Archive for July, 2009

Duke University has done it again.

With “Office Hours,” a new series in partnership with Ustream launched today at noon ET, the institution has found another great way to showcase the expertise of its faculty.

The idea – put a professor in front of the camera for an informal Q&A with the university community and Ustream viewers – looked interesting on paper (well, I mean on the web) when I saw the announcement yesterday on Duke Today.

Ariely to Launch ‘Online Office Hours’ Series Friday at Noon

That’s why I was in front of my screen today at noon ET to see if its implementation could meet my expectations.

It did.

Duke University has again written a page of higher ed web history (can’t you see I really liked what I experienced? I bet you can).

Accessible right from the Ustream homepage, the 45-minute (?) long office hour with Professor Ariely gathered more than 150 viewers. Questions could be asked via email, on a dedicated Facebook page – broadcasting live the stream – as well as on Twitter.

I asked the first question via Twitter and it was promptly answered by Professor Ariely (around 9:00 in the recording).

Twitter question

You cannot imagine (well, you probably can, but I’m emphatic today) how excited I was to be able to ask a question – while at lunch – to a Duke professor and get the answer in a matter of minutes.

Just great.

Watch the recording – made available a few minutes after the end of the event- and I’m sure you will agree (if you don’t, please tell me why. That’s why comments are for)

Please note that the recording takes 39 seconds to start – so be patient if you watch it from the video player below.

Who needs television when you can actually interact with experts at this level?
Who needs television when you can actually demonstrate the expertise of your faculty to the world?

So, I’m pretty sure it won’t be long before other institutions follow in Duke’s footsteps and we see more of these “Office Hours” with faculty all around the country (world, should I say).

What do YOU think?

Lately, the higher ed community has been taken by the Twitter storm. I’ve heard and read a lot about the importance to add Twitter to the communication mix with students, alums and other target audiences.

While I’m a big fan and a daily user of Twitter (you can follow me @karinejoly), I’m still not sold on the rapidly spreading idea that it should be a priority to set up a “Twitter plan” for an institution. If your institution has done everything else, I guess it does make sense to go for the extra credit. However, if your website is a thing of the past, your email marketing strategy nonexistent or your facebook page never updated, Twitter can probably wait a little bit. The only exception would probably be media relations as I’ve noticed that more and more journalists have fallen in love with the tool, so in this specific case, it makes sense to make “getting up to speed with Twitter” a priority.

But, I digress. So, why start this post about online videos with Twitter?

Because the good folks at the Pew Internet and American Life project have just released some new fresh data from a survey done in April 2009 confirming what many probably know:

A majority (62%) of American adult internet users watch videos online while only 11% use Twitter.

The share of online adults who watch videos on video-sharing sites has nearly doubled since 2006. | Pew Internet & American Life Project

While many of these online video aficionados are actually watching TV shows, there’s still an important audience out there that could stumble upon (or search for) the videos produced at your institution.

So, how do your videos stack up with the rest?

You can find out by having a quick look at the Youtube EDU launched last March – Want to get your videos listed there? Read my previous post to find out how to be added.

And, if you want to improve the overall quality of your production while making sure you comply with the law when it comes to accessibility of web content, you should have a look at this upcoming 3-webinar series I put together for September: Online Videos 360: How to Create Better, Viral, and ADA-Compliant Web Videos

Upcoming Webinars: Higher Ed Experts

You can find out more about the series at www.higheredexperts.com/onlinevideos360

I love conferences.

Unfortunately, I can’t go to all of them – especially when they take place in Europe. So do most of you, I bet.

That’s why I really enjoyed watching earlier this morning the live stream of the keynote given by Professor Derek Law (University of Strathclyde) at the IWMW 2009 conference held until July 30 at the University of Essex in the UK: Headlights on Dark Roads

IWMW is THE web conference in the UK.

The organizers have done a great job at integrating social media and video streaming to offer a great experience to remote attendees. All the plenary talks are offered live from the website of the University of Essex. You can even ask a question – as I did this morning – by tweeting it to @briankelly

Twitter / karinejoly: Question: Clay Shirky states that we are not faced with information overload but with filter failure. How can we fix the filters? #iwmw2009

Starting tomorrow (July 29) at 9AM ET, Higher Ed Experts will also offer the FREE webinar versions of 2 sessions presented at this conference that were pre-recorded a couple of weeks ago:

Just check out www.higheredexperts.com/iwmw2009 to find out how to access these recordings.

IWMW 2009 Webinar Series: Higher Ed Experts

My fifth UB column for 2009 is now available in the July/August issue as well as online: “The ABCs of Mobile Marketing: Words to know in exploring this new frontier in higher education marketing”

The ABCs of Mobile Marketing

I added a QR code to the column, but it got resized at printing time – which made it impossible to be properly decoded (a real shortcoming of the technology, BTW) by the QR code reader on my iTouch . This is why I’m adding it below if you want to test the technology.

The QR code above points to the page featuring online resources mentioned in this column about mobile technology, a web page that you can also find by visiting www.higheredexperts.com/mobile.

If you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

As reported on the Chronicle’s blog, Campus Wired, the giant of online course management system, Blackboard, has announced yesterday at its user conference BBWorld its acquisition of the start-up Terriblyclever Design LLC specialized in mobile application development and behind the MobilEdu suite.

Blackboard paid about $4 million for this small company started by students from Standford.

In May this year, while I was working on my upcoming column about mobile marketing for University Business, I had the opportunity to ask a few questions to one of the co-founders of Terriblyclever Design, Kayvon Beykpour.

1) Before launching your business, you were students. In that context, can you explain why you decided to design and develop an iPhone application targeted to college students?

As Computer Science students at Stanford, who were particularly interested in technology, we had the opportunity of being both consumers and producers of the “newest” and “coolest” technologies on campus. “Mobile” is a perfect example. We all loved the iPhone. We thought it represented the beginning of an incredibly powerful new medium and development environment– one that presented many more opportunities for interesting developments than other mobile platforms. We also were fascinated by how people were and could be using mobile devices. We were in the perfect environment to notice such things. We’d walk around campus and see people using their iPhones in different environments– we ourselves would discover new ways that the iPhone was useful and ask ourselves “how could this great device be used for other things– other things we do on a day-to-day basis”. Some of the common answers to these questions were based our tasks that every student on campus needs to do, like searching the campus map or searching the directory or checking their class schedule. That’s what led us to ultimately create a utility that serves a university audience– both students and faculty.

2) Can MobilEdu work on other mobile devices (Blackberry, Google Phone, etc.)?

Currently, MobilEdu operates on a few different formats:
- A native iPhone application
- An XHTML website for newer phones like Blackberrys and any other web-enabled device with a browser
- A WAP website for older phones (say old Nokia’s or old Blackberrys) with the existing browser on those devices.
- We are constantly observing new developments wth native platforms (like the native blackberry platform, android, etc.) and plan to support these platforms in the future.

3) As you try to market your application suite, do you think that higher ed institutions are ready to cater to the needs of their “mobile” students?

I think Universities are realizing more and more than addressing the “mobile” need is a significant and important step. MobilEdu represents a very sensible starting point for Universities since it’s fundamental purpose is to empower those with mobile devices, which is why we’ve had great reception among our initial customer base.