Newsletter #61: University of Sheffield makes robots even cooler; metaverse hype is dying; a 2-D demon is now the 8th most popular Twitch streamer
✏️ From the Education Marketer desk
Why the idea of “students being the new marketers” is powerful, but potentially oversimplified. Read
How one image from Disney changed the way I approach content marketing. Read
Interview with Hesham Abdelhamid (social media officer) on University of Glouscershire’s daring response to Nottingham’s micro-prospectus. Watch
📰 HE news
Community colleges are having a bad time in the States, seeing a 5.6% drop in enrolments last year. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The cost of education in the US is growing 8x faster than real wages, trumping both increases in child care costs and medical bills. Shocking. To address recruitment shortfalls, community colleges are partnering to deliver “course shares” i.e. a student can choose to study at their local institution, even if it doesn't technically own the course. Course sharing | Price of education over time
More has emerged on how much the UK Treasury will benefit from new student loan repayments: £11bn in 2022-23 alone. It’s a heavy hit to Gen Z, the threshold for repayment being lowered to £25,000 and the payback period extended to 40 years. It sounds like a life sentence. Bad news for those students on lower to middle incomes too, they’ll be paying up to £28,000 more over their lifetime. Expect questions at open days. Read
📊 Marketing and media news
Interest in the term “metaverse” has seen a 75% drop in traffic since Facebook’s rebrand - not good for Zuck, but ideal for developers trying to create something usable. Though the hype is dying down, it’s important to note that Oculus exceeded Xbox sales in 2021. Also, there are a few other signals that virtual worlds are a mainstay - Roblox claims 80 minutes per user per day and in Fortnite, 64% of users spend more than 6 hours a week playing. Brands are already well and truly invested in those spaces, but the latest story is Yuga Labs (owners of Bored Ape Yaught Club and CryptoPunks) announcing their own virtual world: Otherside. This is significant, as it looks like it will enable people to bring NFTs (characters) from multiple projects (games) into one world. Translation: It’s like having a Pokemon card and being able to play it in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Yuga Labs has both money (stupid amounts of it) and talent, so if done well, Otherside might be a metaverse that sticks. Otherside | Metaverse cooling
Instagram made an announcement via a word search (why?) that it will be reintroducing a chronological feed - although, it will not be enabled by default. Other than PR, I can’t think of a reason why this is a thing. If anything, it seems counter-intuitive for an app that has recently pivoted to video. Open TikTok and YouTube and then picture them without algorithms - it doesn’t work. Maybe dust off the old “best times to post” playbook and keep an eye, but I doubt many users will go to the effort of turning this on. Read
Google announced that it will stop its current analytics programme (probably the one you are using) on July 1 2023. In its place, Google Analytics 4 will report on your digital content in a completely new way - you’ll even lose metrics like bounce rate and time on page (😱). Note, once the current version of Analytics is switched off, your data goes with it. That includes annotations too because, apparently, Google didn’t think that far ahead. Read
Bonus: Nike did an awesome 3D billboard ad in Tokyo (the same billboard that made a cat internet famous.) Nike | Giant billboard cat
🏫 What unis are doing
University of Sheffield gets a double win this week. Firstly, for its media hub, which is a powerful example of how you can make the most of on-demand video for your website. And, secondly, a research video about “Pipebots” - robots that fix waste and water pipes from the inside out. Of course, Pipebots are theoretical right now, but the effort that has gone into bringing this research to life is remarkable. There’s a fully animated video and you can even experience the life of a Pipebot in VR. Complete with sewer section. Media Hub | Pipebots | Pipebot VR
San Deigo University is making weekly (minute) news updates for its YouTube channel. I can’t stress enough how useful this format is for growing your audience - it’s a reason for students to subscribe and then return to your channel. If you’re looking to do something similar, I suggest experimenting with YouTube Shorts, which would fit the minute format and look WAY better on mobile. You could even publish daily. Look
Arden University is building out its positioning as “the university that comes to you.” Known for online and blended learning (a bit of a blessing, really) it focuses on student situations and location, rather than subject of interest. A stay at home mum fitting studies around her toddler. A taekwondo Olympian studying for a backup career in finance - there’s a wide range of students, yet the University has a solid sense of who it’s talking to. One to look at if you’re developing your online course offer. Look
🧑🎓 What students are saying
“We don't like the way that staff are being treated and it has long-term implications for students like us who want to go into academia but don't want to have the same problems.” Students on their solidarity with striking staff across the UK. Read
“Am I glad I swapped my share house for housesitting? Absolutely. In what world could most students rent an entire house in London, let alone stay in one for free?” One student on how she’s saving thousands a year on being a full-time pet and house sitter. Fair play. Read
👾 Culture shock
Clubhouse is so unpopular that the Russian government forgot to shut it down. Look
Netflix is ending password sharing. Read
A 2-D demon is now the eighth most-watched streamer on Twitch. Look
