Social Media; Meeting students in their world.
Over the past several years one of the biggest changes that I have seen in working with college age students has been the way we communicate with them. Many things have changed but I think that one of the most influential changes in how we communicate with our students is; their world.
We all know that communication is key is so many relationships. Communication is essential and can be displayed differently in each type of relationship. For instance, boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, customer/ client, teacher/ student and for us, advisor to students. In each of these relationships there is one common dominator which is meeting the partner where they are at. It does not matter how much good information that we have or how important our message is, if we are not communicating properly then the relationship is going to suffer. If we are not meeting them where they are the relationship is not likely to thrive and be the best it can be.
I related this to relationships that we may have with students that we work with. If we are not properly communicating with them and meeting them where they are, then our relationship with our students is going to suffer.
In the past decade we have seen the birth of facebook, twitter, YouTube, instagram, pinterest, iphonegram, tumblr and we know that all students are at least using some form of social media regardless of their age.
I think that email is still a great way to communicate to our students and our student have to be held accountable for checking nteir email and reading information that is sent to them. I also believe that it’s important to not only communicate that way. I believe that it’s important to target the student population that we work with, find out what avenue of social media that are using the most and always learn to communicate with our students in their word as well.
I think that if we do that we have more of a change of connecting...