Exploring How Social Media Marketing Practices In Community College Academic Programs Shape Student Engagement

This study sought to explore how social media marketing practices have the potential to impact student engagement, which is linked to student success, at the community college level. The research leveraged 16 interviews with student participants within a community college from a specific academic program that has shown increased enrollment numbers and utilizes social media as a tool in the promotion of student work and aids in engagement of students. The study utilized a grounded theory research approach, as student experiences are particularly helpful in addressing the gap in knowledge about how today's community college students understand feelings of "belonging" within a program. Ultimately, this research study allowed for a focus on group characteristics and patterns in how students reported feeling of belonging and success within their media program of study. While emerging research shows that social media is also a hot-button issue, community colleges are behind the curve when it comes to understanding how this tool can potentially be used far beyond mere marketing but can be used by faculty and staff for greater sense of community, student belonging, and, potentially, student success. The two research questions that guided this research focused on how community colleges currently use their official social media to connect with students and prospective students, and, critically, how social media practices of community colleges shape student engagement and success. The study's findings indicate that social media channels managed officially on the part of Oak Tree Community College are not used particularly well, with the bulk of student participants explaining that for them to follow these pages actively - or at all - they want to see themselves reflected and want current information. Participants described how they engage with non-official social media pages run by departments and programs, but virtually all participants explained that they are less inclined to closely follow the official page of the college. To better utilize official social media channels, community colleges should take into account that students need to feel engaged in content shared; that is, student participants require that they are reflected in the posts and information shared, and explained that they desire regular postings that present current, updated information. Ultimately, student participants helped to determine that social media is an effective tool to motivate and engage students, both of which help students to succeed academically and professionally, when students see that they are reflected in posts. Student participants described the important of social media usage in the everyday lives, and described their expectation that it be used in higher education because of the widespread and common use of it in everyday life. In the course of interviews with student participants, it became clear that social media usage was tied to student participants' identities. According to participants, the media department in this study used social media effectively to support the participants by helping them to feel more engaged, describing the motivation they found in seeing their work shared, and explaining how they felt validated by seeing themselves reflected in the department's social media postings. The study's findings suggest that faculty and staff in higher education settings can use social media to directly engage with students, though it is recommended that the impact of social media platforms in higher education should be further explored with more research that includes larger numbers of participants, as this case study showed students benefitted from departmental social media usage. An exploration of social media usage following March 2020, when many public institutions moved to remote/virtual instruction, is also recommended to understand how colleges and universities adapted by tapping into emerging technologies and the efficacy of using these technologies to help students feel supported and engaged during the COVID-19 pandemic.