Conferences

Tom
Original post
Conferences — 2 Comments
6
Dec 11

Education Reform: Feeling Like An Outsider

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?

Tom
Original post
#sachat / Conferences / First-Year Experience / Professional Organizations — 2 Comments
18
Aug 11

Weak Ties vs Strong Ties

James Fowler’s keynote address at the #ACUI11 conference this year stirred up quite a discussion after he made the claim that online relationships had little influence over behavior. As expected, our friends in the #SAchat community quickly expressed concern for the statement through the Twitter backchannel and afterwards in the hotel lobby as they’ve experienced a great deal of influence exchange through #SAchat. In talking over the keynote with Jeff Lail from UNCG that night, he brought up the idea of weak ties verses strong ties within relationships. In-person connections are more likely to build strong ties whereas online connections are more likely to result in weak ties.

Over the past year, it’s been interesting to watch this concept play out within the micro world of Student Affairs. The #SAchat community on Twitter is the most active hashtag for Student Affairs professionals to connect, learn, and grow from each other. However, within #SAchat there are many sub cultures such as Residence Life, Orientation Leaders, First Year Experience, etc. These subcultures have tried, several times, to create and maintain a hashtag to connect their members together. But most of the hashtags have faded away. Why?

Let’s start with #SAchat. The original group of people who started #SAchat knew each other in the real world. There were strong ties within the inner core. This meant that if no one else participated in the conversation, there would still be a longer term commitment to the conversation between the people in the inner core because they shared strong ties. As it happened, other people did join the conversation and over time it grew. If it were a dance floor, the total number of people on the dance floor increased through weak ties, but the number of people with strong ties in the center of the dance floor stayed the same. The critical shift in the community happened last year during conference season when #SAchat members hosted meetups at each conference. They wanted to meet their weak tie online friends IRL (in real life) and thus turn them into strong tie friends. The results were amazing, the #SAchat community grew exponentially. Back to the dance floor, not only did the overall number of people on the dance floor increase, but the number of people in the center of the dance floor increased as many of the weak ties were converted into strong ties. Each meetup repeats this process.

During conference season this year, I made it a point to connect with as many #SAchat people as possible IRL because not only did I want to get to know them better, but I also know how strong ties are what keep people engaged in the community longer.

On the flip side is #FYEchat. I started the #FYEchat community to mimic the success of the #SAchat community. But it has never quite worked [yet] even though I see the value it could provide to First Year Experience professionals. The difference is I started the community on a foundation of weak ties so the commitment to keep the conversation going wasn’t there. So it fades in and out.

Another example is the #WLsalt community. The community started online with a collection of weak ties but has since grown to a dedicated group. The critical difference between #WLsalt and #FYEchat was that soon after a collection of weak ties were created online, they hosted a meetup for the community at a conference to convert those weak ties into strong ties. The strong ties thus formed the inner core of their dance floor.

In terms of weak ties and strong ties, there are two options to creating and maintaing an online community. Either start with an inner core built on strong ties that are dedicated, or convert your weak ties into strong ties quickly. Once the inner core is established, and the community norm of inclusion is practiced, you’ll watch your community grow with little effort from you. Weak ties won’t have as much influence over you as strong ties whether online or offline.

SA Team
Original post
Conferences / Poll — No Comments
8
Mar 11

TuesTally: What is your conference “must-have” item?

If you cannot view this poll click here.


Joe
Original post
#sachat / Conferences — 4 Comments
15
Dec 10

Living in the Backchannel: Pre-conference and Day 1

Before reading you may want to make yourself familiar with what a backchannel is by reading the #SAChat transcript from the 12/9 chat on the topic.

#LEI10. That simple six character term has completely transformed my perspective of what it means to be engaged at a conference.  It is the Twitter hashtag for the 2010 Leadership Educators Institute. The conversation started in late October by @NASPATweets and Chris Conzen (@clconzen) with reminders for registration. The Twitter stream then went silent until the end of November when the conference was just a week away. Then December arrived and #LEI10 came alive.

Think about how you’ve connected with fellow conference-goers before a service like Twitter. Perhaps you posted it on your Facebook profile status or sent an e-mail to a listserv asking who else was going. In both of those cases, you were throwing up a signal flare in a forest and hoping someone not only saw it but responded to it. With Twitter, that hashtag becomes a lighthouse, or the North Star of the conference, not just a flash in the pan call for help. The hashtag serves as a beacon to guide participants to a place where lively discussions are happening in real time and, as a result, connections are breaking through the barriers of the virtual world and being made in real life. In the days leading up to the conference, Twitter allowed me to connect and be aware of what “tweeps” were going and who I’d get a chance to meet in real life. This may seem frivolous but you can’t tell me that when you go to a party and do not know anyone else that is going your anxiety level isn’t heightened just a bit. With Twitter, a conference where you are surrounded by strangers from all over the country became a conference where you and a group of your tweeps can meet up. This made the conference not only a professional development opportunity to learn new skills but also a chance to deepen friendships and strengthen your network. It is organized, sponsored, and supported by the association running the conference (in most cases) which adds legitimacy and purpose to the usage of it.

On the first day of the conference, the backchannel provided fellow tweeps a chance to locate each other right from the start of the keynote speech with tweets like this one from @LeslieMPage:

During the opening speech 55 tweets were sent responding to questions posed by the speakers, posting resources the speaker had shared, and sharing quotes that struck a chord. A perfect example from @OberBecca:

Now, I have followed a backchannel before for other conferences so I had an idea of what types of tweets would be most helpful and what would hopefully engage those, who are not in attendance, to contribute. What I did not expect was the amount of effort and time it takes! Contributing to a backchannel can turn into a part-time job while attending a conference. You can find yourself so involved in your tweets and other participants’ tweets that you forget that you are in the room with the person providing the information. My analogy for this is going to a concert and focusing on the screens on the side of the stage that give you a close up of the performer, rather than looking at the actual performer. How is that any different than watching the performer on TV? If you are in their presence, pay attention to them! With Twitter, your mobile device can turn into that screen at the concert right in your lap and in place of being a participant of a conference, you are now a bystander. So, as great a resource as this could be, remember to be mindful of the presenters and be careful not to be rude.  Educate conference-goers of what you’re learning by tweeting resources, quotes from the presenter, or questions posed by the audience. Do not tweet that the lunch spread looks delicious or that the room is chilly.

The first day of the conference backchannel rendered 152 total tweets of which I contributed 31. The backchannel had sucked me in. It was exciting, it was fun, it was leading to more connections, more resources, and had me more engaged in a conference that I had ever been before. I’ll get into my experience of the second day of the conference in my next post which will highlight the explosion of the backchannel (over 400 conference tweets!), what happened when my phone died resulting in being cut off from the backchannel, and an epic tweet-up.

Cindy
Original post
Budgets / Campus Issues / Club/Org Recruitment / Collaborative Learning / Conferences / Creativity / Leadership Training / Low Cost Programming / Online Tools / Orientation / Professional Organizations / Technology and Programming / Uncategorized / University / Web/Tech — 25 Comments
20
Sep 10

Blog Reflections: Student Leader Development

I always hope for that perfect storm of aligned experiences when sending a small group of organization representatives to a conference.  In my mind, the students will be empowered with questions and ideas to pursue upon the return home; their energy ignites a new sense of motivation in their group; and they begin to pursue their new definition of the future.

Sound great?

Hasn’t happened for me yet, either.

Sure, our students had some great presentations and excellent experiences but nearly always my student groups struggle to accurately communicate the true picture of what they experienced.  They struggle to not use too many “inside jokes” when describing their time at the conference and nearly always ended up engaged in a conversation about “why can’t we send more people next year?”  Given that our travel funds are not likely to increase anytime in the near future, we needed a new plan.

So, my insanely talented staff member (that’s you, Matt!) says, let’s try blogging.

Our office now requires any students traveling to conferences sponsored by our department to blog each day while they are there.  We create a blogging site for the group’s travels and make each of them the authors. I love the fact that those of us not attending the conference can keep track of their experiences and that we can comment and have dialogue while they are there. We also send the site around to our student affairs colleagues and division leadership so that they can get some insight into student experiences.

This has enabled us to document these travel experiences and now see, in writing, what we already knew about the impact of spending time with other students who are similarly committed to common goals.  As one of our student orientation coordinators posted, “I don’t think I ever got completely used to everyone actually understanding ‘Orientation Speak’ and being able to have in-depth conversations about different aspects of their programs.”

The use of blogs has enabled our students to do more active reflection on these conference experiences and has allowed us to use the sites to help other students understand what the experience might be like the next time around. We get pretty active commentary from participants about what they like and don’t like about the conferences and, when warranted, our structured reflection topics allow for some time for them to pause during a busy conference and make meaning of this experience that the university has offered to them.

For our department, we reported themes communicated in these blogs as part of our annual report in hope of illustrating the impact that off-campus professional travel has on our student leaders.  Themes of increased pride in our university, increased confidence in their own leadership efficacy, and enhanced sense of community with other student leaders certainly made this student affairs professional proud.

If you’d like to take a look at one of them, here’s a link to the blog from our delegates at the National Greek Leadership Association conference in Hartford, CT this year.

http://bscgreeksgotongla.blogspot.com/

And just for fun…check out the Wordle the blog for our Student Orientation Coordinators’ trip to the regional NODA Conference (at the top of this post) and the Wordle for our Program Committee’s travels to the NACA regional conference (2) pasted below.  Looks to me like they had a good experience…and had some fun along the way!

