The educational development company Jenzabar has made some serious strides in helping companies lure in those who are looking to continue their education. Their new widgets is drawing people into continuing education by using the new Facebook (News - Alert) widget that allows people to see basic course forms through the social networking giant. There are actually just two universities who are taking care of this new widget. Emory Continuing Education in Atlanta and California State University San Marcos are both users of Jenzabar'sHigher Reach.
The Higher Reach widget makes it possible for people to access course forms directly from Facebook. Users can also access a whole set of administrative applications that make it worthwhile to link an online continuing education course and Facebook. This is actually just the latest improvement of the Jenzabar continuing education application.
In 2011, the company had come up with a Facebook catalog application that allows users to connect the continuing education catalog from a particular school with that school's Facebook page. The catalog function allows potential students to actually look through the catalog for a school’s offerings through their Facebook page. This feature simply makes it that much easier for a prospective student looking for a class or a class type to find what they are looking for by not having to browse through several different websites.
"Jenzabar Higher Reach provides...the tools needed to stay focused on continuing education-specific goals," said Chris Hartigan, Jenzabar vice president and general manager for the Continuing Education Business Unit in a statement. "Social shopping, particularly on Facebook, has gained widespread acceptance across consumer businesses. By bringing our continuing education platform together with Facebook, our clients now have even greater reach for their programs and offerings that will help them maximize their enrollment and revenue goals."
Jenzabar seems to be on the front lines of making finding the right kind of continuing education curriculum easier to find. While there are only a couple of online universities using these features, that number should grow over the next couple years.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli