As Student Affairs (or in my case Student Life) professionals, one of the key metrics by which we measure ourselves is the level of “engagement” with our students – how they engage with our programs, services and campus in general. We’re constantly trying to find ways to involve our students and encourage them to use our services and come to our events – to share knowledge and build community and, well, engage.
We’re constantly asking how we can engage with our students more. In fact, we ask it so routinely that when I hear it, part of me shudders a little.
As I look across the landscape of channels in which we push out to communicate and engage with our students (walk-in appointments, events, individual counseling sessions, workshops, infosessions, posters, TV screens, flyers, postcards, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, Foursquare check-ins, blogs, vlogs, text messages, websites and email – lots and lots of email) I’m often left wondering: in what way are we not engaging with them?
We communicate and engage with them through pretty much every imaginable pathway, yet we still believe we’re not engaging with students and they’re not engaging with us as they should.
This brings up the next question: in what way are we expecting engagement? At what point will we believe students have engaged? Is this possible?
What do you think?
Are we over communicating with our students? Are we asking them to be too engaged? At what point will we feel we have successfully met that engagement threshold or are we truly asking the wrong question?
Nick Simonton manages the marketing and communications for Student Life and the Career Center at the University of Washington.
I’ve been testing out 3 web-based social media apps. Built to leverage the API’s of sites like Twitter and Facebook, these apps are web-based and can be accessed from any net enabled computer. TweetDeck (Chrome only), HootSuite, and Seesmic are all amazing in terms of functionality. I tested them all out using Google’s Chrome browser. This was mostly due to the fact that TweetDeck is only available as a web app via Chrome.
Aesthetically speaking, I really like the look and feel of Seesmic. It’s been my favorite Twitter app on Android and the web-based version doesn’t disappoint. It’s feature-rich and integrates the following social media services: Twitter, Foursquare, Google Buzz, Facebook, and LinkedIn. TweetDeck works almost as well as the desktop version. HootSuite has long been a popular alternative to TweetDeck. However, I find it’s interface to be less intuitive and quite a bit more “clunky” than Seesmic or TweetDeck. The API connection that TweetDeck leverages in Chrome is impressive. Tweets stream into your web browser almost as fast as they are posted. This makes it very easy to participate in Twitter-based chats using “ChromeDeck.”
In terms of social media listening / engaging, I would recommend that you try out all 3 apps to determine which one works best for you. I’ve been using TweetDeck in Chrome for fast-paced Twitter chats and Seesmic works really well in Firefox. HootSuite offers up a paid, Pro service for folks who want access to a larger feature set. It will be interesting to see how these app providers can continue to provide such amazing apps while at the same time covering their operating costs. While these apps are certainly not as powerful as the social media listening stations that Gatorade and Dell launched last year, I’m certain that you can do quite a bit with a browser, a connection to the Internet, and one of these web-based social media apps. Which of these 3 apps do you use? Do you use something else?
Hootsuite – (Works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome)
Seesmic – (Works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome)
This month marks the 1 year anniversary for the #SAchat. I wanted to share a little bit about what the #SAchat community has meant to me.
I first found out about the #SAchat in September of 2009 when I received a direct message from one of the creators of the chat – Debra Sanborn. Her message was simple, but it captured my attention: “We have the beginnings of an #sachat going.” I was intrigued. When the other co-founder, Tom Krieglstein, posted a tweet in October of 2009 with the #sachat hashtag, I was hooked. While I haven’t been able to “attend” every #SAchat, I have been able to participate frequently and read through the weekly chat transcripts.
I can say without hesitation that if you are in student affairs (and/or interested in the profession) and are interested in seeing how social media can be a place for learning, networking and making connections, then you need to check out the #SAchat.
Personally and professionally, the #SAchat community has been a source for learning, mentoring, caring, inspiration, knowledge, and friendship. I have made so many meaningful connections through #SAchat including the following amazing student affairs professionals: Debra Sanborn, Tom Krieglstein, Cindy Kane, Ed Cabellon, Teri Bump, Kristen Rupert, Stacy Oliver, Rey Junco, Mike Severy, Christopher Conzen, Julie Kirchmeier, Becca Fick, Kathy Petras, Niki Rudolph and Thomas Valdez. I didn’t know any of them prior to engaging / connecting on #SAchat. I’ve met several of the #SAchat community in real life and have made lasting friendships.
The #SAchat community contributed greatly to my decision to take a ride on the “Stoller Coaster.”