So, how do you facilitate reflection when your students travel? Any interested in blogging?  If you are, let’s correspond and if our students attend the same conferences we can cross-promote their sites!

Ross
Original post
#sachat / Conferences / Uncategorized — 10 Comments
19
Jul 10

Student Affairs Up North – Canada, CACUSS and Komives

From June 20-23, over 600 Canadian student affairs professionals gathered in Edmonton, Alberta for Shine 2010, the annual Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) conference.

For those not accustomed to your northern neighbour, think of  CACUSS as our NASPA/ACPA and adjust for the fact that student affairs in Canada:

  • Is primarily comprised of publicly funded institutions
  • Has around 1/10th the population of the States but has 4/10th the comedians  and  8.66/10th the hockey players
  • Doesn’t require a graduate degree to hold an entry level position (though the placement exchange system is really, quite amazing and kinda energizing/intimidating); and
  • Can actually fit our conference on a campus which means a large group of  us can relive our residence days…

The Shine theme was quite appropriate, not only for the 19 hours of brilliant daylight during the summer solstice, but also for the illuminating opening keynote – Susan R. Komives.

Now, Dr. Komives needs no introduction to this crowd, being a Legend and all but her comments were timely, thought provoking and worth sharing (plus, I tweeted a couple of posts which seemed to resonate).

Key Komives Comments Condensed

1.  Why do we do what we do?

Clearly we want to help students grow and learn but in the realm of the institution, what do we own and how intentional are we in relation to this?  Further, how does this impact the impact the student experience: after all, we call it curricular and co-curricular, students simply call it college.

Dr. Komives noted that one of the roles for student affairs is to proactively build upon collaborative leadership that is future thinking oriented thinking (such as our aboriginal peoples who consider decisions  that will impact 7 generations).

Student Affairs and its role with sustainability is a good example of this.

2.  Paradigm Paralysis and Positive Psychology

Given our role as dashboards for our institutions, we have an ongoing responsibility to encourage/force reflection amongst our departments.  To this end, we need to be able to abandon old practices/ideas.  A good method for this is to create a ‘going out of business list’ which identifies core functions vs. supplemental activities.

Another method is to adopt some good ol’ positive psychology and shift the concept of “doing more with less” to “doing more with more”.  This made me think a lot of Roger Martin’s Opposable Mind concept and the shift of thinking from conventional to integrative.

3.   Key Komives Questions

Dr. Komives asked us to consider a number of reflective questions:

a)      What capacities do I need to focus on for development and what capacities do I need to park for development?

b)      What are you doing to ensure your organization is a learning organization?

c)      How healthy is your workplace – what is your role to ensure it is healthy

d)     How would you rank yourself in relation to other areas  on your campus

e)      Where do you think your President would rank you?

f)       How do you know your ranking – what are your key indicators?

So, with all of this in mind, what are your thoughts on the comments and questions raised?

Ross McMillan is Assistant Director, Student Community at York University, Toronto

Brian
Original post
Conferences / Resident Life / Uncategorized — 12 Comments
1
Jul 10

Where’s the Excitement?

This past weekend I returned from a trip to San Diego for the annual NACURH, Inc. conference. Folks in residence life may be familiar with NACURH – the National Association of College & University Residence Halls.

Although I’ve been working in residence life for a collective 8 years, both as a student and professional, this was my first-ever trip to a NACURH conference. NACURH is the national organization that many RHAs (Residence Hall Associations) are affiliated with. As the advisor to a National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH) on my campus, I was able to attend with a group of my student leaders.

Like most student affairs professionals, I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, ranging from ACPA and APCA to NACA and the national Habitat for Humanity Youth Leadership conference. Yet, somehow this particular conference was a tad bit different. First off, it was run by students for students… that’s the special thing about NACURH. This conference had energy, pizzazz, intensity, and a sense of pride. All of this reminded me of an important lesson that I am guilty of forgetting.

That lesson? Be excited. Be energized. Be proud. Be all of these things in the process of our daily routines.

I was in awe through the duration of the NACURH conference. So much energy. Students standing, chanting, screaming, and applauding their home institutions and regions. Students dancing on the sidewalks, making up cheers and chants, and dressing up in costume. It was wonderful to see so many student leaders from across the country under one roof with so much excitement.

This conference caused me to reflect… What excites me? What energizes me? What am I proud of?

I wrote this blog post to get us all thinking about these three questions. Feel free to share. After all, we need to constantly remind ourselves of why we do what we do. We need to remind ourselves that there are things that excite us, energize us, and make us proud here in the student affairs profession.

