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One of the things that the on line for profit on line universities brought to the world
is the idea of peer to peer learning. Because the way students study on line, they are gathered
together in virtual classroom and they teach each other and learn from each other. Through
this discussion, students study, through this discussion we teach. But this is very similar
to the concept of social networking. Social networking where people help each other or
share information with each other and help each other. So this is one element of social
networking that we use, obviously beyond all the social interaction between students.
But social networking for us is a way to market ourself as well. We-- our marketing budget
is very limited at this stage and we are unable to advertise. However we spread our word,
we spread the word of University of the People through social networking. So we interact
there with students, we gather interest there, we gather friends there and we spread our
word and that’s the only way we have right now to reach the students. Our potential students
are in social networks and that’s where we’re trying to reach them.
We’re trying to be as transparent as we can, which is a very social networking phenomenon.
We are non profit, everything is open and we do everything on line and we keep all the
information on line. So we keep updated all the time our friends on the different social
networks of what we’re doing, of what’s happening with us. If we have an article written
about us, we put it there. If we have students telling us stories about their life experience,
we’re putting it there and we ask them questions. We ask all the time questions about their
experience, about their thoughts about what we’re doing. Now we have just launched our
fundraising or our fundraising effort on social networks as well. We come and ask that we
have a fundraising effort and a fundraising event on Facebook, as an example. And we ask
our fans to come and help the university because we need their support.