Using Technology to Reach Students Where They Are

Mandy Reinig is thinking about geolocation. The study away director at Virginia Wesleyan College in Virginia Beach is playing with ideas for getting her study abroad programs on Snapchat. They’re already on Facebook—who isn’t?—and in the last year, she’s doubled their Instagram audience to about 500 followers.

“It’s basically the concept of meeting students where they are versus making students come to you,” she says. “In the classroom, they have to do what you say but outside the classroom that doesn’t work so well. You kind of have to engage them where they’re already engaging.”

The social media platform Snapchat reported 178 million users in the third quarter of 2017, up from 153 million the same time a year before. Reinig is considering features such as geotagged banners that students can use when Snapchatting from a particular location. The concept is part advertising and perhaps part “fomo”—or “fear of missing out.”

“They can be like ‘I’m at the study abroad fair at Virginia Wesleyan!’” she says. That immediately tells other students they’re considering international education.

Reinig’s social media brainstorming is indicative of the quickly growing role that new forms of technology are playing in making the world ever smaller and the international education community increasingly connected. As the development of technology accelerates, the days of tracking students’ international travel approvals and applications in notebooks and reams of paper have begun slipping away. Many campuses throughout the United States are upgrading database portals, developing apps, pushing orientations online and, of course, recruiting