Feel the excitement (NACURH 2010)

SA Team
Original post
Conferences / Poll / Professional Organizations — 7 Comments
8
Jun 10

TuesTally: Conference Presentations

If you cannot view this poll click here.

And here are the results from the last poll.

Cindy
Original post
Conferences / Professional Organizations — 16 Comments
8
Jun 10

Calling all “experts!”

One of the best things about the world of social media is that former barriers relating to positional leadership go out the window. You could banter for six months via Twitter with someone and then realize he is a published author on the very topic you are debating.  You can be a VP for Student Affairs and have conversation with first year RD’s about a campus issue that has you stumped.  You can also write blog posts on any topic and leave it up to your readers to figure out how credible your arguments are or how much experience you have had with the issue at hand.

After a few less than perfect educational sessions at NACA and ACPA this year as well as some growing interest in research and writing, I find myself thinking more about the idea of expertise in our field and how it is developed and proven.  I distinctly remember being a new professional and wondering at what point I would be ready to stand up in front of my colleagues and proclaim expertise on a topic.  I think as a new professional I figured I should present on anything and everything I had experience with and then after getting more experience I realized how little I really did know and how many others out there knew more.

I know the answer lies somewhere in the middle and the secret is to push yourself to learn new areas with the right amount of support and foundation to your work.  Given conference proposal season is looming, I wanted to offer a few tips to readers out there in SA Blog land if there is anyone else out there wondering what it takes.

If you are trying to think of a presentation topic to submit for an upcoming conference, ask yourself a few questions:

  • What has been the most important thing that I have done over the past year on my campus?
  • In what ways is my work innovative or different from my colleagues at other campuses in similar positions?
  • Is there an important discussion that needs to be a part of the conference that hasn’t been there in the past?
  • Is there an interesting point of common interest between my close colleagues that might make for a good co-presentation?

Once you’ve come up with the right topic of focus, it’s time to write your proposal.  I’ve observed a few important things about conference proposals and presentations that I want to be sure to share:

  1. It’s all about the description.  How you write your session description makes all the difference.  Even though you might have to write it six months before you present it, this absolutely must be the way you plan your session.  Your participants are using this paragraph to decide whether or not to attend, so you had better deliver on what you promise or you’ll have some unhappy friends in that room.
  2. Put your experience in an accurate frame. If you are a first-year administrator and plan to present on supervision, you can create a session called “My First Year in Charge” and be very authentic about your expertise and shed some great light on an important topic.  This kind of title will make sure that the right people come to your session and that the fifteen year Director of Residence Life doesn’t end up in your session as the cranky one in the first row if she’s surprised to know you are a first year professional.
  3. Be honest. If you are presenting on a new program, say it’s a brand new program and frame it as a presentation about your pilot year.  If you’re presenting on something that has faults, admit them clearly.  There’s nothing worse than watching a presenter burst into flames as question after question from the participants begin to reveal a more honest truth than the one that has been discussed for the previous 45 minutes.
  4. Anticipate your audience. It’s pretty easy to anticipate what your audience might be looking to explore and what may motivate them to attend your session.  Review your session description and try to think like your audience. “Reading this, what would I expect to learn?”  I once did a presentation relating to podcasting where a good portion of the participants assumed I was going to teach them how to podcast.  In reality, we were talking about using podcasts in leadership programming but they were looking more for the “how-to.”  In future sessions, I remembered to be much clearer about what the session was not going to cover.
  5. References are important. Someone out there probably thought this topic was worth talking about too.  A reference list for those who attend your session is such a great addition.  It will show your participants that your ideas are connected to the rest of the profession and will give them a way to seek additional knowledge on the topic after you leave them wanting more.  You can even use other colleagues as references if you are talking about program innovations on campus.
  6. Theme-related corny stuff only goes so far. Please resist the urge to get over-schmaltzy with the conference theme stuff.  I know that sometimes mentioned as part of  the review process, but if we’re talking about professional conferences we want to be sure these programs are grounded in some kind of reality.  If the theme is “Soaring to New Heights” you can bet on the fact that the majority of the proposals will be “Soaring to New Heights with Technology” or “Soaring to New Heights in Assessment Practices.”  You can do better than that.

I hope that these tips might demystify the program proposal process a little bit and won’t scare you off from developing an idea.  My goal is just to focus you on being comfortable in your own skin – it’s easy to see when a presenter isn’t comfortable with their own content.  If you pick something that’s grounded in your experience, you’ll be the natural and inspirational presenter that you hope to be!  Best of luck!

SA Team
Original post
Conferences / Poll — 7 Comments
25
May 10

Tues Tally: Conference Tweet-Ups

If you cannot view this poll click here.

And here are the results from the last poll.

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