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?

Sir Ken Robinson continues to be a hero of ours for his ability to perfectly articulate how to imporve the educational system. In case you haven't watched any of his pervious TED talks, check them out here and here.

(via @NikiRudolph)

Most student club advisors will tell you that club engagement goes through waves; some years are rockstars and others are duds. Almost every club starts the year with aspirations of rockstardom, but within a couple weeks, the excitement and motivation of the leadership team fades, and thus, the entire club activity withers. In pondering this problem, I've been talking more and more about an idea called engagement-based leadership (EBL), meaning that leadership is not a one-time elected thing, but rather an ongoing, ever-changing position rewarded based on engagement. Before I talk more about EBL, first let's dissect the problem of why student leaders fade within a month of being elected. 

Several years ago, I walked the second day of a 2-Day Avon Walk For Breast Cancer with my wife and some friends. Anyone who's ever done the walk knows how grueling it is. Blisters alone are painful, but the average Avon walker can expect to endure multiple layers of blisters building up until his or her entire foot becomes one big blister. It's disgusting and painful and makes the second day of the walk intense. The organizers know that completion of the walk is extremely difficult without a continuous onslaught of support from spectators and volunteers. That's why for every walker, they commit to line the entire path with at least five cheerers. On the last leg of the walk, my feet blistered up and shot a pain through my body with each step. Mentally and physically I was ready to quit. My motivation was gone. But then, as we turned the corner, there was a smiling old lady sitting in a wheel chair, wearing a cap to cover her bald head and holding a sign that read, "I'm why you're walking, Thank you." Like a bolt of electricity, my whole body reenergized and plowed toward the finish line. Imagine if the only rewards for walking the race were in the beginning when they pumped us up, and at the end when we crossed the finish line? The attrition rates would be horrendous! 

Like the Avon walk, student leaders begin the year excited and motivated about the idea of the journey they're about to start. They might have just attended an award ceremony where the outgoing leaders were showered in praise for the hard work they did throughout the year, which further motivates the incoming leaders. So much support. So much praise. And then, let's say within a month or so, reality sets in. The real work starts, and the "blisters" of being a leader build up. But unlike the Avon walk, with a motivational checkpoint waiting for you at every street corner, the next motivational checkpoint for student leaders most likely won't be for another six months, during their outgoing ceremony when they are praised for all the hard work they did throughout the year. Thus, within the first couple months of being a leader, the excitement and motivation fade and the attrition rates go up. It should be noted that some leaders drop off for other reasons, such as class overload, work overload, or personal issues.

What's a solution look like? 

As the advisor, you could make sure to set up a collection of individual checkpoints for your leaders throughout the year, so you make sure they stay excited and motivated. At bare minimum, let's say you create checkpoints that happen once per week for ten minutes where you praise them for the work they are doing and remind them of the bigger picture of student engagement. Just one leader multiplied out for eight months, that's just under five hours of your time. Now expand that to 50-300 leaders. If you don't think you have a life now… 

Enter EBL. The goal is still the same, keep the leaders motivated on an ongoing basis so they can survive through the typical student leader burnout, but in EBL, the tactics change. In EBL, you are moving the motivational checkpoints away from you as the admin/advisor and pushing it to the students. EBL builds in a peer-to-peer motivational system that is ongoing and ever present. Now it doesn't matter if you have 50 or 5000 student leaders. Actually, the more leaders you have, the better. 

How does it work? 

It's no secret I'm a fan of Whole Foods (also known as Whole Paycheck). Because there's a WF on my way home from work, I tend to frequently stop in and grab a few items. Over time, I realized that WF is one of the top five places I visit the most every week, which makes me a pretty darn engaged customer. In fact, WF should probably be rewarding me for being so engaged. Enter FourSquare, Yelp, and SCVNGR. For those unfamiliar with these three sites, they are, simply stated, mobile check-in tools. I can be anywhere in NY and check in that I am there via my mobile phone. Nothing special yet, until you start to receive prizes, titles, and recognition for checking in more often. For a while, I was crowned the Mayor of our WF because I was the most engaged customer. But then my speaking travel schedule picked up and for several months I disappeared and rightfully so, someone else took over as Mayor. 

