Skip ahead several years to the present and Facebook, along with other social networking sites, has become as much a part of the college experience as Greek rush weeks and formative dorm room experiences. Everybody knows this. Colleges and universities have integrated social networking into nearly ever aspect of coed life that students practically need to be wired into at least a couple of these sites in order to keep up with class and other campus events.

Justin Marquis, with OnlineUniversities.com, put together an infographic that shows, for better and worse, how social media has affected higher education. Take a look and feel free to comment below on how you feel social media has changed college life. For one, I’ll say this: the Facebook college experience is no longer limited to tagging incriminating photos of doing keg stands at last Friday’s field party.

Via: Online Universities Blog

That’s a bit too broad of a statement, but as this handy infographic shows, the use of Facebook in the classroom doesn’t harm grades that much. In fact, a high school GPA better predicts the GPA of college students than Facebook use does.

For a bit more in-depth study, they found that sharing links and checking up on friends had a positive relationship with grades. The only thing that had a negative relationship with grades was making status updates.

As a final coup de grâce to the Facebook is bad for students argument, there was no strong link between using Facebook and the amount of time students spent studying.

I can personally confirm that Facebook never impacted the amount of time that I studied. I had video games for that.

Via: OnlineEducation.net

The decision to include college campuses as part of the Street View is well-timed as it’s getting close to that time of year when high school seniors will begin finalizing their decisions on where to – if they must – attend college this coming fall. As much as visits to universities by prospective students is one of the mainstays of any campus landscape (I always delighted in seeing doe-eyed teenagers herded together so as to protect them from the coed wildlife), Google seems to think it’s a burden that could be easily alleviated if you could tour campuses from the comfort of your sofa. From today’s blog post:

Whether you’re a current student trying to familiarize yourself with campus, an applicant assessing your options or an alumnus feeling nostalgic, the Street View feature in Google Maps can be your tour guide without the backward walking. We recently added imagery of more university campuses to the existing special collections already available via Street View through our Partner Program.

One bonus for you future coeds: it’ll be a lot harder for your parents to embarrass you on campus tours if you’re doing it via Google Street View. FYI.

Google has included universities from around the world in their campus-touring Street View such as Sunderland University (Great Britain), Waseda University (Japan), McMaster University (Canada), Stanford University (U.S.), and Uniwersitet Warszawski (Poland). The full list is available here. Additionally, anyone interesting in virtual-touring a campus can visit the Street View gallery of university campuses. Since you’re here, though, why not go ahead and take a look-see around Dartmouth College:

View Larger Map

No word yet on how long it’ll be until you can use Google Maps to attend your class in real-time. Sorry, kids.

To help calculate the lifetime of unpayable debt students can look forward to, the U.S. Department of Education implemented a new policy for all college and universities to include a “net price calculator” on their websites so prospective students can get an idea of how many lifetimes they’ll spend paying off their debt loans. Perhaps realizing that this wasn’t quite enough to really get that message to sink in, the Department of Ed has created a challenge for high school and college students to help spread the word about how terribly expensive college is.

Oddly named the “College Net Price Calculator Student Video Challenge” (seriously, guys, you couldn’t name it in such a way that it’d have a cute acronymic name?), the contest is an effort to use students’ first-hand misery to help spread the word about just how costly it is to go to college these days. From the contest’s website:

Net price provides very important consumer information to prospective students and their families, but few students and families know to ask colleges and universities about their net prices or to look for a net price calculator on an institution’s website. The Department of Education is announcing a prize challenge for the creation of a short (approximately 60-180 second) creative and informational video that tells viewers about what net price calculators are, why they are important, and where viewers will find them – both on college and university websites and also on the Department’s college search website, College Navigator (http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/).

Students have until January 31, 2012 submit their video that explains the deathly cost of enrolling in college. A panel of five independent judges will be selecting three winners, each of whom will be awarded a prize of $1,500. Wow, way to break the bank for kids, Department of Education. That sum wouldn’t even cover 6 hours of credit at my state-funded alma mater.

In all honesty, they should reconfigure the marketing of this video contest and just use it as a platform to discourage people from going to college. How is a bachelor’s degree even worth it anymore?

Or do you just walk by, unable to burden yourself with one more thing to do in your busy day?

According to some research by QR skeptic youth marketing agency Archrival, there is at least one important group of the population that’s failing to muster any excitement for QR codes.

They asked over 500 students across 24 different U.S. college campuses about the technology and found that although recognition of the codes was pretty high, interaction was just the opposite.

Students were shown a picture of a QR code and then asked questions like: Can you identify what this is? Do you know how to use it? How likely are you to engage with these in the future?

Here are just a few of our findings:

• 81% of students owned a smartphone
• 80% of students had previously seen a QR code
• 21% of students successfully scanned our QR code example.
• 75% of students said they are “Not Likely” to scan a QR code in the future.

Apparently, these college kids know all about QR codes and have the smartphones they need to interact with them, but really have no desire to investigate further when they encounter one.

It looks like one of the big problems is actually a lack of comprehensive understanding of the process. Some of the students thought that their smartphone camera in some way included a native QR code reader, and had no idea that a 3rd party app was necessary to read the code. Many just thought the whole thing took too long and abandoned the process before completion. Either way, that 75% figure of students who said that don’t plan to scan a QR code in the future is an interesting one to marketers and promoters.

QR codes can be used effectively for viral marketing – for instance when a team constructing an underground art show sticks QR stickers all over town, and scanning them leads directly to the show’s website. Still, even this interesting promotional concept requires curiosity from the public.

And of course QR codes have simple data storage purposes, which are very practical in daily life. Take for instance airlines that use them for electronic boarding passes. Some entering the work force have also taken to putting QR codes on their resumes, providing employers with a way to access more information. Hospitals are even using the codes to help women schedule mammograms.

