One idea is to set up a Yammer External Network for your students to use.
Source: Me, because I run two external networks for our customers and clients.
The set-up part:
The gear icon next to your name in the bottom left of Yammer will show you if you have the +Create a New Network option.
Otherwise, your network admin should be able to get into their Yammer settings->Network->External Network and see what's enabled.
Why an External Network?
External Networks (EN) are really neat because although your "home" network is the parent network, people on your EN cannot click back into your home network unless they have the same email domain as all of your staff, or you whitelist their email for some reason.
Whereas your staff will be able to flow easily back and forth between networks using that same gear icon.
So all of your home network content should remain private, while you can choose to populate your EN with whatever materials you want students to see.
Additionally, you can set up your EN with almost all the same features as your home network: Create groups, have a usage policy, etc.
And unlike the home network (because you're on O365), you can also upload a customized banner! ENs aren't affected by O365 at this time.
How to get people ON it
After you've got things set up to where you want it, now you need people in it! Give your students the URL to the EN and tell them to sign up. There are various fun ways to do this; I should post some on a separate thread, now that I think about it, but we've done:
- Targeted emails with awesomely enticing language about how beneficial this community will be
- Postcards
- Website announcements
- Word of mouth
- Signage and sign-ups at conferences and the like
Now, you will have to manually approve everyone wanting to join your EN, so it's best if you have a couple community managers set up with verified admin access so they can help out. These notifications will be emailed to you or you will find them in the Pending Requests area that is also on the gear icon.
Security and/or massive influx
If you are concerned about the URL falling into the wrong hands, or anticipate a huge influx of registrations, there are third-party vendors who can set up an auto-approval system that you can have behind a password-gate on your own website. Let me know if you'd like more information about that.
Give them a reason
As with any community, you will still have to come up with a couple use-case reasons for why students should join this online network among all the other online things they are undoubtedly part of.
With our customer base, it's important that they (and their bosses) realize that their EN is intended to be an extension of their training: They can get tips, strategies, and insights to challenging questions, and help out others with their concerns, so that everyone can deliver the most meaningful and relevant programs possible.
We also bill it as a "professional development" or "professional learning" network and do not let a whiff of "social media!" or "Just like Facebook!" get through. Not only would that squash a lot of participation what with the stigma of social media, but--people already have pretty much all the "social media" that they need. Yammer is something different.
So I just dumped a lot of information on you. Let me know if you have any questions!
