In Search of the Holy Grail of Social Media Class Assignments #highered

As you might know if you are a regular reader of this blog, I designed and authored the capstone graduate online course of the MBA in Social Media at SNHU (which happens to be the 12th most innovative organizations in the world according to Fast Company, no wonder Seth Odell from Higher Ed Live and Karlyn Morrissette Borysenko work there).

So, when Erica Moss, social media outreach coordinator for Georgetown University’s online MSN degree program, pitched me a story about less-than-optimal social media class assignments, she got my attention.

Not because the activities I designed for the SNHU graduate course or for my Social Media Marketing for Higher Ed online course are terrible – students told me they are pretty good.

Erica got my attention because I know how hard it can be to design learning activities using the social media space while keeping things interesting and manageable for everybody.

That’s the reason I agreed to publish Erica’s guest post – with one condition though: she had to offer some suggestions to improve those social media assignments. Erica did a great job with this piece. So, make sure you share it with anybody teaching social media at your institution so they can offer their 2 cents on the topic as well. It’s all about conversations, no?

Social Media (Home)Work
By Erica Moss

There are some universities that are nimble and highly adaptable when it comes to tailoring curriculum to the changing needs of the modern-day student. Georgetown University offers a Philosophy and Star Trek class, Frostburg State University a Science of Harry Potter course, and at Stanford University, you can take a class on iPhone Application Programming.

But, of course, there are some that are not so agile.

Social media, for example, is something that almost everyone can agree has fundamentally changed the way people communicate. As a result, colleges and universities have been scrambling to update their course offerings in an effort to help educate students about these tools before sending them off into the “real world.”

The problem is, some of these professors, who are not at all familiar with the etiquette, applications and best practices related to these sites, are trying to “wing it,” so to speak. They’re adding social media to their classrooms as an after-thought because they feel like they should, or because of pressure from school officials.

And when you’re a student who’s even vaguely familiar with sites like Facebook and Twitter (and who isn’t?) it can be painful to watch your instructor wander aimlessly through a lesson on this topic — and then assign you a project based on that very lack of experience.

The following is an actual assignment from an MBA-level marketing course at a four-year, research university, shared with me by a friend of mine:

Twitter Assignment

Become familiar with Twitter as a business communication tool and register on its site.
1. Follow a company of your choice and observe the types of questions and responses that the company is fielding. Share your insights with your classmates.
2. Tweet about a question that you would be interested in having the company answer. Provide feedback to your classmates about whether it was answered in a timely manner and whether you found the answer provided to be satisfactory.
3. Experience a retweet of someone else’s comment and paste that into the conversation.
4. You may comment on your own and others’ experience with the social network.

Is this how we teach students about using social media in a business context? If so, we’re all in big trouble. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been using Twitter for a few years now, and I still don’t know what “experience a retweet” means. To me, this assignment feels like a box to check on a long to-do list, and not a real attempt to illustrate just how powerful social media has become in improving communication and a company’s bottom line. I rarely endorse reading about something rather than actually doing it, but in this example, the students in this class would benefit more from curling up with a case study about Zappos than seeing how quickly Company A will respond to a random question on Twitter.

Another friend of mine opted to take a social media course from a different four-year university, even though it wasn’t required, because she thought she could get a leg up on some of her peers. The course was taught in a regular classroom with no computer access, though students did have the option to rent iPads from the bookstore for a $100 fee. There was no real-world application of strategies or tactics or creating content. There were no case studies, just lectures and essays. “Overall, I think the university saw a need and tried to write the curriculum for the course too quickly,” she said. “It was a jumbled mess.”

Another failed attempt at integrating social media into higher education. Why not give the students something they can really sink their teeth into?

As the professor, reach out to a local small business. Maybe a flower shop. Maybe a mom-and-pop diner. Tell them you’d like to offer social media services to them for free, and help them drum up some more business over the course of semester. They’ll likely be grateful for the free publicity, and if they’re not, move onto the next one.

If they don’t already have a Twitter account, set one up for them. Ask the students to help. Pick a name that’s simple and easy-to-remember. Don’t forget to fill in all profile information, including the business’ website (if they have one) and a succinct, 2-3 sentence description of the services or products they offer. Make it fun and conversational.

Then, hold a brainstorming session in which the students help craft a social media strategy around the Twitter account. What type of message or campaign makes sense for this particular brand? Should you be tweeting funny quotes? Should you be talking about events that are happening locally? Should you be offering a special promotion to your followers (this would, of course, need to be cleared with the business owner). Have your students decide what the overall message should be.

Also, consider what the chain of command will be. If an unsatisfied customer tweets about his or her poor experience, who should be notified? Will the customer receive a template response and then a follow-up after you’ve contacted the business owner? Pin down a policy for dealing with both positive and negative feedback.

Have the students decide in advance what success looks like over the next 14 weeks. Do we want to increase traffic to the business’ site by 10%? Do we want to grow Twitter followers by 50%? Will we measure it by the number of @replies we receive, and attribute that to greater brand awareness? Pick something tangible you can point to at the end of your campaign.

Once a strategy has been agreed upon, develop a content calendar that maps out the topics and offers you plan to promote. You don’t have to map out every word; in fact, it’s best to leave some room for spontaneous or timely tweets. Make the document available to the entire class via Google Documents, and hold a different student accountable for posting on each day, depending on the frequency of the posts. Also, consider what time of day they’ll be posted; if you’ve agreed on two a day, it’s best to post one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Use a little bit of class time to monitor @replies and direct messages. The types of responses given should align with the “voice” you’ve developed in your original strategy, whether that’s a buttoned-up or more laid-back tone. Discuss which tweets elicited a response and which didn’t. Should you update your content calendar accordingly?

If the business owner is up for it, have the students develop some collateral to advertise the Twitter account in store. (You can’t build followers if you don’t point them to your page, right?) Make sure it’s professional, aligns with the brand and has a simple call-to-action: “Follow us on Twitter.”

At the end of the course, the students should write a reflection paper based on their observations throughout the experiment. It should be written as if they are speaking to the business owner(s), and it’s a great idea to actually share these essays with them after they’re completed. The students should discuss what they learned about the business’ customers, what worked and what didn’t, and any successes and challenges they experienced. What would they do differently next time? What should be done in the future?

This isn’t a perfect assignment, by any means. Having a group of students take ownership over a business’ Twitter account might be a scary proposition for some people. However, the pay-off for those willing to go for it can be huge. And it’s a great way for students to craft and hone a social media strategy for a living, breathing company. Certainly, more hands-on than “experiencing a retweet.”

Let’s stop treating social media like a shiny new toy and really start to identify it as a necessary tool in every company’s marketing or communications plan. I understand the challenges in higher education when you try to change the course of the ship, but we owe it to these soon-to-be young professionals to do a better job of preparing them for the impact that these tools will have on their careers.

Erica Moss works as the social media outreach coordinator for Georgetown University’s online MSN degree program, which has one of the nation’s leading nurse practitioner programs. She also loves exploring New York City, photography and meeting new people.