Higher Education Digital Marketing — News Round Up

This week's collection of articles and tools that our team hopes will be of value in your work as higher ed professionals:

• Higher Ed Intelligence — great new research from long-time consultants RHB & Lawler Group on real marketing challenges facing private higher education and possible solutions.
• How can Facebook’s new 360 Video be used for large events like graduations or alumni reunions? Does it complement or distract from existing video livestreams? Via TechCrunch.
• NY’s Free College Plan — what does the trend towards making public college free mean for marketing practices? Will this lower marketing quality for public institutions? How will the pressure to sell private education's distinctiveness impact digital strategy? Via NPR Ed.
• Varvy Pagespeed Tool — ever run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights and end up confused about how to fix the areas that needed improvement? This highly visual tool provides practical steps on how to resolve common problems.
• Google’s WebVR Experiments showcases how VR can exist on a common web browser. How can higher ed embrace and use this technology for virtual tours or other applications?
• Drupal 8.3 was released this week — an important step forward in making Drupal 8 more widely embraced in the higher ed industry.
• Heard of Circular Design and the Circular Economy? Consider the radical promise of moving from our traditional take-make-dispose economy, to one that has a closed loop, where materials, nutrients, and data are continuously repurposed. Via IDEO.
• Institutional survival is at stake — can your school strategy still be summarized as "Ready, Fire, Aim?" Via InsideHigherEd.