There are now over 100 million active Twitter users – but is your college principal one of them? If not, should they be, and so for that matter should the rest of the senior management team.

“But isn’t that the job of the marketing team?” I hear some people cry. Others might answer the Twitter question with responses like “I tried getting into it, but just couldn’t get the hang with it”, “It’s like another language with all of those hash tags and things – I don’t get it!”, “Where would I find the time?” or “I’d like to, but I have real work to be getting on with”.

Yes, Twitter is a powerful tool for college marketing and PR and your marketing team undoubtedly should be tweeting for your organisation – and, of course, many already do. You can get some great PR from Twitter.

As well as providing opportunities to network, Twitter is also a space in which you can establish a reputation and tell people about the key things happening within your college.”

Our college song and video, produced by student record label Interim Records, was recently picked up and re-tweeted by MC Hammer to over 2.3 million follows worldwide! Such a retweet brought City College Norwich and our work to promote student entrepreneurship to a much wider audience – and our local paper thought it was a great story too!

But Twitter is not just about the corporate. It is also an inherently personal medium, which gives you the opportunity to network virtually with many of the key people with whom you work – and, perhaps more importantly, those with whom you want to work. It’s the mother of all networking opportunities, anyone who’s anyone is there, and you can talk to whoever you like.

For me, too, it’s been a huge source of new and hitherto inaccessible information. I now concentrate my tweets (following some professional advice) on one core topic – entrepreneurship. I have found so much information (mostly in the States but from all over the world too) that I just would not have come across without Twitter.

For example, do you know what Crowdfunding or Crowdsourcing is? Well I didn’t until I started following a crowdfunding guru in the States and we are looking at doing a pilot student start up here in Norwich following crowdfunding principles later this year.

As well as providing opportunities to network, Twitter is also a space in which you can establish a reputation and tell people about the key things happening within your college. Provided you add value with your tweets – highlighting and sharing knowledge and resources that will be helpful to those with whom you are engaging – your Twitter following will grow rapidly.

Although I have been tweeting for a couple of years, I only really started properly around six months ago and even more recently concentrated my tweets around education and entrepreneurship. In the first eighteen months I went from zero to just over 150 followers. In the last six months I’ve gone from 150 to over 1200 – not exactly Stephen Fry (millions) but it’s a positive step!

As a college principal, I spend a lot of my time talking to people: to students, employ
ers, staff and a plethora of partners who are in the business of further education and training.

Twitter extends and opens up those conversations, bringing new and sometimes unexpected opportunities for new partnerships and projects. We have a 19 year old entrepreneur coming to the college to deliver a two-day course to some 13 year olds from one of the local academies where we are the lead sponsor, later this month; I “met” this young man through Twitter and met face-to-face at the AoC Conference.

Twitter also invites you to tell others about what’s happening. As well as providing the opportunity to tell the world about what you’re up to, it is fantastic for finding out what’s happening elsewhere – very often in real time. Twitter enables you to be fully up to speed with the very latest news, even before stories make it into the news bulletins and papers (in part because so many journalists are also active Twitter users).

Of course there is an investment of time needed in following others on Twitter, adding your own tweets and engaging in conversations – as there is in making phone calls and writing and responding to emails. Twitter is very often more immediate and to the point – and it can open up a whole new world of possibilities to you, your organisation and your students.

If you’ve tried it and not quite “got it” – persevere! It will surprise you as to its connectedness – honest! And, of course, do follow me at @dickpalmerccn – all you need to know about crowdfunding.

Dick Palmer is Principal and Chief Executive of City College Norwich

Want to know more about using Twitter. Why not download our FE Week Guide to Twitter? Click here

In my previous life as a college tutor, January was always the month of the annual student awards evening. Each year we would dutifully send in our list of worthy candidates. The brief was fairly succinct: nominees must have been enthusiastic learners who attended fully and punctiliously.

They must of course have produced work of high merit. Finally, and perhaps with one eye on the PR benefits, we were also encouraged to identify those who had overcome ‘significant personal obstacles’ in order to attain their qualification.

One year, a student of mine – I’ll call her ‘Irene’ – scooped the student of the year award. She fulfilled all the prerequisites. She was in her mid-sixties and undertaking her first recognised qualification in some fifty years. She had left school with no qualifications. Her work was genuinely exceptional.

However, Irene was a distance learning student and I clearly remember that this didn’t sit well with some of my colleagues. For the academic purists, distance learning wasn’t ‘real’ teaching or learning.

That unless the bestower of education was at the front of their classroom imparting their wisdom, something substandard was going on.

Although some of the purists may still hold that view, there is little doubt that attitudes have changed and distance learning (also commonly referred to as ‘remote’ or ‘distributed’ learning) has established itself as a credible alternative to traditional classroom delivery for some types of learners, qualifications and sectors.

In the last two decades providers have embraced established and emerging technologies to turn distance learning into an extremely valuable tool, bringing benefits to both individuals and employers, as well as to the providers themselves”

One reason for this is that education providers have sharpened up their act in terms of their distance learning provision. Sure there are still stories of overseas ‘degree mills’ conferring bogus distance learning ‘qualifications’ on those willing and desperate enough to pay.

However, in the last two decades providers have embraced established and emerging technologies to turn distance learning into an extremely valuable tool, bringing benefits to both individuals and employers, as well as to the providers themselves.

What are the benefits to the individual? Well, perhaps the most obvious is flexibility. Distance learning gives the learner the opportunity to learn anytime, anywhere.

This is ideal for those that are in employment or have to fit learning around other commitments. Learners are not beholden to a college timetable or set enrolment dates.

For example, online learning usually allows learners to save work and log back into where they left off and podcast lessons can be downloaded and listened to on the go. Mobile learning, or ‘mlearning’, done well, may take distance learning to another level.

Some providers are already using smartphone applications to enable their students to complete quizzes and assessments via their phones or other handheld devices.

Employers are also becoming increasingly switched on to distance learning. Understandably, organisations that are operating with a lean workforce are reluctant to release staff en bloc for training.

However, distance learning allows companies in tandem with their training providers to build elearning activities, for example, into quieter work periods.

Better still, if the individual can see the personal benefits of undertaking such training, many are prepared to complete their learning at home.

Finally, what are the benefits to the providers themselves? In an age of economic austerity, distance learning can be an extremely cost-effective option. Take the 100 hours learning ‘away from the workstation’ obligation under apprenticeships.

This can be delivered via distance learning and many providers are now using elearning packages to deliver this. By reducing travelling times and the number of workshops, these allow assessors to deliver to more learners and to cover a much wider geographical area.

You only have to look to some of the examples from North America and Australia to see how distance learning, in particular elearning, has enabled providers to penetrate the hitherto impenetrable.

Distance learning has still to lose some of its blemishes. But, like classroom-based delivery, if those involved in the delivery are passionate and there is a scrutinous eye on quality, surely innovative distance learning deserves a seat at the same table as the more traditional methods of teaching.

By Lee Brooks