From web tools to lunch breaks (or lack thereof), here are the most popular SA Collaborative polls:

August 2010

Dear “SA Grad”:

Greetings!  As many of you begin (or return) to your graduate experiences, I’ve been meaning to share something that I’ve talked about on Twitter before, but never really had a chance to flush out.  I figured, why not do it today?

As you embark on this new academic year, I believe that your graduate training in technology will be inadequate.  For most of us in Higher Ed, we’ve been playing catchup for years, and frankly, I don’t know how much longer we can do it. (Higher education, generally is the slowest to adapt to rapid change.)  We need to shift this paradigm and move in a new direction, and it starts with you, our graduate students.

You need to find time to build your skill bases in emerging educational technology and social media integration into your Student Affairs work.  It is imperative that our Student Affairs Graduate Programs begin to infuse this important pedagogy into its curriculum to keep you up to date and competitive with other job seekers out there.  How can we, in good conscience, send you out into the workforce without these skills?

If I were a Student Affairs graduate student today (or frankly any type of Student Affairs professional), here are two things I would do to build my technology knowledge base:

1.  Sign up for a Twitter account and attend the weekly #sachat each Thursday at 1pm or 7pm EST this fall.
If you still are not on Twitter, now is the time to sign up and use it.  Not only is it the best free professional development tool out there, but if used properly, it can help land you a job!  Read my “Teaching Twitter to Colleagues” post for a step-by-step guide on getting set up and using it for the first week.  Put the #sachat in your calendar as a recurring appointment and join us for our weekly online student affairs conversation!

2.  Blogs: Read Them and Start Your Own
There are so many great blogs out there, rich with information and perspective.  Besides this SA Blog, some of the best technology information I have gotten has been from the following:
- Eric Stoller – Professional/Personal Blog | Inside Higher Ed Blog: Eric is one of the best Student Affairs & Technology bloggers out there. He’s been doing this since the mid 2000′s and is simply a great resource. (@EricStoller on Twitter)
- Dr. Rey Junco: Rey is a college professor (Lock Haven University, PA) and researcher who studies how social media use affects college students. (@ReyJunco on Twitter)
- General Technology and Social Media Blogs: Read Write Web | Mashable | EDUguru Add these to your RSS Readers if you haven’t already! (@rww @mashable @eduguru on Twitter)
- BreakDrink by Jeff Jackson: Jeff does some great work centralizing all the most current news and trends in student affairs! (@breakdrink on Twitter) He also does some great podcasting work!
- Kristendom Talks Tech: Thanks to a recommendation from Brenda Bethman, I’m a fan of Kristen Abell’s stuff as well.
- My blog is OK too “On the Go With Ed Cabellon” (@EdCabellon on Twitter)

I also would recommend starting your own blog, not only as a tool to share, but as a great way to reflect on your experiences!  Once you create your blog, add it our growing directory of Student Affairs blogs!

I wish you all the best as you start the new academic year.  I hope you will join our online community and be active and engaged with us!  We are here to help in anyway we can.

Sincerely,

Ed Cabellon
Director, Rondileau Campus Center
Bridgwater State University (MA)

What advice would you give new and returning Student Affairs graduate students regarding their technology training? What sources of online information would you recommend? Any other tech blogs by women you would like to recommend?

Career Services and Social Media: Todd really says it best

Let’s shift some paradigms: Introducing my new blog at Inside Higher Ed.

Challenge and Tech Support: Student Affairs practitioners and Tech Support departments…please let us be admins.

Do you YouTube? Don’t forget to add captions: Would you build a new building without an elevator? Nope… Then why would you ever create videos without captions?

George Orwell, Web Stats, and Your Site Visitors: Student Affairs + Web Stats….Nerdvana

I am thrilled to announce that I’m going to be blogging about Student Affairs and Technology for Inside Higher Ed (IHE). As an avid reader of IHE, I am very excited to join the IHE blogging team. I think that my posts on student affairs + technology will complement Joshua Kim’s blog on Technology and Learning.

Recently, I held a contest via Twitter to name my new blog. The incentive — a $100 Amazon gift card — courtesy of Inside Higher Ed. Several folks came up with interesting/creative blog names. I think the #SAChat Community provided the majority of ideas. Student Affairs folks are uber creative.