#SAchat members have enriched my mind, nurtured my soul, and touched my heart. I am so thankful that Debra and Tom had the courage to start this community.
One of my mentors once told me that mentors are everywhere and that all I needed to do was to seek them out. At the time, I had been struggling with finding experienced practitioners who were as into learning / using technology within student affairs as I was. It took me a while to realize that what I had been looking for was the ultimate mentor. I was seeking someone who matched up with every nuance, every interest area, in effect, the “perfect” mentor.
When I woke up this morning, I had a realization. A thought that I had never really allowed to materialize. I currently have multiple individuals who I call “mentor.” No single person. Not a lone individual. I have multiple mentors. Some of my mentors provide professional advice. Some of my mentors assist me in the “apprenticeship of life.” This cadre of mentors provides me with an amazing breadth and depth of learning, experiences, and guidance. A community of mentors who I look to for strength, insight, humor, and caring.
My mentors come from all over the place. They have been instrumental in where I am and where I want to be. Here are a few ideas that I have been pondering about mentoring:
Sometimes mentors bring mentorship into your life without it being strategic or intentional. It just happens.
Age does not always equal wisdom. Be open to mentoring from anyone. Wisdom can surprise you.
If your mentors are well-known, be prepared to spend less time with them. Learn as much as you can when you have access. Maximize your time with them.
Social media spans the globe. Your access to mentors has just increased…be ready.
Sometimes mentors and mentees switch roles depending on circumstances, timing, and need. It’s okay.
Bill Gates and I don’t often disagree. However, at the recent Techonomy conference, Bill was predicting the future of higher education. I took umbrage with some of his comments. Per his usual rhetoric, Bill positioned technology as the panacea for the future of higher education.
Here are some of Bill’s comments:
“The self-motivated [college] learner will be on the web and there will be far less place-based things.”
“College, except for the parties…. needs to be less place-based.”
“Place-based activity in that ‘college thing’ will be 5 times less important than it is today.”
“The room for innovation, thank God for charters, there’s no room for innovation in the standard system.”
The interesting thing is that the quote that’s being passed around on Twitter as originating from Bill Gates seems to have been actually just the post title from TechCrunch. I wasn’t able to find video or text where Bill Gates actually said what is being attributed to him by a lot of folks on Twitter.
The disturbing aspects of Bill’s quotes from the video are that he seems to have a negative attitude toward the physical spaces of higher education. Bill constructs his arguments around cost and access, but fails to adequately critique his own points. “Self-motivated learners” generally do not include students from traditionally marginalized groups. Bill Gates went to an exclusive preparatory high school and attended Harvard College. His is not a story of overcoming obstacles. Access issues are pervasive in higher education. Socioeconomic status catapulted Gates to where he is today. His arguments around access fail to include awareness of the digital divide in terms of both class and disability. Simply offering more web-based opportunities for learning will not improve access issues. And don’t get me started about the bit about “parties” being the only rationale for “place-based” institutions.
Bill’s rhetoric is consistently anti-student-involvement. Gates approaches his arguments from the position that every student is coming out of an innovative charter school and where self-motivated learners roam the higher education sphere. What Bill is forgetting is that involvement is crucial to student success. Can a student be successful when there primary involvement opportunities take place via the web — absolutely. However, most of our students benefit tremendously from their involvement and interactions within the brick and mortar activities of their educational institution.
Student involvement theory is a foundational element for student affairs professionals. Research has shown that increased involvement leads to higher amounts of persistence and greater academic success.
[S]tudent involvement refers to the amount of physical and psycho- logical energy that the student devotes to the academic experience. Thus, a highly involved student is one who, for example, devotes considerable energy to studying, spends much time on campus, participates actively in student organizations, and interacts frequently with faculty members and other students.
Astin (1984) concluded that “the greater the student’s involvement in college, the greater will be the amount of student learning and personal development.”
I wish that Bill Gates would offer a blended approach. Why can’t we have both? Amazing opportunities can be created to support students in both the virtual and physical spheres.
References
Astin, A. (1984). Student involvement: a developmental theory for higher education. Journal of College Student Personnel, 25(4), 297-308.
Conducting a successful student affairs job search requires patience, networking, and technology. That’s right, technology. One particular tech tool that is extremely useful for conducting a search is RSS. Job postings delivered to your feed reader via RSS means that new job announcements are efficiently delivered to your virtual doorstep.
