Project Updates & Interviews
On Feb 20, Engaging Alumni team met Jessy Hsieh, the Associate Director of Graduate Education at Stern. As an alumnus of Stern, she liked the idea of platform "What I Know Now" and wanted to join. However, she said to make other alumni click our invitation email, there must be something provocative, such as "do you feel disconnected from Stern?" She also pointed out that since this platform was action-oriented, it should be differentiated from Facebook or Linkedin. In addition, to make people sign in, the platform must be user-friendly. She suggested pulling in existing information of alumni on Facebook or Linkedin so that alumni don't need to create their profiles again. She also mentioned Princeton University's research on "Open and Quantifiable Data Collection", focusing on "easy things (choose between 2 or 3 ideas) work best".
At the meeting with Shankar on Feb 25, we changed our project direction. Shakar suggested using existing platforms such as google forum and focus on 1. asking alumni how they want to be engaged (our original question) and 2. figuring out alumni's expertise and building profile, because we didn't have enough time to create a new platform.
On Feb 27, the team met Professor Natalia Levina at Stern, the crowdsourcing expert. She recommended to clarify the goal of our project first before searching for existing platforms.
1. If the goal is asking alumni about their preferred methods of engagement, crowdsourcing can help. Natalia recommended various free crowdsourcing platforms such as Ideaken, but her preferred one was Linkedin group/forum. It's because while many alumni are already on Linkedin, other crowdsourcing platforms require registration, which is tiny but great barrier. If Linkedin doesn't work well, she suggested trying Facebook group.
Her another idea was starting from a small focus group consisted of active alumni, get their ideas about engagement via face-to-face meeting or email, and ask more specific questions ("how do you want to be more engaged in specific area, such as offering job opportunity / mentorship / etc.) to the whole alumni group.
2. If the goal is updating information about alumni's expertise, crowdsourcing has nothing to do with it. We can just update alumni's current profile on Linkedin (Stern student group, SEA, already has its own alumni group on Linkedin).
3. If the goal is offering alumni information to current student, it's also not related to crowdsourcing.
About incentivizing alumni's participation, she pointed out that alumni usually don't need $5 for joining the survey. Instead, they need impact and the type of impact depends on their area of interest (be a mentor? donation? offer job opportunity to students?). People also react to small things such as "best ideas". Offering them a small prize can also be a good idea.
Based on her suggestion, we will clarify our project's goal, decide the platform, and meet SEA to discuss and confirm these ideas.