Here are my 3 favorite submissions:

• Jeff Jackson: The Stoller Strikes Back, Return of the Blogosphere, Student Affairs….I am Your Blogger
• Zack Ford: Challenge and Tech Support
• ACUHO-I (sent via DM): Binary Code of Conduct

Choosing a winner from these 3 has been extremely challenging. Star Wars references, Sanford, and an entire Association…how cool is that?!! After more than a week of deliberate (intentional ) deliberating I have decided that the winner of the gift card is:

Zack Ford’s submission made me laugh. It’s subtle….and I love subtlety. The obvious nod / homage to Nevitt Sanford warms the heart. Challenge and Support is one of my all-time favorite, and oft-used, student development theories.

It should be noted that Julie Larsen was correct…the official name of my new blog is going to be: Student Affairs and Technology. The name needed to be something that would be simple enough that any IHE reader would know exactly what it was about. The blog also needed to be search engine friendly…”Students Affairs + Technology” is simple and searchable.

Stay tuned for my first official post on Inside Higher Ed!

Honorable mention:

Julie P-Kirchmeier: Stoller: Resistance is Futile

Niki Rudolph: Epic Stoller

Justine Carpenter: Tech Tips for SAPs

Christopher Conzen: The Stoller Coaster

A Live Video Interview with Rey Junco
Monday, July 12 from 4:00pm – 5:00pm EST
Broadcasted over Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/student-affairs-3-0
Video Hashtag: #SA30

I’m pleased to announce that I will be sitting down with Rey Junco (@ReyJunco), Associate Professor in the Department of Academic Development and Counseling and the Director of Disability Service at Lock Haven University (PA) on TODAY at 4:00pm.  Rey is someone who I have been following for a while on Twitter and when I heard he would be in the Boston area, I just had to meet him!  I’m very excited that our schedules have worked out to make this happen!

We will be talking about how Rey uses quantitative methods to assess the effects of social media on student development, engagement, and success.  We’ll also be talking about how Rey teaches technology impacts on colleges students, how to use Social Media in your Higher Education marketing efforts, etc.   To learn more about Rey, please visit his blog.  I hope you’ll join me for this exciting interview!

What questions do you have for @ReyJunco?  Please leave them in the comment section and I’ll try to incorporate it during the interview!

#SACHAT BOSTON TWEETUP
After the interview is over, please join Rey and I for a summer Tweetup in the heart of Boston at John Harvard’s Brew House in Cambridge, MA!  Details and RSVP information here!

Pictures from the Tweetup

These days, you couldn’t swing a LOLCAT anywhere on the internet without banging kitty right into someone pitching themselves as a “guru” of something or other. I’ve become especially aware of this as a new business owner, because people call me to pitch this-and-that, and probably some of the other.

I’ve written a third post in my series “How to Tell a “Who-Do” from a “guru.” Originally, I cross-posted it here as well. That was at about 3 or 4 a.m this morning. Then I got up this morning, re-read it, and decided it didn’t really belong here. Not because it’s not relevant to this community (I think it is), but because it contains an affiliate link and some salty language. I can do that on my site, but thought after some consideration (and some coffee) that it didn’t belong here. I like writing here occasionally, and so I decided that it’s best to keep it clean and non-commercial. It’s the social contract we have here, so I don’t want to blur the lines. I didn’t come here to sell you anything but ideas.

If you’ve been reading the series, please feel free to visit HigherEdCareerCoach.Com today and read along. The post is about the value of engaging in communities to get where you are going in your life and career. And in part, it is a tribute to the great community I’ve found here as an occasional contributor to this blog, and as a participant in #sachat on Twitter.

For me, engaging with this unique community of professionals has broadened my perspectives, challenged me, inspired me, and encouraged me. I feel that as I get where I am going in my career, I’ve got a great group of colleagues not just cheering me on from the sidelines, but helping me run the plays, go long and head for the end zone.

Yesterday, I learned (quite by accident) that somehow, Higher Ed Career Coach got ranked #49 on the Technorati top blogs for small business. It wasn’t something I was even thinking about, but it’s a nice validation that something is going right. And I give credit to the awesome people and communities I’ve been a part of, especially this one.

