“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.” – Thomas J. Watson

It’s been two years since my last letter to the #SAchat community and as we move into our eighth year, I figured now was a great time to write a follow up.

Since the community has exponentially grown with new members since my last letter, below is a reposting of the history before I dig into our current state and what to expect for 2013.

The Backstory

I started The Student Affairs Collaborative in 2005, with Kevin Prentiss, to test a hypothesis that a decentralized, open system of peer-to-peer learning built around shared interests would increase engagement and retention.

We wanted to create a community in which everyone was a teacher at some level, and everyone supported each other to become more involved. A place for Student Affairs Professionals to come together and digitally play, learn, and grow from each other.

In the beginning, 100% of the content was written by me, Kevin, and Del Suggs. We then bribed our student affairs friends with cookies to help us write content, and slowly, over time, the site gained a readership. The SA Collaborative started to become the go-to place online for student affairs professionals to receive and share knowledge from their peers. The growth remained steady, and then Twitter came along…

In 2009, over tea at Panera Bread with Debra Sanborn, I pitched the idea of a weekly chat via Twitter for student affairs professionals, which would mimic the already established #EDchat (for teachers) and #JourChat (for journalist). She nodded excitedly at the idea (as she does with all new ideas), and a couple weeks later, on Oct 8th, 2009, we attempted our first #SAchat.

I remember telling my wife how nervous I was that it was just going to be me and Debra tweeting back and forth for an hour, and it would never take off because there were no student affairs people on Twitter. I kept a shot of vodka close by to calm my nerves just in case .

The chat started extremely slow, but within 15 minutes a couple of people joined us from out of nowhere. Twitter still hasn’t opened up its history past Feb 2010, so the data can’t be verified yet.

Many years later, the vision and mission of this community remain the same.

Where We Are Now

What’s Next

• The #SAchat Awards – The #SAchat community is filled with so many amazing Student Affairs Professions worth recognizing for the value they give to others and to the community as a whole. From raising stars to established thought leaders, the #SAchat Awards will cover it all as a way to celebrate the great members who make it a great community.
• #SAchat Meetups – Moving from online connections to offline friendships is a critical element to sustaining any community and through  the years, many informal #SAchat meetups have taken place in which many life long friendships were formed. This year, we’re stepping up our game to help make more meetups happen so more friendships can be formed.
• The #SAchat #SAgrow Scholarship – An idea originally pioneered by Ed Cabellon to help champion the next generation of Student Affairs Professionals, we plan to carry the torch forward and use the power of our community to continue to see it grow through the next generation.
• #SAchat Partnerships – At the beginning of December 2012, we used one of our weekly chats to partner and promote ACPA’s Commission for Social Justice Educators (CSJE). As #SAchat continues to grow, we want to make sure the entire SA ocean is growing as well, and partnerships, like with CSJE, will ensure that happens. Expect more of this to come in 2013. If you are part of a SA community and would like to partner with us, drop us a comment below and we’ll follow up.

Lastly,

Every time I thumb through the #SAchat Twitter feed, I’m blown away. I’ve never experienced a community this large be so willing to support, inspire, challenge, and laugh with each other. From brand new members to long time matriarchs/patriarchs, everyone seems to find a way to gain some value and give some value to fellow members. #SAchat truly is a place of peer-to-peer learning.

Having said all that, I am really only one small tiny part of the full volunteer leadership team that runs #SAchat and 99.99% of the credit for the past year goes to Erica Thompson, Seth Hagler, Lisa Endersby, Julie Larsen, and Jay Chauhan. They are truly leaders giving their time and talents to the world.

Here’s to another 365 sunrises and sunsets on our great community! Queue the fireworks.

A while back I keynoted at the ACUI Region 6 conference in Florida. For those unfamiliar, ACUI stands for Association of College Unions International. ACUI people are in charge of the physical student union space on campus. This can mean anything from hosting student events, to furniture, to vacuum cleaners. At larger schools they often run entirely independent event calendars from the traditional student activities departments.

Initially my talk was supposed to be around the topic of digital student engagement. In the end, this is what I keynoted on, but in the back of my mind I wanted to totally mix it up with a brand new speech that I’ve been thinking more and more about titled, “Chairs, Stairs, and Garbage Cans: Your Partners in Student Engagement.”

It’s in its infancy right now, but the basic idea being that the physical environment in which students walk through every day has as much to do with student engagement as do the events and activities hosted in the physical environment. It’s not just about the layout and design of the physical space (round tables vs square tables), but also in the creative repurposing of the space.

Like I said, this idea is currently just a seedling germinating in my brain, but I’d love to ping-pong brainstorm with others who have thought about this more. Till then, here are some examples for inspiration…

A football team practices set plays over and over again in preparation for the upcoming game. An army works out like crazy in preparation for the battle. Avon Breast Cancer Walk volunteers prep months ahead of time in preparation for their once-a-year walk.

