Many campuses have struggled to harness the power of Facebook with their students and prospective students.

Some now have Facebook pages, where prospective students can request information, post questions, and learn more about the institution. It can be a very effective way for institutions to put themselves in a familiar online context for students.

But most institutional recruiting efforts fail to capture the power of the peer-to-peer marketing that online social networks make possible. I don’t mean being able to Facebook friend recruits online, or just being able to reach out to current students online (although both these avenues can be helpful, especially for recruiters who want to know exactly how indiscreet potential students might be). I mean that students, especially local ones looking at their nearby higher education options, probably already know some people who have attended those nearby institutions. A high school friend from 5 years ago with whom you’ve lost touch might be the perfect person to reach out to in order to learn more about a particular course of study at a nearby college or university, if the institutional Facebook page were equipped to tell prospective students about alumni who are their Facebook friends.

Of course, institutions have already shown their growing awareness of how Facebook might assist them in recruitment purposes. But, there are also academic advantages to using Facebook, and few have attempted to find ways to use the tool to academically benefit students.
Recruitment and academic benefits are two strong arguments for integrating your course catalog with the Facebook.

Imagine:

A student who didn’t finish their degree logs into your course catalog to view courses. When they’re browsing courses, they see that five of their friends from high school, who they’ve kept up with through Facebook, have also taken classes at your institution, and that one of them was in the same degree path. Or, one friend sees that another has enrolled in a course at your institution from a post automatically pushed up to their Facebook wall, and decides to take the course with them.

Current students can academically benefit from Facebook in the catalog. If they opt-to integrate their Facebook (students can opt out), students can suggest courses to one another easily. They can also form study groups for specific courses, which can be among the most effective means of staying on top of course work.