How do you tell a “who-do” from a “guru?’ Look around you, read this blog, and participate in #sachat and all the other hashtag chats that have been spawned by this community’s synergy, and I think you’ll get the idea.

I have seen the “guru” and he is us.

In the words of the Hopi Elders: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Much has been said lately about the value of social media to job seekers. Since you’re reading a blog post about it, which you probably learned about from a post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or BrazenCareerist, the value of social media should be obvious. It is likely what brought you here.

So let’s cut to the chase: You know social networking can be valuable, but you just aren’t sure how to do it the right way. Here are 5 great posts that can help you figure some of this out.

Take 5:

• How to Use Social Media in Your Job Search: Using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to Job Search by Rachel Levy gives a great overview of ways to use these tools, and your blog.
• 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media by Dan Schawbel gives some unique ways to use search engines, bl ogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Video Resumes and your blog/rss subscriptions to stay on task, monitor your personal brand, an d get connected during your job search.
• This article about a panel presentation by the Sacramento Social Media Club about using Facebook and Twitter for your job search gives some simple but good advice from panelists. I also like the idea of social media clubs. If you have one in your area, this could be a great place to find people who could help you understand ways to use social media to enhance your job search and career.
• The Social Media Commando offers 10 tips on using Social Media in your job search
  
• Alison Doyle offers a good overview of networking sites at her About.Com page. Alison is a great person to follow, and her articles on About.Com are very much resource-packed. I visit often and always learn something.

And listen in the morning:

I am doing a BlogTalkRadio show on using social media in your job search tomorrow (Friday) at 11 a.m. My guest host will be Mallory Bower, Assistant Director of Career Services at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Mallory writes periodically for my other site, HigherEdLifeCoach.Com, and will have some articles on this site soon, as well. Our guests will include some of Mallory’s colleagues at UNCP, including Mike Severy, Director of Student Involvement and Leadership, and newly hired Assistant Director Becca Fick. Twitter was integral to posting the job, getting candidates and to Fick’s eventual hiring. Mike and Becca wrote great posts on their perspectives on using Twitter in the job search. Mike’s post, on the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, can be found here, and Becca’s guest post at On the Go with Ed Cabellon can be found here.

We’ll also revisit last week’s discussion on “purpose” and what it means to people working in higher education. Plus news, events and perspectives of note in the higher ed/student affairs world. Show is scheduled for 90 minutes to allow call-ins, discussion, etc., but may end after an hour or so.

You can listen to the show by following this link. And you can call in live to ask questions during the interview to (347) 989-005 or via Skype from the show page. (I’ve never really done that, but it is supposedly possible. Someone should give it a try, and let me know how it works!) Please listen in and share your questions and comments. After the show, you can call in and record your comments to my GoogleVoice comment line, 706-352-9467. (352-WINS) and I may play them on the air in a future episode.

So please check out these links, think about how you might use social media to advance your job search and career, and call me in the morning.

Related posts:

1. Take 5: Social Media Resources for Higher Ed Pros
2. Today on BlogTalkRadio: Using RSS in Your Job Search
3. Take 5: Five Resources for Your Student Affairs Job Search

NACADA Tech in Advising Recommendations for Use of Online Social Communication in Academic Advising

The purpose of these recommendations is to provide guidance to Academic Advisors contemplating the inclusion of on-line social communication tools in their personal or programmatic advising design.

For the purposes of this discussion, Online Social Communications will be understood as externally hosted Web environments, sometimes referred to as Social Media Environments, in which information is aggregated, presented and shared. Further, where functionality exist, the environments allow you to document and filter connections between individuals, maintain profiles, support multimedia, and facilitate communication with a time shift supporting response at user-defined times. On-Line Social Communication environments include Facebook and other Online Social Networks, Twitter, YouTube, personal blogs and wiki pages. Since Facebook’s introduction in 2004, an ever-increasing number of advisors, student services specialists, academic units and universities have been leveraging the benefits of an on-line presence.