But as far as college kids are concerned, Archrival has some advice for those wanting to use QR codes for marketing purposes: “Unless QR codes become easier, more nimble, and can provide content that engenders a more meaningful connection to the brand or product, students will continue to shower them with apathy.”

Check out the infographic below and let us know your feelings about QR code marketing and promotion in the comments.

[Lead Image courtesy Wikipedia]

“The more time you spend on Facebook, the less time you’re going to spend studying.”

I’m sure that a large majority of people would think that’s true – it’s rather intuitive. But according to a study by Lock Haven University professor Reynol Junco, that’s not the case at all.

It seems like every week some report comes out that definitively states that Facebook and other social media (but predominantly Facebook) is turning our children into idiots, drug addicts, anti-social jerks, homicidal maniacs – or all of the above. The collective hand-wringing over the modern age’s addiction to social media never fails to create a boogeyman for the ills of society.

Back in August, research was presented at an America Psychological Association that discussed how Facebook is affecting today’s youth. The study concluded that teens that use Facebook more often were likely to show narcissistic tendencies and signs of other psychological disorders like antisocial behavior and aggressive tendencies.

Another part of that study looked at the impact of Facebook use on learning and found that middle school, high school and college students that checked Facebook once during a study period achieved lower grades.

This new study by Dr. Junco seems to contradict those findings. His sample size was 1,839 students. Here is how he says his study is different from previous studies on the same subject:

This is the first one to : 1. Use a large sample, 2. Include better estimates of Facebook use (time spent on Facebook, number of times students checked Facebook, and frequency of engaging in Facebook activities), 3. Connect survey data to actual grades, and 4. Use high school GPA as a control variable in order to parse out the variance attributable to pre-existing differences in academic ability and to place other predictors in context.

What he found was that Facebook use did affect overall GPA, but so little as to be negligible. Every hour and a half increase in Facebook usage from the mean only decreased GPA by .12 points.

The study also found no link between time spent on Facebook and time spent studying. When a student spends more time checking their news feed, it looks like the time is coming out of some other activity, not their schoolwork.

The way grades were affected has to do with the type of Facebook activity in which the student is engaging. For instance, sharing links was related to a boost in GPA, while posting status updates was tied to a net GPA loss.

Also, Facebook use was an indicator of higher participation in extracurricular activities.

There’s no real way to make a definitive statement about how social media use will affect you or your kid individually, but this study suggests that Facebook is not creating a generation of idiots.

That doesn’t mean that it isn’t turning them into drunken stoners, though.

The bad thing about Facebook is that it’s a ridiculously easy way the advertise and spread the word about your events.

And events that aren’t set to private can wind up attracting more attention than the creator ever imagined. Numerous reports have emerged in the past couple of years about public events gaining thousands of confirmed attendees. Many of these event are shut down before they happen but some, like the birthday party of a German girl earlier this year, wind up getting out of hand.

It appears that the power of Facebook was at work again this weekend at a Colorado State University party got a tad out of control.

Police estimate that somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 people attended the annual back-to school party being held at an off-campus apartment complex. Over 3,000 guests were confirmed on the Facebook event page.

Videos have surfaced on YouTube of the party –

Although it looks like the majority of the students had a good time at the giant bash, police say that 10 people were hospitalized and four people were arrested as a result. apparently, some students suffered from alcohol poisoning while others were involved in fights.

“When I got in there it was total chaos,” said one student. “One woman was hit in the face with a bottle and she was gushing blood.”

The police said it was one of the biggest parties they had ever seen.

Although some students got out of hand, I’m sure many students at CSU see the party as a success. In one regard, I guess, Facebook helped them throw one hell of a party while it lasted. But you’ve gotta admit, 4,000 people is a little much, isn’t it?

The app called AdmissionSplash, asks users to create a list of colleges, enter their academic  and demographic information, and get results based on a proprietary formula. People can share the information with their friends or keep it private.

Splash Networks says it did accuracy tests with publicly available individual admissions information. With a sample of 75 students admitted to New York University, AdmissionSplash correctly predicted their acceptance 90.6 percent of the time.

Currently AdmissionSplash works for over 1,500 undergraduate schools. The app does not work for graduate school, but the company says it is working on a law school edition of the app and a med school app as well.

"One of the more interesting findings from the survey is the high percentage of faculty who use Twitter, even if they’re still experimenting with the best ways to incorporate it into their courses," says Mary Bart, content manager for Faculty Focus. "What also became quite apparent was how strongly Twitterers and non-Twitterers feel about the technology."

Participants were asked if they use Twitter, and depending upon how they responded, they were asked a unique set of follow-up questions. Here are some key findings from the survey:

- 21.9 percent of respondents say they are "familiar" or "very familiar" with Twitter.

- Of those who use Twitter, 21 percent say they "frequently" use it to collaborate with colleagues; 15.6 percent do so "occasionally."

- Of those who use Twitter, 7.2 percent "frequently" use it as a learning tool in the classroom; 9.4 percent do so "occasionally."

- 71.8 percent of current Twitterers expect their usage to increase this school year.

- 20.6 percent of current non-Twitter users say there is a "50/50 chance" they will use Twitter as a learning tool in the classroom in the next two years.

- 12.9 percent of respondents say they tried Twitter, but stopped using it because it took too much time, they did not find it valuable, or a combination of reasons.

It is worth noting that the majority (55.9%) of participants are actually professors or instructors, while about a fourth were academic leaders, such as department chairs and deans. 16% fell into the "other" category, which includes faculty development, academic advisement, instructional design, marketing, admissions, assessment, and library services.