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…

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.”

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.

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:

SuperCamp is a 10 day academic and life skills program that happens throughout the summer for various ages. I worked mostly with the high school students. As you’d expect, no high school student wants to spend 10 days of their summer learning about speed reading, memory tricks, and positive thinking. Most would much rather be playing video games. Parents, knowing this, sometimes would trick their kids into going by saying they’ll be skating or video game playing.

On the first day, out of 100 students, there’d usually be one or two who’d have their skateboard in hand, looking around for the ramps. But instead of ramps, the walls were covered with positive affirmations and academic stuff. To which the students reacted with annoyance and anger. It was right about that time when I, one of the program facilitators, would step on stage in front of the mob and express my excitement for all the academic learning we’d be doing over the next ten LONG days. You can imagine the reaction.

We knew there was no way we’d be able to teach the students anything without first building a relationship with them and between each other. That’s what we did for the first few days. Then slowly, around the third and fourth days, we started to integrate more learning into the daily flow.

By the eighth and ninth days almost all the students loved the program and didn’t want to go home. But the tenth day was graduation in which the parents showed up to take them home. While two of the facilitators talked to just the parents in our main room, the other two facilitators took the students to a grassy court yard to play some games.

While hanging out with the students in the court yard, a traditional final game we’d play was called “Scream and Run” in which three students would start off by running and screaming across the yard and back again to the start line. No one was allowed to say what the game was unless someone came over and asked, to which we’d reply “it’s called Scream and Run. Do you wanna play?” They always did. Then a slightly larger group would run across the court yard screaming and running and again a few more students would come over to ask and eventually join in. After eight rounds of playing, usually all 100 students were standing in the corner waiting for a facilitator to yell go so they could run and scream across the court yard.

Every time I saw this game unfold, all I could think was how this was the stupidest game EVER. All they were doing was running and screaming. That’s it. I probably could have told them to scream and tie your shoe and they would have had fun. Or scream and clean the building with a toothbrush and they would have had fun. What I realized in that moment was that ANYTHING IS FUN as long as you have two things…

1. Numbers
2. Relationships

High Numbers, Low Relationships

On the whole, hardly anyone knows each other at this event, but because there are such high numbers, the event works despite the fact that there aren’t very many relationships.

Low Numbers, High Relationships

Admit it. When you and your friends get together, you do the dumbest stuff. So dumb that any outsider would question your sanity, but because you are doing the event with your friends, you have a good time. In this situation, the numbers are low, but the relationships are high.

High Numbers, High Relationships

The ideal situation for an event is one in which the numbers are hugh and the relationships are high. Family reunions (assuming you enjoy seeing your family) are a good example of this. There are a lot of people, and everyone knows each other. In this situation you could do just about any activity and it would be fun.

Low Numbers, Low Relationships

This is the typical flop event that far too many of us have either been to, or hosted, in which the turn out is low and the few people who do attend don’t know each other. In this situation the best option you have, to turn the event around, is to build up as many relationships as possible with the attendees so that it turns into a low numbers, high relationships type event.

In order to have a fun/engaging event you either need high numbers, high relationships, or both. But not all events will work with each situation. Scream and Run wouldn’t have worked on day one of Supercamp even though we had high numbers, but other activities did work on day one because we had high numbers. Scream and Run needed both high numbers and high relationships to be successful. As you plan your calendar of events, think about what type of event you are trying to create and what formula from above you need to make it successful. Then go and make that happen to set yourself up for success.

Three quick stories, one important point.

Story #1:
Last week, before my soccer match, I watched a little league softball game on the field next to us. Surrounding the field was a collection of parents multitasking between the game, their blackberries, and babysitting their, even younger, offspring. One parent in particular was having a hard time keeping her little one under control. Her kid kept racing up and down the sidelines while mimicking a train. He put his hand in the air, pumped his fist, and as he passed us let out a loud, “Choo Choo!” Then 30 seconds later he’d come steamrolling back. The kid clearly had extra energy and needed to let it out. The parent, and most parents would agree, didn’t try and stop him from running, instead she calming kept looking a few yards ahead to clear away any dangers that might be in his way. The little kid was motivated to run, so instead of trying to stop him, the parent took on the role of laying tracks for him to keep running.

Story #2:
My brother and I were playing Frisbee Golf and he lodged his frisbee square in the middle of a mud pit. I quickly looked around for a large stick and without much thinking took two steps into the mud pit, reached out my arm, and started to retrieve his frisbee for him. With my foot half covered in mud, my brother said, “never get in the way of a motivated individual.”

Story #3:
At this year’s ACPA conference in Philadelphia, the conference organizers hosted a special social media strategy session with several individuals to talk about how they could better leverage social media for the ACPA community. Throughout the session it was clear that someone needed to step up and lead the charge. Looking around the room, there were many capable individuals, but the question was who was the most motivated and ready? Kathy Petras raised her hand and agreed to lead the group. Since then,  she has been a wonderful leader, and had we had enough data to work with, probably could have predicted so because Kathy was already a trending leader in the community. She was a newer associate that recently took on a leadership position in another committee as well as led an ed session for the first time this year. If we were to tally up her actions, we would’ve seen she was a trending leader and was hunting for her next level of growth. In this case, leading the social media adoption committee was a perfect fit for her.

Point:
Every student group/classroom can be broken up into varying levels of engagement. Based on a specific student’s engagement level, they want to be treated in different ways. A fully involved students wants to be treated in a totally different way than a student lurking on the edge of the wall. A student’s engagement level is constantly shifting though, with a hope of always trending towards more involvement. It’s up to the leaders of the community to thus recognize the individual engagement level of each student, and also to recognize how an individual is trending. Find out who the Kathy is of your community that is trending towards being a leader, then lay down tracks for her to continue to be great, because the worst thing a leader can do is get in the way of a motivated train.

We’re excited to open the digital doors for our upcoming webinar on Leveraging Social Media for Increased Student Engagement. This webinar is an updated version of our last webinar in December on the same topic. The biggest update is the inclusion of a student panel to talk about how they want you to engage them online.

100% of the webinar proceeds go to the Student Blogging Scholarship.

We limit “seating” to allow everyone to engage in the Q&A, so check below for details and to reserve your spot.

Title: Leveraging Social Media for Student Engagement
Date: Wednesday, Mar 3rd 2010
Time: 3-4:15pm EST
RSVP: http://webinar03-03-10.eventbrite.com/

**Sign up before Saturday, Feb 27th and save 25% with code: Early-25 (works for both the webinar ticket and audio/slides)