life where being online was not the safe choice. Where I really wanted to hide. And so I just want to put that out there if something happens that makes you feel unsafe online, it’s okay to remove yourself.
Ana: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing Jennifer. Because there might be people here who also feel like that. And you shouldn’t feel like also guilty for not being online.
Jennifer: Right, that’s what I wanted.
Ana: Yeah. Yes, exactly. I love that you pointed to that. So good. Just to add something to this conversation that adds something that I also recommend when you’re trying to choose like, “Okay, I cannot be doing everything. What should I choose?”
I always say like, what do you enjoy the most? Right? Yeah, some people really have fun on Twitter, others is on LinkedIn, others is maybe in ResearchGate. So just also maybe put more effort on that platform that you enjoy the most.
You also said the key word that I always tell my students, like updated, that’s the key word. I wonder whatever you choose is updated. Not with that. The last paper that you are showing is from four years ago. Have that profile updated and be where you also enjoy it.
I don’t know if I told you all this story, but I started, I just wanted to be a lurker. I just wanted to be there and not interact with anyone and just see what people were doing. So first a colleague told me, ‘but you can create a fake account so nobody knows it’s you, nobody’s going to follow you.’ And I say, ‘oh great.’ But my fake account had a name that was a little bit similar to mine. So of course once I started following the people I knew, they started following me back and this was like, okay, this fake account is not working.
But for years I would not do anything, just look at post. And this was great to stay updated about research, new papers. And then later I did my next step, which was liking and reposting. That would be it. I would never write a comment, I would never write a post, that was it.
And then came the next level which will be commenting to things of my friends, right? Like celebrating with them, they got a new job, you know, they got this grant, this paper and that will be it. There was all these levels that for me at least, each level was more and more challenging. So you also gotta decide what is your level that you feel comfortable with.
Jennifer: Yeah, I’ve actually had professors come to me because maybe they were on Twitter and they’re like, I don’t want to be be on Twitter anymore. Like, ‘I don’t like Elon’ or something like that. And they want to learn Instagram. So then we talk about Instagram, we talk about what that might look like. There’s so many features on Instagram. How you use Instagram isn’t going to be the same way someone else uses Instagram.
But when we talk about it, like they’re like, “Oh, I don’t like that.” They’re like, “I don’t like images.” or “I don’t want to do video.” And, and you know, realizing that actually they like writing text, they like thinking about things in text.
Thinking about what you like, thinking about what you don’t like, thinking about what you want to try, or what you don’t want to explore. Do that before you start a platform or do it as you’re starting a platform.
Don’t feel like once you create your account you’re going to have to have that forever. You can delete anything that you’re feeling like isn’t really a good fit.
Ana: Yeah, so good. And, and actually people also were asking like also alternatives for example to X or Twitter. Well I think we covered this. Probably LinkedIn is a good idea in that case.
Do I have enough publications to set up my faculty profile?
Ana: And Sabrina also had a very nice question. “Hey, my university has a website where I can set up a profile yet I’m hesitant to set up a profile because I don’t have any publications yet. Any advice?”
Jennifer: If your university let’s you set up a profile, you should, even if you don’t have any publications. Having one or two sentences in that area that just says what your research is focused on and who you’re hoping to connect with about that research is going to be just as effective as listing publications.
I have seen thousands of faculty profiles and a huge portion of those wherever they are in their academic career don’t have publications listed. Oftentimes that’s because the person who the profile is about hasn’t updated it or hasn’t provided information. Or, the process to update it or provide information just doesn’t exist or isn’t being managed in a way that can actually facilitate updates happening on the website.
I just want to say if you feel the publications or what’s been holding you back, you don’t have to wait because there’s so many faculty profiles out there that don’t have any publications on them. So I really encourage you to do, make that profile.
Whereas if your university offers you a website space, I would actually recommend not using it and making an external website yourself. So profiles, definitely have on your university website. Websites, I don’t recommend quite as much and we can talk about that if you want. But yeah, generally WordPress.com, Squarespace is a better option, or Owlstown. Better options for you.
Ana: Yes, I love that. And I also always recommend that too because yeah, at the end of the day you might leave that university, right? And your, I see your web website, like your home-
Jennifer: Yeah, but also your university may just decide to stop posting websites, which I’ve seen happen at like six universities before. So your website could just be gone next week and you’ll get an email that’s like, “Oh, we’re discontinuing this service,” and it disappears. I don’t want that to happen to you. And that’s why I’m saying it more so than the potential of you moving universities.
Sometimes if you move universities, you can actually keep that website space. I’ve seen that from people too. So it’s not like if you have a space already that like you should delete it. I’m just saying if you’re starting a website project, I would recommend it being on WordPress.com or Squarespace or somewhere outside of your university server when possible.
