Lisa Cameron-Norfleet, Program Manager for the Office of Web Communications at Cornell University, presented this Sunday afternoon a session at the EduWeb Conference in Baltimore titled “Life on the Hill: The True Story of Student Blogging at Cornell.â€
Lacey Updegraff, online content manager for Auburn University’s Office of Communications and Marketing, is one of the six very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Lacey’s first scheduled post.
Lisa began by doing a quick poll of how many attendees university’s had student blogs and how many of them were censored. I was not surprised to find that out of the maybe 25% of the room who said they had student blogs, maybe 2 said that they were not censored.
The goals of creating these blogs were to share the Cornell story, student voice on cornell.edu, join the blogosphere, supplement admissions office (unofficially) and do so authentically (that last bit is most important). The Cornell blogging site uses WordPress.
They decided to choose 6 students and did so from campus tour guides and a campus service group. One of Lisa’s biggest points was to look for 3 things: passion, talent and enthusiasm.
You should choose your bloggers wisely – search for passion, train for writing.
She made a very good final point that it is ok to trust students, they get it. Most universities are afraid of on-line blogging for this very reason. They are afraid of bad PR. Cornell does not monitor the blogs, but their biggest success that has come out of this is that the students now self-moderate. They know what to write about now and what not to. Not because someone has disciplined them, but because they “get it”.
Her main talking points were:
Step 1: Convince the Senior Administration that you are not crazy (Give them the opportunity to comment, but you don’t necessarily ask for permission)
Step 2: Find some bloggers
Step 3: Teach them
–Use straight talk. This includes 1 (really 2 rules): If you wouldn’t say it in front of your mother, do not say it on your blog and honest opinions are welcome, so long as they are expressed respectfully (talk about how bad the beans in the cafeteria are — just don’t talk about the chef).
Lisa did talk a little bit about compensation, but she did express that the way Cornell is doing it is not ideal.
They began by giving the bloggers a $50 gift card every month for writing 2 entries of substance per week (1 during finals and breaks). Their accountants didn’t like that student bloggers were getting “paid,” but not being taxed. The result was that they had to create student jobs and put them on payroll (this part is not ideal).
If you are considering doing this with your university’s site, here are some final words of advice from Lisa:
1. Have your payroll figured out
2. Choose your bloggers wisely
3. It’s ok to trust the students, they get it
4. Weather the storm of bad PR (don’t give them the power)
5. If your Senior Administration balks, tell them, “Cornell’s doing it!”