It’s week five of Thompson Rivers University, Open Learning (TRU-OL)’s first ever tuition credit contest and the competition is intense with over 60 contestants vying to win free education through Open Learning.

One lucky winner of the Grow Your Education, Compete to Complete contest will receive all the fees normally associated with completing up to 60 credits through TRU’s Open Learning Division – a  prize valued at up to CAN$9,500.

With only seven weeks left in the contest, participants have already forwarded enough supporters to TRU-OL’s Facebook profile page to more than triple its number of fans.

“By using social media to run this competition we are developing communications in human, rather than institutional, terms,” Cameron Beddome, Chief Recruiting Officer, TRU-OL, said. “Communicating this way – listening first and initiating second – allows us to create relationships with the very people that may want the opportunities we can provide through our open and accessible approach to online and distance education.”

In order to gain one entry, each contestant must first create a new Facebook group for the Grow Your Education, Compete to Complete contest that describers how winning the contest will make a difference in their life. From there they must fill out an entry form and invite friends to not only join their own Facebook group but also become a fan of TRU-OL’s Facebook profile page. Each friend their Facebook contest group ultimately has in common with TRU-OL’s Facebook profile page counts as one single entry. Each contestant can achieve up to 1,500 entries each which means their chance to win can be quite substantial depending on how well they market their plea to grow their education through TRU-OL.

Richard Baldelli, Director, Marketing and Communications, TRU-OL, explained that using social media as the contest medium for the contest not only provides potential students with their own voice to convey their message but it also allows TRU-OL to converse with students in a different voice that traditional advertising does not allow. Through social media, TRU-OL, he explained, this contest can help to ultimately target the perfect online and distance education market.

“This contest uses Facebook as a social media tool to help us reach our target market by simply engaging in conversations with the right people which is potentially more effective than advertising,” Baldelli said. “When our students and prospective students are engaging with us, we need to be there listening – social media provides us with that channel and opportunity.”

Advertising through communicating has allowed TRU-OL to leverage its ability to interpret exactly what its market desires according to Baldelli.

“Social media is the new communications system,” Baldelli said. “It (social media) helps us properly understand what our students are looking for and where they are looking. It can help us respond to market trends.”

And the trends are saying that online and distance education fills a real niche for mature students who have work, familial and other life obligations necessitating an alternative and flexible method of learning. Students requiring an open and accessible education are out there and are driven to complete their post-secondary education for a number of reasons ranging from a desire to start their own successful business to wanting to be a better parent and teaching their children the value of education.

The contest, which launched on January 29 and runs until April 18, 2010, comes at an auspicious time for many individuals, who are both swayed by today’s troubled economy and yet concerned over related tuition fees, to return to school to enhance their job marketability.