Do I have to be online every day as an academic?
Ana: Yes. Lovely. And we have here a question also from Elaine. “Can an academic build an online presence by not being online every day?” And this, I love this because we can also connect be with the how what, what would you recommend, and I guess this means more for social media because of course once you have the website, there it is. So what would you say about, about being online in social media?
Jennifer: That’s a good question. So actually I have a question for you, [Elaine]. When you say you don’t want to be online, does that mean you don’t want to post on social media or does that mean you don’t want to check social media at all for an extended period of time? Both answers are totally fine. I’m just curious how using it less looks like for you, if you don’t mind answering in the in the channel, I would love that.
Ana: Maybe Elaine can answer that.
Jennifer: Yeah, or or unmute yourself if you prefer.
Elaine: I meant that I don’t want to post every day. You know, I don’t want spend so much of time there.
Jennifer: That’s totally, that totally makes sense.
Elaine: I think that the algorithm forget you.
Jennifer: Ah, the algorithm.
So yeah, a lot of people feel like the algorithm forgets you. But the people that you’ve connected with do not.
When you think about who you’re connecting with, it’s actually more important than you posting because when people decide to connect with you, it means that they’re choosing to potentially see your post in the future.
Now with Twitter, it makes it really feel like the algorithm is kind of like working against you because you only get that kind of 10 minute window to reach potential people. Maybe they have you in the For You section, so you show up towards the top. But Twitter is the one platform that sometimes feels like you might be more beholden to that. I would just say, post the same thing twice and call it a day.
But other platforms like LinkedIn, if you post once, that post could continue to show up for people for not days, but weeks and months. I want you to think about your content that you share out there in any capacity as something that can last, something that can be useful for people beyond the time that you’re posting it.
Because of that, you do not need to post every day. Not only do you not need to post every day, you don’t need to post every week. In fact, for most of the professors that I work with, I recommend if you can consider, you don’t have to commit to it, but like if you can consider sharing one post per month that can really impact your online presence. Just one post per month. So people know when they visit your profile, you’re still somewhat active. That makes a really big difference.
You don’t have to post every day, definitely don’t have to post every week. And if you want to take extended months off from social media, but you have that stronger online presence when people Google you, you could do that. You could delete all your social media if people are finding you in those Google Search results with ease and they’re finding what you want them to see.
If you don’t want to be on social media at all or you just want to lurk, that’s an option too. I just want you to have that other side of being findable for the things that you’d like people to find you for that that also be something that supports you.
Ana: Yes, thank you. Okay, we’re going to then start moving into the section of the, the how. I think we indeed covered the, the why, the where.
Would you give us Jennifer some ideas of post that people can access easily I could post about this or about this other topic. Content pillars. Or type of post that they could work on.
Jennifer: There, there’s so many things that you can post about. It really depends on what your personal needs are. So like, I mean, if you have a new publication, there’s a ton of posts that we like, you want to do, we could talk about that for a sec?
Ana: Please, yes.
Jennifer: Yeah, so let’s say you have a a new thing. It doesn’t need to be a publication. Like let’s say a new publication, an upcoming conference talk, an event that you’re attending. There’s a thing that you can share.
That is something that can and probably should be shared more than once. So the first, easiest content pillar is sharing things multiple times.
Let’s say you have a publication. One way to start sharing it is actually before you have the publication, I really recommend talking about research in advance. I’m not saying to give away like all of the secrets that you feel like are really new research on Twitter, but what I am saying is sharing that you’re working on something in a particular topic is a great way to clue people in that there may be something to engage with or read in the future. And honestly, depending on where you’re at, if you’re in like the data collection stage, it might help shape and inform your research. So talking about publications even before their publications is great.
When you submit a publication is probably the most popular time for people to celebrate you. When your publication is accepted is the second most popular time for people to celebrate you. People are actually more excited by the process of publication than they are from the publication itself. And that’s not that your publication isn’t important. It’s that what people care about when they connect with you is you. And the publication itself is just the outcome of what you personally have done.
I’m not trying to downplay your publication at all. It’s amazing and there’s a ton of ways to share it once it’s out in the world, but I just wanted to encourage you to consider sharing it early and those kinds of mindsets about sharing things early is true for events, conferences, things that you care about.
If you’re on a committee, if you’re on any kind of service type thing that you’re doing that is important to you, share it while it’s in process, share it while it’s happening because people love that behind the scenes stuff. They love hearing a little bit more about what you’re doing.
If that feels uncomfortable for you and you’re someone who wants to wait until your publication is out, that’s absolutely fine.
We want to share the things that people really need to know. So that’s what is the publication about? Where can I find more information about it? Who should read this? Should I share it with any particular type of people? Answer questions for people who are unfamiliar with your research area and subject because far more people are going to see your tweet or your post about your publication then are going to be excited to read it.
And that’s not a bad thing, but we have to trust that those people have the potential to share it with someone else who might care, even if they personally do not benefit from reading your research themselves. I think that that’s something the scientists and professors that I’ve worked with have struggled with. There is even a feeling that like if I share this with my friends and family members, like they won’t care. Or like, ‘I celebrate this with my husband, but like my friends on Facebook, no one’s going to care about this.’
And that’s actually an assumption that I think a lot of people have. But when we take those extra steps to invite people into why it’s important to us, why it’s something that we spent that time on, who we want to help, it makes a really big difference. And it can really open your eyes to how much people care about you and the things that you’re doing.
Ana: Yeah, I love, I love that.
Jennifer: Sometimes we’re actually doing this like live on the call because the professor that I’m working with is so anxious about sharing this particular publication or sharing with this particular audience that it feels uncomfortable for them.
One time we were sharing a client’s new book. Their book had come out years before, but it was being released as paperback. And she was like, ‘No one is going to care about this book from 2012. This is so old.’
But when we did it together, she had such a response, not just from people who had read the book the first time, but people who were excited to share it with their students, excited to share it with other people, people who said and felt like it was relevant today. That’s the kind of engagement we can invite when we’re more open about what we do and why we care about it. Even if it’s years after the fact, it can still help people. And because of that you still have an opportunity to share it.
Ana: Whoa, this was so nice, Jennifer, because actually I want to share with all of you also that one of my biggest things was like I thought that we could never share anything again.
Jennifer: Yeah, right. So many people feel that way.
Ana: Like, I already did the post about this paper, I cannot talk about it. Yeah, never again. Right? And then indeed that’s not the game of social media. The game is that first, like for I have here the data for, for Twitter, only 5% of your followers are going to see that post, not to start. So yes, keep sharing even the same post.
But then what Jennifer said, all these ideas like before, before when you see me, right when it’s published, I always say when it’s online first, when it’s the final version. So out of one paper you can write different 10 different posts.
Jennifer: Oh at least. Not saying you have to. If you just like the one post, that’s fine. Try to include your why, like why this is important to me, why I want to help people.
But if you are open to posting more, I want you to know that there are many natural ways to do that. In fact, some, one of the exercises that I’ve done with professors is we take a larger piece of content, maybe it’s their article or a book or like a talk something, something that is quite long and figuring out all the ways we can take this one long piece and break it into different social media posts.
And before we do that, before we do this, like sharing, like lots of sharing things, that’s like a lot of time, right? We really think about who we want to help with that. So for instance, if your scientific paper is aimed at helping other researchers in a particular field, maybe all of your focus is reaching those researchers at different times of day so that someone who’s over in Europe and someone who’s in Australia and someone who’s in South America can see it has the possibility to see it. So just posting that same tweet three times at different times of day might make it easier for a variety of people globally to be able to see it.
Now thinking about the who and how we want to help them is what motivates us to then do the work of sharing it. And if you don’t have a good answer to that who and how it’s going to help them or me, it’s probably not going to be worth the time. And that’s okay.
It’s okay when things aren’t worth the time because that’s helping us better focus on other things. It’s helping us better prioritize. So before you start writing things just to write them, think about you know, who you want to talk with and how you want to help them because that’s, that’s going to help you feel like it’s a good use of your time.
Ana: Yes, that’s good. And then still something that helped me was batching. So although indeed it might take time, but for me it was also that moment of saying, okay, now the paper is coming out, let me write four or five posts thinking yeah, for different purposes and then scheduling. And then you have pause for a couple of months. You don’t need to worry about that anymore, eh. And the same, eh. And I love also the perspective again that Jennifer is giving us about the people.
Talking with some of our students, they were telling me, ‘I hate to talk about my own research but they were saying, okay, what about celebrating the people in your team?’ And then their face was like, ‘yeah, that’s fun.’ So they were very excited to, yes, make posts then about their students either like presenting in a conference or a paper of their student or whatever the student did and that motivated them to do this type of post.
So that’s also something that if some of you struggle to talk about your own work, you could start getting this practice talking about your students in your team, your favorite colleagues, why not, and other people that is not you.
Can you share your struggles and challenges on social media?
Ana: And thinking about that, there is a very nice question from S- now. “So what about sharing about challenges? I do like those posts that are very real and natural, but I be hesitant myself to share those like perfection is kicking in, right now.”
What about sharing about challenges, like personal challenges, that we go through?
Jennifer: Ooh, personal challenges really engage people. It really can actually shift someone else’s mindset or perspective and help them with what they’re going through too. So I love when people are open about posting their struggles or a problem that they’re having.
It’s great if you invite your network to get involved with that. If you find that you want support from people beyond your institution or your colleagues, you can ask social media for support. There’s also ways to ask for support anonymously, depending on what your situation is, there may be another account that can post it for you. I love that there are ways to be more open about your struggles.
I did an interview on The Social Academic on my podcast with Dr. Monica Cox, where she talked about her workplace struggles on social media and how actually posting things helped protect her in legal issues with the university. It actually made a big difference that she had posted these things and shared them in something that was admissible in court. I don’t think that that is a likelihood for everyone, but I do want people to know that posting about your struggles for whatever reason, may be beneficial for you. But it also may be beneficial for other people.
Ana: Yes, thanks for sharing. And here of course, it depends the style, your style, what you want to share, what you don’t want to share. Sometimes you might feel also more comfortable to share that struggle once you have overcome. Sometimes we say we don’t speak from the books anymore.
Jennifer: That’s true.
Ana: So that’s something that maybe some of you feel better or, I love personally, this is part of storytelling, right? The, the problem. And, and seeing, seeing you overcoming this problem. For example, when you, when we are talking about publications, if you tell us also something that was hard for that paper, right? Because we have this bias, bias image of paper finish everything successful while there is behind all those struggles that we all go through. So if you share something about that, that’s also a great way of, of connecting.
We are coming to the end. So I just wanted to show quickly. So Jennifer, I know you love examples and I wanted to show you also some examples of the websites that Jennifer has done. Let me see.
I pulled examples from two early career researchers. You’re going to see three websites. One is a personal website, one is a research lab website from the same person. And then another one is a personal website. So I hope that you find them hopeful, inspirational, and you get some ideas from them.
You do not need to work with me to have your own website. You can definitely make it yourself. And if not, you can hire support locally. You don’t have to work with me (but you can if you want my support). So there’s many ways to create your website and I would love if you shared it with me, if you have one, or if you’re thinking about creating one when it’s live, please email me. I always get excited when people have created websites.
Ana: Oh, this is so nice, Jennifer. Thanks for sharing. Let me drop them then here. And as I have a look, I have a look at them indeed. And we have at least one example of, of something that can be sensitive topic, eh? So you can have a look there also for inspiration.
Jennifer: They may be both sensitive topics to be honest ’cause one is sexual health including transgender people, and the other one is juvenile weapons and gun violence.
Ana: Oh, okay. So actually that the two you mentioned. This is amazing. So good. We are going to close trying to stay on time. I want to thank Jennifer for this super interesting talk. I hope all of you enjoyed. And if you have questions, send them over to me, to Jennifer also on social media. You can please all follow her, interact.
Jennifer: Oh yeah! Let’s get in touch.
Ana: Yes. And I’m going to send the replay tomorrow. We’ll send a replay of this talk in an email and also the links so you can also learn more about Jennifer.
And please, if you have the budget and you want help with this, here you have an amazing person to hire because it’s something important and something that more and more we are giving more attention of also ways of, there is so much time and effort and energy going into your research.
And I always say having this only presence, yes, it takes work, but it can boost that many times. And, and the hard work that you have done is a pity when we just give all that power to the journals to let know about your papers, right?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Ana: That’s it. When you can also boost all that, all that visibility.
Can I use research or professional development funding for my online presence?
Jennifer: Whether you work with me or not, you don’t have to always pay for this out of pocket.
Universities are becoming more and more open to the idea of funding this kind of professional development for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, professors, other people who work at universities. So I want you to know that there are options that you can explore on campus or through your funders who may be able to support your work on your website or social media.
Ana: Yes, totally. And linking to that, I also work with a lot of people who are grant writing grant proposals. And I, this is also where we basically speak about how the importance of having a, a personal website. Scientists, these people, they don’t have yet a website.
Through that process, they use part of that money to build that website and boost that, that online presence. Because yeah, when you want, especially when you want to go to big funding and big, big funding calls, having a website, it can be quite helpful.
Jennifer: Yeah, funders love when you have an online presence ’cause it means you’re more likely to share the research that you’re doing, that they’re funding and helping the people that, that research ultimately supports. So they are very excited if you have a stronger online presence, whether it’s your LinkedIn or your website, they’re really happy.
Ana: Yes. So totally a moment for you also to, to work on this. Thank you! Thank you so much. Thank you to all of you here. Also those who stay till the end.
Jennifer: Thank you! So nice to meet you all.
Ana: So good. Stay in touch and see you all very soon. Bye bye.
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