It could Pay to Tweet and facebook...

[mtraininjax]

This was in the Business Journal I found out of Louisville, KY. This could be a great way for FCCJ to expand its presence downtown, start with one class and branch out. This is one thing kids of the phones, know how to do:

Social media started as a virtual gathering place where mostly young people could mingle online.

Now, a University of Louisville professor wants to put them to work in a program that he says could be the first of its kind in the nation.

David Faulds, associate professor of marketing at U of L’s College of Business, has created Marketing 490: Social Media Consulting, a class that would turn students into paid consultants.

The “consulting-based class” would offer Louisville-area businesses and nonprofit organizations 12 to 15 weeks of social-media consulting services at what Faulds describes as a bargain price.

The intent isn’t to make money, but to provide a revolutionary learning experience for a select group of juniors and seniors, “and we’re stepping beyond academia in doing so,” Faulds said. Participating companies would pay $2,500, which U of L is charging only so clients treat the program seriously, he added.

Big talent for small money
Beginning next January, at the start of U of L’s spring semester, Marketing 490 will match students with faculty and social-media industry experts in teams that would advise clients puzzling through how Internet-based trends such as Facebook and Twitter can work for them, Faulds said.

“I have a gut-level feeling that organizations â€" for-profits and nonprofits â€" really are struggling with this social-media thing. A lot of them have missed the market,” he said.

“Our program gives them an opportunity to sit down with a team of pretty sophisticated people.”

Marketing 490 teams would create new social-media programs for clients or help refine existing social-media presences, then make presentations as “reports that will look like a consulting project,” Faulds said.

The new course is open by permission only to students with a minimum 3.5 cumulative grade point average and one semester of social-media classes.

“This is a blue ribbon cast,” he said.

Faulds said he has discussed his plan with Jason Falls, owner of the Social Media Explorer LLC Web site, Deborah Boyer, owner of Louisville-based Boyer Consulting Group and others.

“They all mentioned that if a consultant did this, it would cost $25,000,” Faulds said. “And maybe not be as good.”

U of L and Murray social-media pioneers
Faulds said he believes his students will be able to handle as many as 12 firms in the spring semester with three to five meetings over 12 weeks to 15 weeks.

Introducing students to companies via the class-cum-internship also might help the marketing department place its best students, he said.

Falls said Faulds and Glynn Mangold, professor of marketing at Murray State University in Murray, Ky., already collaborate on a social-media class.

The two Kentucky schools are among a small number of colleges that offer social-media classes, said Falls, who also is president of the Social Media Club-Louisville and the former director of online and interactive communications at Doe-Anderson Inc.

“Both have something to be proud of there. They’re doing something other colleges really aren’t,” he said.

Falls said he has been helping Faulds develop the social-media class/consultancy concept, but he won’t participate directly for several reasons.

Among them, he said, is that he’s too busy, and he has some reservations that he’d be helping to create his own competition.

[Sportmotor]

FCCJ has a "campus" on second life and I have actually talked and befriended one of the teachers that teaches a English class on it.
It is rather intresting the way collages are reaching out and expanding.