The expanding use of on-line social communication by advisors and advising offices, evidenced by numerous publications and presentations over the past five years, encouraged the NACADA Commission for Technology in Advising to proffer the following recommendations when considering inclusion of Social Communication tools in the delivery of advising information:

1. First and foremost, one should appreciate the importance of face-to-face communication in academic advising and view any forays into Social Media Environments as supplemental to advising in brick-and-mortar environments.
2. As is the case with all communication taking place at a distance, the recipient of the information cannot be verified when posting information in Social Media Environments. Advisors should be familiar with your institution’s FERPA compliance or other student records standards and technology use policies, and as is the case with email and telephone, refrain from discussing these topics in uncontrolled, on-line environments.
3. Advisors should remember that Social Media Environments do not represent the university to most students. This being the case, allowing your students the option of interacting with you in these spaces and regularly surveying your populations to ascertain their continuing level of comfort is recommended.
4. By accepting that Social Media Environments do not represent the university to our students and that we’re reaping great benefit from students’ willingness to engage us in these spaces, care should always be taken to not “clog the drain” with information. Note how likely students are to delete university-generated emails without reading them. Likewise, if one pushes too much information into Social Media Environments, students will stop paying attention and disengage.
5. Finally, Advisors should also bear in mind that these are public sites and as such care should be taken to ensure you are playing the role of the professional–even on personal profiles.

Thanks to Art Esposito, Berdie Eubank, Ned Donnelly, Jennifer Joslin, Sharon Loschiavo, Scott Roberts, and Terry Duncan for creating these recommendations.

Social media as a job search tool? Sure I’d heard about it but didn’t really put much faith into it beyond employer/employee fact checking and social background research.  By the time we had a position moving through our HR process in January I’d been contributing to studentbranding.com for a several months so I knew the networking expectations for both employers and candidates in the non-higher education arena.  As such, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by sharing news of our process on twitter.

While I had been engaged in the #sachat community not much came of this tweet (note no #sachat hashtag) until we progressed as a community into discussions on job searches, of course triggered by Ed Cabellon.  Here is a sequence of tweets than ensued over the course of sixteen minutes.

As promised, when our position was finally approved right before #NASPA10 I sent a tweet sharing the news and our process from that point forward.  I didn’t have a live link yet so several people requested the job description as a result of these tweets:

Several members of the #sachat and twitter community requested a job description after these tweets.  Anyone who expressed interest in the position or had asked questions about the job, university and location via twitter was on the radar for us.  As we progressed through the search, all search committee members, including me, unfollowed all of the twitter candidates to maintain the integrity of our process.  Communication with candidates became more formal and traditional – email and phone – but by that point the networking had reaped its rewards.

Twitter can change the search process

While unexpected, twitter and the #sachat community fundamentally changed the search process by decreasing the size of an already small profession.  Certainly candidates still had to successfully navigate the gauntlet of our search process but our knowledge of them through social media outlets was very informative.

As an employer our engagement on twitter, whether individually or through our office account, helped us put information in the public domain that we wanted to share about the future direction of our office and our work environment.  Knowing that I was being followed by several candidates didn’t change how I interacted on twitter but it did reassure me that when we got to the point of fit questions that these candidates were probably better informed about us than those who were not accessing our information.

As a candidate you need to think through how you use twitter and what degree of access you want to provide.  It can be hugely beneficial for employers to triangulate your professional perspective and network connections.  On the other hand it can also be detrimental, particularly related to candidate authenticity and consistency in different settings if your interviews and application materials don’t align well with your presence in social media.

Social media expertise will be a required job criteria for all future searches

Our job description listed social media expertise as a preferred requirement.  It became a more prominent factor in our search every step of the way as our discussions to balance expertise and needs within our office became more focused.  In our next search social media engagement will be a required component.

In response to:

You may be asking:

Based on our candidate pool and how they identified their skill set as it related to our job description I would disagree that most people in gen-y have them in some form.  Facebook doesn’t cut it anymore.  That is now below the minimum – fan pages, connections, etc. Different institutions will measure social media skills differently based upon their needs and the expertise currently on staff. We were looking for someone who had the interest in and ability to give us traction in areas where we knew we needed to be engaged but were spinning our wheels – Facebook a bit, twitter, and blogs. (Again social media served as only two of thirteen criteria in our search process.)  In particular, we were looking for a solid knowledge base of how to use twitter and, ideally, high quality engagement in the student affairs community and #sachat in particular.

