Supporting students at institutional and global levels

Social Media and the Year Abroad

Lizzie Fane

21st June 2012

But what do we do? ThirdYearAbroad.com is…

• A free social network for UK students who work or study abroad during their degree

• An information resource with advice for students before, during and after their year abroad

• A platform for user-generated reviews and articles, and social media interaction @thirdyearabroad

How we use social media…

Panicky questions

Reassuring answers

The TYA annual life cycle:

I was alerted to this question on

So I posted a link to it on our

page…

And it received 3 very detailed, helpful and supportive publicly visible responses:

Invitation to collect data for the BA-UCML Position Statement

Social Media:

Valuing the Year Abroad

1. People who are not part of an email database can still find out about and get involved in the campaign.

2. Social media users have an average of 100 fans or followers: one Tweet or Facebook post can be seen by a lot of people very quickly.

3. By plugging into social networks you can target particular groups of people: Language Assistant alumni, translators, graduate networks, etc.

3 benefits of using social media…

“Please give us a thumbnail sketch of your year abroad (where you went, type of placement, duration), and tell us what you got out of it, what your job was on graduation and your subsequent career path. We're also interested to know how else you have used the skills gained during your year abroad, and how it has enhanced your life (not just in terms of employment).”

“Flights: £500. Accommodation: £2,000. Tuition fees: £1,500. Value of the third year abroad: Priceless.”

Aimee, BA Hons Modern Languages, Nottingham Trent University, 2003. Studied in France and Spain, now a Planner for a Construction Company.

The year abroad makes students and graduates:• More independent• More self confident• More driven and focused• Have work experience for their CV• Able to work on an international team• Have a better idea of their career path• Happy to travel with work• Prepared to relocate• Good problem-solvers

Feeding back the stories to current students:• 100 Real-life case studies

• Categorised by type of placement, home university, degree course, year of graduation and career path: easy to relate to

• 178,000 hits!

For more information, and to read the 100 best case studies, please visit:

thirdyearabroad.com/graduates

• fb.com/thirdyearabroad• twitter.com/thirdyearabroad• lizzie@thirdyearabroad.com