If I was hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the college, I would use social media to create groups. Social media groups can help students connect with the right audience. For example, you can have separate Facebook groups to cater to smaller audiences within the Baruch community such as alumni groups, club groups, sports groups, groups for parents of students, and more. These groups can help students find a sense of community with other students who share the same interest. This allows students to conform to a college environment more easily as I personally know it takes some time to get used to the atmosphere of college. Groups can be a good place to hold discussions, share announcements and interact with community members.
Another method of using new media to improve Baruch is to develop open-source textbooks. "Open source texts - whether on paper or in a digital format - are compiled using copyright-free materials from a wide variety of sources and can be edited and updated immediately." (Agardy) Pursuing such a method of new media allows a community such as Baruch to come together and compile a custom-made text. This is a lot better in the long run because the other option would be to purchase traditional textbooks that may get outdated in a few years, which would force the school to purchase textbooks again. These traditional textbooks are expensive, but on the other hand, open source texts are free. Although this may take some time and money at first, in the long run, this would definitely be an intelligent choice.
From reading your post and other students' blogs it seems that Baruch should develop an open-source textbooks. This would help a lot of struggling students get the material they need to succeed in their academic studies.
ReplyDeleteThis is a particularly interesting response for me because I was actually the Social Media Lead for Baruch College Admissions. I was tasked with getting the ball rolling on all of our new social media accounts. My first initiative was doing precisely as you recommended: creating “Class of 201x” groups to help foster an amicable camaraderie. It worked and utilizing Facebook and Instagram for these purposes of connecting with the younger audience allowed them to develop a better relationship with each other and familiarize themselves with college life.
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