Whether a game, a battle, or a walk, they each provide the same level of motivation and focus for a team by having a tangible team rally point. A rally point is a singular event in which the entire team comes together for a set period of time and produces some outcome.

Some student groups already have a defined rally point such as THON. But many others I’ve encountered over the years don’t and it shows in the team moral. Without a tangible rally point, it’s hard for the leaders to express to the rest of the team ‘why’ what they are doing matters. Creating an emotional bond within the team is a lot harder in words than it is through a physical event in which all hands are on deck.

Follow these three rules and set up a rally point for your team:

1. Repeating event (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
2. Defined start and stop times to the event
3. Involves as many team members as possible

Part of the intense facilitation/speaking training that I acquired through my three years working with QLN, was a deeper understand of their core tenets. Two tenets that still stick heavily with me today in the work I do with training staff, faculty, and administration on leveraging social media for increased student engagement are called, “The Prime Directive” and “Rapport vs Influence.”

Let me step back before moving on with the QLN tenets.

Rejection to “this generation’s technology” is a common reaction that comes up during almost every faculty training I’ve attended . The frequency has dropped over the past seven years, but it still exists. Through the rejection, comes anger and frustration that spills over to cover a plethora of topics. Now is a good time to introduce the “Reaction to Technological Change” chart to help put the anger in perspective.

Sometimes in these trainings, I go on a mini rant to say how it doesn’t work to stay angry or frustrated at Facebook, Twitter, Texting, or Google+ because it’s the world this generation is living in. By rejecting their world, you are rejecting them, and they need you. They need you to show them your morals. They need you to show them your values. They need you to show them your traditions. They need you to help them be better people in this world. After all, that is your job as an educator. And you won’t be allowed to influence them unless you have rapport with them, which brings me back to the two QLN tenets.

• The Prime Directive
• Rapport vs Influence

The end goal of an educator is to influence an individual in such a way that they become better citizens of the world. Influence is like currency that you spend on someone that they gave to you, and the way to increase your “Influence Currency” is by building a relationship with the individual. As you build the relationship, they will give you more “Influence Currency” that you can turn around and hand back to them in the form of influence. So the question then becomes, how do you build rapport with someone?

Building rapport with someone comes down to showing that you are interested and care about an individual and the world they live in. It doesn’t mean you have to live in their world, just be interested and curious. You go into their world to build the relationship, then you bring them back to your world to spend some of your “Influence Currency” to give them your values, morals, and traditions. Then you send them back into their world to be better citizens in THEIR world, not yours. Theirs to ours, ours to theirs.

I understand anger in terms of the “Reactions to Technological Change” chart above, but if your goal is to better connect with this generation, then staying angry or frustrated won’t work. It’s time to reach past the CNN headline and open up your curiosity door to see what their world is really like so you can increase your “Influence Currency.”

Earlier this year, I was honored to be invited to attended the inaugural #140edu conference in NYC which brought together several hundred educators for two days to talk about the future of education. Modeled after TED, each person was given roughly 10 minutes to talk about his/her topic. My topic was on leveraging social media to increase student engagement outside the classroom. You can watch my keynote here.

After the first day of the conference it was clear that the focus of my talk was different than almost everyone else. While everyone was involved in education some how and had a desire to improve it, almost all the topics involved how to make “in-classroom” learning better, while my focus was on “out-of-classroom” learning. In higher ed this is often an area managed by a Student Affairs department.

I’ve attended dozens of education reform/revolution type conferences over the years, and I always end up feeling like the lone wolf talking about the “out-of-classroom” learning space. The informal learning moments that happen in-between classes.

Higher education analyst, Thomas G. Mortenson, revealed that a typical student will spend 15% of their day in class or working on classroom work and 35% of their day sleeping. That leaves 50% of the day for working or hanging around the campus community.

According to a UCLA national study of college seniors 4 out of 5 seniors say their most significant learning moments happened outside the classroom.

Academic researchers Astin, Tinto, and several others, conclude that the more socially involved a student is within the campus community, the higher his/her retention and graduation rates are.

With such strong data to support the work I’m doing, why do I always feel like an outsider at the education reform conferences where the conversation is dominated by in-classroom learning?

Luggage Porter by ColbyBluth

The day before Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern Seaboard, a friend asked my wife and I to help volunteer setting up an evacuation center in NYC. While helping out, I was trying to be as nice as possible to the people coming in seeking shelter. I’d stop my work to help people carry luggage up stairs, answer questions, and clean up water spills. All of which I thought was part of my job as a volunteer.

After helping a family carry their luggage up some stairs, a supervisor stopped me and said…

“You shouldn’t be helping the evacuees as much because we need to train them to know that this is a self-help facility. They need to do things on their own. Training them that we will help them with everything is just setting us up for failure because there will soon be a lot more of them then there are of us and we won’t be able to help everyone.”

