Tuesday 28 May 2013

Social media – more than just a quick fix

I recently attended a social media course organised by the Higher Education Academy.
The course gave a really useful overview of the main social media platforms, as well as providing some more general guidance on how to build your business case and measure impact. Below are a few key reflections from the course. I hope you find them useful!



Building your business case and measuring impact
Social media activities should not be carried out on the assumption that they add value. There should be a proper business case for everything you do, informed by user feedback wherever possible. You could even consider doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.
Key questions to ask yourself include:

Who is your audience?
Are you meeting their expectations?
Are they engaging with your chosen social media platforms?
Are the platforms utilised fit for purpose?
What if any evaluation is taking place?

Twitter
Think about your audience when you tweet
Be interesting and engaging
Be timely/tweet in real-time
Tweet frequently (and don’t just re-tweet)
Typing ‘re-tweet’ works better than ‘RT’

General
Think about the accessibility of social media platforms and applications. Check out the Web Accessibility Initiative for details of what makes an accessible website (http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php).

Facebook and Google+ are all about creating a sense of community and engaging students outside of the classroom.

Check out Google Apps (including Apps for Education) – there is a lot of functionality available for free.

Friday 17 May 2013

ScHARR Snack Size - Jenny Freeman - Memorable Presentations - Thursday 23 May - 12.30 - Eric Wilkes Room


Latest Research Funding Update - Projects and Programmes (May 2013)



Photo by monkeyatlarge

Previous editions of the update can be viewed here

Posted by Kath

If its Friday it must be cookies....

                                       
         
 

So it's Friday here at ScHARR towers and I'm celebrating 10 whole years working with the incredible IR gang. In recognition of this most momentous of occasions I baked some 'mystery cookies' following a recipe by a famous New York bakery. The 'mystery' element concerns one of the ingredients which is unorthodox to say the least, a Keyser Soze amid the Usual Suspects if you will. When eating the cookies my colleagues described them as 'awesome' and 'amazing'. Really, that's what they said-verbatim, I'm not showing off, honest. I won't reveal the mystery ingredient here, but let's just say if it was a song it would be the 'one of these kids is doin' his own thing' tune from Sesame Street. It's pretty out there. 

Pray to whichever god you worship that you get to eat at least one such cookie in your lifetime. 

Happy Friday y'all.

Angie 

Thursday 16 May 2013

International Year of Statistics



Did you know that 2013 is the International Year of Statistics? To find out more go to the official website: http://www.statistics2013.org/

To celebrate, Wiley is providing free access to some of its resources, including three months of free access to the January to June 2011 issues of all Wiley Statistics journals. To find out more visit the Wiley website