College v2 comments on one college’s creative use of eBay to auction off a year of tuition, room and board. “Judging by the way bidding is going, it probably won’t end up being that much of a discount.” Although it is an interesting way to try to build buzz.
Month: February 2007
Going virtual and ‘Second Life’ campuses
The virtual university was high on the agenda at Sun Microsystem’s three-day Worldwide Education and Research Conference, held earlier this week in San Francisco. (I would have said “the university in cyberspace” rather than “virtual university,” had I not recently read erelevant’s recent lamentations about the death of the cyberspace concept and agreed with many of his points). The ZDNet report on the conference notes that:
Virtual worlds are already beginning to change higher education, according to several educators.
For example, more than 70 universities have built island campuses in Second Life, according to Stuart Sim, CTO and chief architect of Moodlerooms, which builds structures in virtual worlds and offers course management software. Sim said his company is currently developing tools to help universities better manage students and courses delivered in Second Life. That way, universities can have an application to control adding or removing a student avatar to the island campus, he said. The project is dubbed Sloodle.com.
Gerri Sinclair, executive director of the master’s degree program for digital media at the Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver, Canada, said her group is building a Second Life virtual campus alongside its physical one. “Our students are digital natives, and they don’t want to be reached in traditional ways. So we’re creating a virtual campus as we’re building our real campus,” Sinclair said.
Jane Kagon, director of UCLA’s Extension Department of Entertainment Studies and Performing Arts, also announced during the conference that the university has opened a Second Life island for its digital-film students.
“It’s an interesting time” to be part of gaming, noted Chris Melissinos, Sun’s chief gaming officer. “There’s an opportunity to grab this technology and new modes of communication and use them for a greater purpose.”
It’s starting to sound like universities are going to need to get a presence in Second Life. Which frightens some of us who are struggling to even get a first life.
Via Wired Campus (link).
In other news: Anna Nicole Smith is still dead
Yeah, I know this is supposed to be a blog about marketing higher education. But sometimes I just can’t help myself and I have to veer off topic just a bit. Today’s post is a case in point.
In a post on Friday about the shame of American TV journalism, Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine points to a ThinkProgress video compilation of “some of the many, many lowlights” of how network and cable news networks covered the death of Anna Nicole Smith compared to coverage of other important stories, such as the war in Iraq.
The death of Anna Nicole Smith yesterday was a feeding frenzy for the national media, and coverage of the war was drowned out: NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3 minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522% more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708% more references to Anna Nicole than Iraq.
Watch it and weep. Or let the numbers tell the story:
References to Anna Nicole and Iraq on Cable Networks After 3PM ET:
NETWORK ANNA NICOLE IRAQ CNN 141 27 FOX NEWS 112 33 MSNBC 170 24
Time Of Segments Devoted to Anna Nicole and Iraq on Broadcast Networks:
NETWORK ANNA NICOLE IRAQ NBC 3:13 0:14 CBS 2:00 2:17 ABC 2:21 2:58
Online experts guides
In years past, a printed “experts guide” for reporters, editors and news directors was an indispensable tool for media relations folks. These days, an online experts guide is just as important. The SimpsonScarborough blog (my latest find in the world of edublogs) recently discussed the importance of online experts guides and shared some examples of online guides. Each of the four samples SS points to “are arranged quite differently, but each hits the mark in being simple, effective and near invaluable.”
Full disclosure: UMR recently retained SimpsonScarborough to conduct market research regarding our proposed name change.