As soon as she said that, I flashbacked to the day before when I was doing an orientation training at a school and the president spoke before me. In his closing remarks to the orientation leaders, he said…

“No matter what, make sure to never, ever, ever let a parent pick up any luggage.”

Then a couple days later on Twitter I saw this Tweet…

So my questions are, are we doing too much for our new students? Are we training them that no matter what they need, we are going to make it happen for them? Are we turning college into a daycare facility verses a place where you are expected to carry your own bag because after all, it’s your life?

I spent some time at Carnegie Mellon University visiting a former intern last week. As we walked through their beautiful University Center, I noticed a large number of campus clubs with tables set up trying to solicit students to join their group. Every table was covered with reading material and a bowl of candy to entice students to come closer. My mom taught me when I was really little to never go towards a stranger handing out candy . We also passed several bulletin boards littered with posters for upcoming events. It all reminded me of an advertisement I saw for a marketing class I was invited to attend…

“If you market it, they will come.”

I don’t agree. Both in business and for student groups. I prefer this slogan…

“Show not tell.”

Instead of an info table for your organization, set up an interesting or creative activity related to your topic, in a place with high foot traffic. You’ll get a 1000x times more curious onlookers by showing what you do verses telling people what you do. If nothing else, you’ll have spent your time doing something verses just talking about it from behind a table.

Let’s stop marketing to prospective members and start engaging them.

“I know from my own education that if I hadn’t encountered two or three individuals that spent extra time with me, I’m sure I would have been in jail.” – Steve Jobs

“I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. Equal opportunity to me, more than anything, means a great education. Maybe even more important than a great family life. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fall far short of that.” – Steve Jobs

“It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment.” – Steve Jobs

“School was pretty hard for me at the beginning.” – Steve Jobs

“[In school] I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.” – Steve Jobs

“[My teacher] basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such a respect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn.” – Steve Jobs

“I’d like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for, making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why should they work at a school for thirty-five to forty thousand dollars if they could get a job here at a hundred thousand dollars a year?” – Steve Jobs

“The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.” – Steve Jobs

“The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can.” – Steve Jobs

“…if you ask who are the customers of education, the customers of education are the society at large, the employers who hire people, things like that. But ultimately I think the customers are the parents. Not even the students but the parents. The problem that we have in this country is that the customers went away. The customers stopped paying attention to their schools, for the most part.” – Steve Jobs

“Each year has been so robust with problems and successes and learning experiences and human experiences that a year is a lifetime at Apple. So this has been ten lifetimes.” – Steve Jobs

“I dropped out of Reed College [Portland, Oregon] after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?” – Steve Jobs

“I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.” – Steve Jobs

“The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.” – Steve Jobs

“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.” – Steve Jobs

NAME:
Booshaka

URL:
http://www.booshaka.com

WHAT IT DOES:
Attaches a point-scoring system to the activity of your Facebook Fans to help you discover your Top Fans through an engagement dashboard.

MY TAKE:
Long time readers will know that I’m a fan of the 90-9-1 rule when it comes to community engagement, so to have a tool that really brings this rule to life is a big deal and something I’ve been waiting for. It’s not perfect yet as it seems to only track month-to-month, but I’m sure in due time, they’ll have a full data dashboard.

The actionable outcomes of having a visualization of your Fan’s engagement will be huge. You’ll be able to identify your trending leaders. You’ll be able to reward the top engaged users every month. You’ll build a game layer ontop of engagement. You’ll be able to…what else? How do you see this being valuable to your work?

SCREEN SHOTS:

Okay, I made up that word, but before our etymologist readers split for the hills, hear me out as to what it means.

When it comes to social media, I’m a data person and every month I run an analytics report to measure what’s working, what’s not working, and the overall growth of a couple Facebook Pages I help manage.

One particular Page has over 20,000 “Likes” on Facebook. A poll or link generates a ton of responses on their Page. If I post that same link on another Page that is 1/10th the size, the response rate is extremely low.

Without “perspectivizing” the data, the smaller Page would probably feel unhappy about the online engagement in comparison to the larger Page. But if we calculate the average level of online engagement per Fan (ALE), we find a different story.

The 20k Fan Page generates a .096 ALE whereas the 2k Fan Page generates a .153 ALE.

Applying an ALE score helps both big and small players really see what’s going on with their accounts.

Here’s how to calculate the ALE of your account…

1. Log into your Facebook Page Insights.
2. Change the date to the date you want to calculate.
3. On the “Overview” page scroll down to “Post Feedback” and record that number.
4. Click on the “Users” page and scroll down to “New Likes.”
5. Toggle “New Likes” to “Total” and hover over the end of the time period and record that number.
6. Divide the “Post Feedback” number by the “Total New Likes” number to determine your Page’s ALE number.

Once you’ve calculated your ALE, please share it in the comments below so we can see a community norm.