USQ is a Relationship brand. Every year we spend many 100,000’s of dollars in an attempt to engage 1000’s of prospective students in a direct personal conversation. We do this because we fundamentally believe the ‘totality’ of what we offer is different. The special relationship that develops between us and our students goes beyond what others offer; want to offer; or are capable of offering for a number of reasons. In fact USQ has recently made a dramatic change in our structure to better deliver on what we promise and build on our existing strengths. We still have a way to go but we are heading in the right direction.

The other reality is that most of our direct competitors will forever have much much more money to throw at promotion. At USQ we know we need to be smarter about how we use our limited resources and couple that with a very clear message, in a personal conversation, about why a prospective should consider USQ over another uni.

As USQ’s Digital Marketing person I am always looking for ways to drive traffic to the USQ website and our semester specific campaign sites. In a web 2.0 enabled world what Peter is suggesting has the potential to reverse the current trend of needing to spend more and more money across an ever increasing number of sites, portals and mediums to reach potential students by dramatically increasing organic traffic. The more people we can engage in a true open conversation generated from organic traffic means less money we have to find for traditional activities where, in most cases, we are in a superficial “line-up” against our competitors.

The other issue that my colleagues and I have discussed today is copyright.

There are many different opinions so here is mine. USQ is the owner of the material we produce. An organisation or individual that wants to reuse it legally will need to follow some rules. Some will choose to abide by the law and others will infringe copyright. Anyone who is serious and makes a conscious decision to infringe copyright and engage in criminal behaviour won’t be phased by whether our content is open or not. As of today they could enrol in a course; get the distance education package; withdraw without penalty before a certain date and hey-pesto they have it for next to nothing. Moreover having open content might actually aid in finding the copyright infringers by exposing our material to more people and encouraging them to “dob” if they find it in use in a different context or attributed to someone other than USQ!

I also suspect that the horse has bolted and USQ has plenty of content mounted on wiki’s, blogs, social networking sites and unsecured web-enabled folders today, right now, because it makes it easier and more accessible for academics and their students. As for other course assets and collateral escaping to internet land with the permission of their university check out – http://www.youtube.com/edu. Looks like it’s already happening. Have I missed something here?