EBL rewards students based on their engagement. The more engagement "points" you score, the more rewards, titles, and recognition you receive. To repeat from above, leadership is not a one-time yearly elected thing, but rather an ongoing, ever-changing position that is rewarded based on engagement. 

There certainly is much more to debate and discuss here, but consider this post only a surface-level introduction to the idea. I'm not interested in getting into the weeds just yet, so I purposefully left out many of the operational details. 

The Value of EBL? 

Admin/Advisor – Student Leader attrition rates will drop, which means student leaders will stick around longer and be more active in their clubs. The increased activity will make clubs more successful throughout the year. The admin/advisor also won't have to do as much individual student leader motivational check-ins. 

Student Leaders – Like a video game, the rewards and benefits built into EBL will keep the student leaders motivated throughout the entire year on an ongoing basis. They are going to have more fun because their clubs are more active and engaged. They also won't feel as much guilt about dropping off the map and letting the club die due to some personal issues they didn't plan for ahead of time. A new leader with the most engagement points is ready to step up to Mayorship. 

Students – They will have a larger group of active clubs to join. After joining they don't have to rely on a disengaged elected leader to keep the group going. Leadership is open to anyone who wants it and is willing to work for it. 

Wrap Up 

EBL is a blend of game theory and student engagement theory. Every student affairs professional knows the pains of deadbeat leaders and thus dead groups. EBL is a new paradigm in thinking about leadership. If we want to break out of the normal student engagement levels of 16-40%, we have to think differently. The ideas, tactics, and tech tools we use have to embody this new way of thinking. It's not just about making paperwork more efficient, that's just extracting more energy from the resources you already know exists. It's about exploring new potential energy that is sitting dormant in the 60-84% of the rest of your student body, that's a massive untapped pool of energy.

The Backstory

Kevin and I started The Student Affairs Collaborative in 2005 to test our 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.

In the beginning, 100% of the content was written by me, Kevin, and our speaker friend 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 drinks at Panera Bread Co 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, 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 hasn't opened up its history past Feb 2010, so the data can't be verified yet, but I remember the hour generating around 100 tweets and 10 people participating. 80% of those tweets came from me and Debra though :-/.

This week marks the one year anniversary of #SAchat, and the community has exploded in celebration. Last week, I jokingly declared that the SA Collaborative editors were bringing fireworks to the party, and fireworks they did bring! I've personally received tweets, emails, phone calls, faxes, and even postcards in celebration.

Where We Are Now

The last seven days of #SAchat'ter generated 2,500 tweets with 300 people participating! The hashtag #SAchat is the go-to place on Twitter for student affairs. Many people have the hashtag saved as a favorite search and keep it open all day on their 3rd party clients, which further solidifies its validity.

The SA Collaborative is now five years old, and has around 700 subscribed readers, 3,900 Twitter followers, 17 content contributors, and is the #1 ranking Google search for "Student Affairs Blog."

As expected, lots of additional niche student affairs chats are popping up with varying success. Most are initiated by the community, but some of the established organizations in the industry are launching their own chats. I say, the more the merrier! It makes sense that as the all-purpose #SAchat grows, sub chats with a more narrow focus will emerge. Once you've found the music fans, now you want to find the old-time-bluegrass-with-a-fiddle-in-the-band music fans because that is what you are really into.

A large percentage of the community only knows my name because of the generous outpouring of gratitude I've received over the past week. I tend not to overly participate in the weekly chats or blog. It's not that I don't care or have time, it's that you all will learn far more from your peers, who walk in your shoes 24/7, than from me being an outside supporter of student affairs. So I'll happily continue on from behind the scenes helping the community grow by facilitating as many relationships as possible, so we all continue to stay on the dance floor dancing together.

Why This Community Continues To Grow

Every community is comprised of champions, participants, and lurkers. This is also called the 90-9-1 rule in which 1% of a community will be the champions, 9% will participate, and 90% will simply lurk. Wikipedia is the most famous example of the 90-9-1 rule. The challenge of community organizers is to provide the right incentives to the right people so they stay engaged in the community. Champions want an audience to help and support, like they received when they were just starting off. Participants want an easy way to engage with people like them around relevant topics and to learn from the champions. Lurkers want a way to watch the activity between the champions and participants, and when ready, a way to easily test the temperature of the water.