Very few candidates provided social media information on their resume or in their cover letter (the best approach for me – hyperlinked to your profile in a PDF resume).  Even some of the candidates we knew were on twitter didn’t identify that knowledge in their application materials.  If you are engaged in the #sachat community your knowledge base sets you apart from the general student affairs community and you need to market that knowledge.  Again, different institutions will measure social media skills differently based upon their needs and the expertise currently on staff but why make the hunt for that information difficult and allow employers to make inaccurate assumptions about your skill set?

In January I never would have guessed the impact social media would have on our search process.  I’m a believer now though.  Without getting into further details of our search I’d be glad to discuss your process as it relates to my perspective on social media and the role it can play in a successful search process for you.

What do you think?  Make it a good day.

Mike Severy is the Director of Student Involvement and Leadership at UNC Pembroke.  You can connect with Mike via Twitter.

About a week ago, I had the opportunity to co-present at the ACPA National Convention with Kenn Elmore, John Battaglino and Teri Bump. Fortunately for the four of us, we were able to secure a larger room as our session had about 60 people in attendance.

We didn’t give out handouts at our session. Our keynote slides had images on them and only a word or two. I’ve received emails from folks who attended, as well as from people who were following via the #ACPA10 Twitter backchannel, requesting a copy of our slides. While we were sans paper at our session, we were certainly not without a lot of bits of information.

Our session was titled “Wise and Connected – Demystifying Social Media for SSAOs and Directors.” We had 2 screens/lcd projectors running simultaneously during the session. On one screen was our keynote slideshow…we combined our slides like Voltron just moments before our session. On the other screen was a live stream (via wifi) of everything that was being said via Twitter using the #ACPA10 and #ACPASSAO hashtags. (Note that the ACPASSAO hashtag provided ample fodder for attendees). We even used clickers from Turning Technologies (these were the same clickers that were used at the opening of the convention). Overall, it was a very high tech, high touch session.

We live streamed all of the Twitter commentary using Twitterfall. Twitterfall has an amazing “presentation mode” that is perfect for the live streaming of tweets. The streaming screen provided probably the funniest moment (for me at least) of our session when @ACPAConvention tried to distract me! It should be noted that I did not look down, not even once. However, one of us did use a 4 letter word at one point during our session.

A lot of people wanted the link for the “Leadership Video.” I’ve dubbed said video as “Who wants to watch EDS dance on a hill?”. I wasn’t really the “lone nut” in this video, but I like to think that I could have been:

A terrific leader in Student Affairs who is utilizing social media is Kenn Elmore, Dean of Students at Boston University. If you have not yet visited the Dean of Students website at BU, please check it out. The site is a wonderful example of how social media can be integrated into a higher ed student affairs site. The folks at BU use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs.

Did you know that you can get a lot out of Twitter without ever posting? Twitter can be a great resource for news, events and general information.

Here’s a terrific primer on “Twitter 101″ from the makers of Twitter.

Once you become an avid Twitter user, you may find that the functionality at Twitter.com doesn’t give you enough options. For “power twittering,” I would recommend that you use TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a free application that will become a staple in your Twitter diet. They even make a version of TweetDeck for the iPhone. What’s that you say? Don’t have an iPhone? Never fear, if you are a Blackberry user, I would recommend trying UberTwitter. You can even use Twitter using standard text messages via any mobile phone.

When I started talking about RSS, I noticed that folks went into an acronym sleep. For more information on RSS, Social Media, Twitter and a host of other online things, please check out Common Craft. The Common Craft videos break down complicated concepts into easily digestible informational videos.

One of my favorite uses of social media that we did not have a chance to talk about is #SAChat:

We talked a little bit about Facebook too…we packed a lot of info, entertainment, and education in our hour and fifteen. I can’t wait to do it again.

Tags: acpa, aggregation, aggregator, boston university, facebook, Higher Education, John Battaglino, Kenn Elmore, RSS, social media, student affairs, student affairs technology, technology, Teri Bump, Turning Technologies, Tweetdeck, twitter, Ubertwitter