This blog post is based on my presentation at the Georgetown Innovation Summit which begins at 2:53:00. 

To most people, hacking represents something negative. But I prefer to think of it as designing a workaround to achieve a desired result. By paying attention to these hacks, Higher Ed can gain all sorts of inisights to improve the overall student experience.

How Facebook learns from user hacking

In 2004, Facebook was growing, fast. Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the team needed to decide what feature to build next. They had to consider not only the time it would take to build the feature, but also the additional support costs.

One of the features being considered was the ability to upload photos besides your profile photo. Yes, there was actually a time when you could not upload your photo album to Facebook and tag all of your friends. It seems obvious to us now, however at the time it was not quite as clear that this was a feature that users wanted.

When the Facebook team looked at how people were using the site, they noticed users were changing their profile photo multiple times each day. Users wanted to show off their new photos and they came up with this 'hack' as a way to achieve their goal. 

In 2003 B.F. (before Facebook), students would receive the name, email and phone number of their assigned roommate and give them a call. It never occurred to them to look that person up online because there was nowhere to look.

By 2005 A.F., more than 85% of college students were on Facebook; each wanting to know everything they could about their new roommate to be sure that the next year of their life would not be spent in agony (desired result). The hack that students across the country constructed was to research their roommate on Facebook and if they did not like what they saw, call into the housing office and ask for a new roommate.

I have spoken with hundreds of people who work in on-campus housing and 99.9% of them experience some level of Facebook related roommate calls. The only department that did not experience them simply decided to withhold the names of assigned roommates until the students meet on the first day of classes.

So there is the hack. Now, how do you fix the process by incorporating the hack? Our clients achieve this through RoomSync because we empower students to search for roommates on Facebook. They are given access to all potential roommates before the assignments are made. The result? Users who want to be in control of the matching process are happy and housing departments do not receive any calls about Facebook.

How are students hacking your processes? Are they hacking their room like this Berkeley freshman? Try re-examining and thinking of ways to incorporate these hacks to improve the overall student experience. Do you have examples of hacks in Higher Ed? Leave a comment below!

Here at RoomSync, we take education and student success seriously. Below is a glimpse into the world of educational oppression and what higher ed institutions in the US, including two of our own clients, are doing about it.

Imagine if you were teaching a class and suddenly the police barged in and took you to jail. That is what a religious minority in Iran has to be careful of.

A video called Education Under Fire (EUF) tells the story of Baha’i youth in Iran who are banned from college and arrested just because of their religious beliefs. The Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was created to give those students a chance for a better future.

The showing of the video is slowly spreading to colleges all around the United States. It has already been shown at Columbia, M.I.T., University of Oregon, Boston University, Harvard and Wheelock College. I am lucky enough to be involved in the showing at the University of Florida this semester, and one of my close friends is also organizing a showing at Temple University.

When I heard about this video last semester, I was amazed at all the talk this video started. If these well-known colleges in the US are supporting it, then it must be a big deal and having this type of involvement from influential institutions means a greater chance for positive change. Harvard already announced that it will now accept credit from the BIHE, which is a huge step forward.

These innocent youth and professors are in need of support from everyone. You can help by signing the "Drive to 25" petition to Iranian officials to end persecution of the youth and BIHE. To take action and learn more, visit www.educationunderfire.com.

Thank you guys for helping out!

-Niaz

I sat in on an excellent session this week at #NASPAtech put on by Ed Cabellon of Bridgewater State University entitled "social media strategy and planning". The focus of the session was obvious from the title, but what was not obvious is how Ed would teach the session.  

Rather than doing the normal slides highlighting keys to social media strategizing, he took a collaborative approach. Ed engaged audience members by enlisting all of us to build a social media strategy for our joint institution. On every slide, he led a guided discussion where we had to think critically about the key components of our strategy. What were our goals? What should our social media voice be? Should we use ;) or just stick with basic smiley faces? All this discussion made for a more engaged audience and, ultimately, more learning by the attendees, including myself.

Another example of this approach to education is at the University of Florida, where I graduated with my Masters in Entrepreneurship. I had been circling around the idea of roommate matching software powered by Facebook for the past year and finally decided to start the business during the first semester of the MSE program. By having a company of my own, all of the classes made more sense and became infinitely more useful. I could template all of the entrepreneurial classes over how they could benefit RoomSync.  

The other thing that Ed's presentation made me think of was a website I found last night called codecademy which teaches people how to program. Why did I think of this? Try signing up for the site and you'll know. They make you code in order to register for an account! Genius.  

Too much of the education that I witness in K-12 and higher education is not taught like this. Instead, professors are asking students to regurgitate dates and equations. I hope to see a growing number of approaches to education like the ones above.

Hey! This is Philip, Creative Marketing Director and intern here at RoomSync.

Next month, we are attending the EDUCAUSE conference in Philadelphia, PA. Rob and I made a pretty sweet video about what we do. We even ended the video with Rob making a basketball shot in our plastic basketball hoop. The only problem was that Rob was having a little trouble getting the ball in the basket... and getting those lines down. Check out our video and the outtakes video too!

We'd like to thank everyone who stopped by our booth at this year's annual Acuho-i conference. It was a great experience for our team to get to know impressive individuals in higher ed.

And to everyone we spoke to at our booth, we'll be in touch soon about those questions and next steps!