If you aren’t familiar with using RSS, please watch this video for more information:
If you need an RSS feed reader, I would highly recommend using Google Reader:
There are a few student affairs websites that offer job postings via RSS feeds, including:
Remember to look for the RSS symbol – – or for a link to RSS data. Ideally, all student affairs job sites will offer RSS feeds in the near future as this makes conducting a search ultra-convenient.
In addition to the RSS and Email solutions mentioned above, most student affairs associations / higher education news sites offer job listings on their websites. Here are direct links to the student affairs job listings for the following associations / resource sites.
Student Affairs jobs via professional associations:
The Pomodoro Technique™ was created by Francesco Cirillo in 1980s after a long search to improve his own study habits. While attending college in Rome, he had a difficult time staying focused and concentrating on his work. He grabbed the familiar kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato (a pomodoro in Italian) and used it to set short term deadlines for himself. Essentially, he would set the timer and work without interruption until it went off.
The Pomodoro Technique™ is deeper than just setting a timer and going to work. The whole purpose is to change your mindset about time and work. It’s not just a silly idea,
but it’s synthesis of concepts proposed by Steve McConnell, Tony Buzan, Hans-George Gademer and Tony Gilb in a variety of areas and disciplines.
It’s built around three basic assumptions:
First, that you will come to see time differently. It’s not the enemy. By changing your view of time from “becoming” (the abstract, dimensional use of time), you eliminate the
anxiety associated with working under a deadline.
Second, that better use of the mind results in a higher level of consciousness, clarity of thought, and more effective learning.
Finally, that using simple tool like a timer reduces the complexity of applying the technique and makes it more effective and efficient.
Of course, there is a website that explains it all. And, while there is a book, you can download it free.
You might think that it would be difficult to apply this in your own office, as it calls for working uninterrupted in 25 minute cycles. There are, however, ways to interrupt and to
keep track of those interruptions. And now — during the Summer when students are fewer and farther between — it might be a useful method of getting through that endless “To-Do” list we all face.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I woke up late one night during my first year as a Resident Assistant to loud voices in the corridor. Laughter erupted from a group of students, followed by the harsh “Shush!” of someone who was hoping to not be caught. As I made my way to my door, I heard people scatter and the metal fire door leading to the stairwell slammed shut. I walked down the hall, blinking in the florescent lights, trying to make sense of what I saw.
Blue liquid dish soap covered the white-painted cinder block walls. Construction paper from my recently decorated bulletin board was torn down and scattered on the floor. The community trashcans from the restroom were emptied into the sinks and toilets.
I spent the next several hours cleaning the mess myself, charged with the energy of frustration. Before returning to my room, I hung signs in the bathroom that outlined the damages and explained that I chose to handle the mess rather than let the floor be billed for damages. The note ended with, “I hope it was worth it.” It was my 19-year-old passive aggressive attempt at imposing guilt.
Years later, one of my residents from that floor confessed to me that it was her sorority sisters and their boyfriends who vandalized the hallway after a night uptown. She assured me it wasn’t a personal affront to me or the job I did as a Resident Assistant. It was a spur of the moment decision to create a memory.
It was, she told me, one of the best nights of her college experience.
And it was during that conversation that I realized there is an opposite side to memory.
For every memory we hold in our minds and hearts, there is someone who knows a completely different version of that moment. More than ten years later, I tell that story to my staff when they are frustrated and exhausted by their residents’ behavior. What is an inconvenience to us as a staff may be a fond memory to someone else.
What the RA staff remembers as a shrieking duty phone at 3:00 a.m. for an after hours lockout may be the only kindness shown to that resident on that day. What student leaders remembers as a program that didn’t meet their own expectations may be the first time a student connected with someone else in the campus community. What the student staff remembers as their obligatory 30 minutes in my office during the week may be what I needed to refocus my energy back on them.
There are opposite sides to every memory, to every moment. While we don’t always get to know who holds them or what they look like, it can be enough to know that they are out there. I don’t use this approach to excuse student behavior; I use it to reframe it in a way that makes sense for moving forward. I can laugh at more and hold on to less knowing that the moments that get to me may be the moments that changed a student’s entire experience.
I took pictures of the vandalism of my hallway that night in 1999. At the time, I thought they may be used for a conduct meeting. I mailed them, instead, to the woman who admitted responsibility to me years later. They were hers, really. It was her memory to hold on to.
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.
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.