I continuously work with the editorial team to make sure we are moving the community in the right direction. For the champions, that means making it easier for them to share their amazing knowledge to an increasingly larger audience. For participants, that means providing quality content, a fun atmosphere, and peers like them they can connect with. For lurkers, that means keeping the community as open as possible and providing baby steps of engagement like the TuesTally.

What's Next

We're only a couple of weeks away from launching a directory for the #SAchat community that will further facilitate relationships and learning communities around shared interests. I want to help the student affairs graduate students find, participate, and learn from the #SAGrad community. I want to help women who work in housing find, participate, and learn from the #wihsng community. I want to help first year experience people find, participate, and learn from the #FYEchat community. I want to help the #RLchat (Res Life people) community grow, the #SAASS (assessment people) community grow, etc, etc, etc. The new directory will make all of this possible, and I predict it will challenge the established student affairs organizations to rethink how they engage their community. Heck, the #SAchat community has already turned some heads!

Three Challenges

• Challenge #1 – If you don't already have a blog, start one and add it to our student affairs blog directory. Write about your experiences at work so we can then share them with others who can learn from you. You're already a teacher to someone, they just haven't met you yet.
• Challenge #2 – Help the community grow. Bring one new colleague to the next #SAchat. Email the SA Collaborative link to five new people. This party has just begun.
• Challenge #3 – Think about how the lessons of this community relate back to your campus in terms of student engagement. How can you move away from being the gatekeepers of engagement and more toward being the facilitators of relationships around shared interests? How can you apply the 90-9-1 rule? How can you support more peer-to-peer learning among students? How can you help your students find old-time-bluegrass-with-a-fiddle-in-the-band music lovers like them? If it’s worked for you here in this community, there’s a strong possibility it will work for students on your campus. 

And Lastly

My excitement for this community is overflowing. I believe we are pushing not just student affairs forward, but the entire educational field. We’re working our tails off over here at Red Rover to duplicate the successes of this community with the students on your campus. Wait till we launch the #SAchat directory, then you’ll really see what I’m talking about.

I’m writing this post from my perspective, but really it’s a culmination of countless conversations between the editorial team that are well deserving of endless praise, so extra cheers and digital cookies to Debra Sanborn, Cindy Kane, Ed Cabellon, Liz Van Lysal, Stacy Oliver, and Kevin Prentiss.

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

The deck below was created to frame the conversation around how Red Rover can support alumni departments with their goals. The slide show can also be viewed, downloaded, and embedded here.

via Alltop

Yesterday, USA Today reported on how student participation in co-curricular (outside the classroom) activities leads to higher GPAs and a more satisfied social life. 

"College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom."

The article's focus wasn't about participation in standard clubs such as German and Chess, but rather in more obscure clubs such as Michigan's Squirrel Club or Harvard's College Cube Club. In other words, the long tail of student interests.

But ask any student activities department how they would feel about a 50% increase in registered campus clubs and you'd experience a face of joyous panic.

Supporting the long tail means the position of student activities also has to shift from gate keeper to facilitator. Instead of registering, formalizing, and monitoring every organization, support a platform that allows students to self-organize around an infinite number of interests and act as the facilitator to introduce like minded students together. 

"Seth have you met Randy, you both like White Water Canoeing" 

Allowing bizarre peer-to-peer learning communities to form through the long tail will not only increase engagement, but also will lead to longer lasting friendships because the commonality of "we're the only ones who love XYZ" is already established. As John Gardner, president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education said in the USA Today article:

"Friendship formation is task No. 1 for most students. If you don't make friends, you're lonely, you're anxious, you feel sort of adrift."

New tools are supporting schools as they shift towards a more decentralized peer-to-peer engagement model.

Through the schools using our Red Rover campus directory tool, we can actually visualize, and for the first time quantify, what the long tail of engagement looks like. 

Dean Long, of LAUS, only needs two minutes to perfectly explain how every educator should be thinking about social media.

And if your life is too busy for a two minute interlude, here are the highlights: