Tag: student-affairs-technology

Intersection of @saTech and @saComm

BreakDrink
BreakDrink

I had the pleasure to serve as a guest co-host on the great BreakDrink Campus Tech podcast series this week. Thanks to Laura Pasquini for the invite. She and Bruce Mann are delightful hosts, and Eric Stoller jumped in to the conversation as well (with a very nice recap of @saTechBOS, which, as you have heard, I missed to do a delayed flight. I may blog on my bitterness later.)

An interesting side note: Don’t know if you can hear it or not on the podcast, but there is a lot of background noise coming in at the beginning from my end. My office is in a residence hall. I don’t work for our University Housing department; I just happen to have an office space that’s off the lobby of one of our many residence halls on campus. The Resident Advisors had just moved in the weekend prior. Just as the live broadcast started, a whole gang of RAs congregated in the lobby and were fairly loud. I loved it! I’m one of those Student Affairs professionals who doesn’t usually work directly with our students (anymore); I work behind the scenes to make sure our in-the-trenches folks have the technology they need to be successful. But the location of my office is always a treat this time of year as the staff returns to start training and prepare for the onslaught of the students and the fall semester. As a former RA and hall director, it brings back fabulous memories. As I think about it, most folks probably could not hear this over the loud clicking of Eric Stoller’s keyboard. :-)

I have no idea how many folks tuned in live, or have/will listen to the podcast. But it’s always fun to just blather on when others are required to listen. In this case, I did not feel that what I had to say was very coherent. Mostly because I just currently have some general thoughts on the topic of the intersection of technology and communications in the student affairs profession. I don’t have any conclusions — good, bad or indifferent — at this point. Just some observations that I think are worth noting. What follows is mostly a copy/paste of my notes in preparation for the program. Maybe some day it will start to gel and I’ll revisit the topic on this blog.

  • Relatively new interest in communications in the field of Student Affairs
  • Who is in charge of #sacomm in SA organizations?
    • Those who control the comm resources and comm technology (initially websites and print media, primarily, now social media) seem to control the message — and that’s the techies in many cases.
    • At the Division level there may be #sacomm staff or the #satechies
    • At the department level, usually not a a #sacomm specialist unless a LARGE organization on a large campus; typically a staff member who wears the comm hat
    • My campus — I lead the central, Division Technology unit that also has responsibility for #sacomm (though right now doesn’t translate into actual services for others except for consulting…mostly leadership and respresentation, and Division-level communications like our website)
  • #satechies and #sacomm
    • Why are we #satechies so involved with #sacomm? Is it because we love the technology? Because no one else is doing it? Because it’s a natural cross-over of interests and skill? All the above? (Would love to hear what audience thinks on this!)
    • #satechies seem to use social media at a much higher rate (anecdotal) than other student affairs staff. Again, is it because the technology is fun? We tend to be early adopters? (Would love to hear what audience thinks on this!)
    • Content of recent and upcoming conferences is amazing — HUGE focus on social media!
      • #unccause – UNC CAUSE (North Carolina’s versions of an EDUCAUSE conference) – Link #2 below – This is a techie conference but includes a whole track and closing keynote on social media.
      • #satechBos –
      • #NASPATech – 2 of the 6 topics are social media, and the “Audience & Format” description starts with: “Whether you have no idea how to create a Twitter account or you are an active blogger, this conference will deliver for you.”
      • 9820 hits when you search “social media” on the EDUCAUSE website!
    • With web work, there’s a move (at least on my campus) to hand over content management to the staff in departments and let professional techies handle the back-end. In other words, #satechies now have good tools (WordPress, Drupal, etc) to get out of the content business. Will the same thing happen with social media? Is that a good thing, or no?

List of SA Tech Units and Leaders

Kevin Guidry has a great thought piece on technology in student affairs and how that fits into our current (and hopefully new) professional organizations. Joe Sabado from UC-Santa Barbara commented on that post and lamented about not knowing any other IT directors in Student Affairs.

I find myself asking myself this question all the time: Who are my peers?

I created this Google Doc to document to help capture that information. I know who a few of us are, but ask others to please add themselves to the document so we can really see who is part of this niche in the profession of student affairs. (Tip o’ the hat to the Student Affairs Collaborative – I basically just copied their Directory idea.)

As Kevin says:

There seems to be three groups of people in student affairs interested in technology: administrators who manage technology projects and groups in student affairs departments and divisions, student affairs scholars who study technology and its uses and impact, and student affairs professionals with interests in technology but a different primary focus.

Certainly the third group is very broad, and we know many of them follow the various blogs and hashtags on the topic, and many are members of the NASPA Tech Knowledge Community. The second group is likely very small…but would it be worth seeing who identifies themselves as such?

So, this is an effort to capture that first group: the geeky admins…some of us may be SA professionals first and geeks second. Others might be geeks first and SA staff second. In either case, identifying the members of this community might be helpful to us all.

Poll Results: Tech Leadership in Student Affairs

I put out a Twitter Poll on November 30, 2010 about technology leadership in student affairs. It ran for one week, and here are the final numbers. (Thanks to Eric Stoller for featuring this on his blog, and to Student Affairs Collaborative for making it the Tuesday Talley!)

Why This Poll?

I am co-authoring a chapter in a book scheduled to be published this spring by Stylus. The tentative book title is “New Realities: Emerging Specialist Roles and Structures in Student Affairs Organizations” and our chapter is on the “Technology Officer” position. (Other chapters include Chief of Staff, Development, Assessment and several other leadership roles.) My co-author is Kyle Johnson, Associate Provost for Information and Learning Technology at SUNY Institute of Technology.

The chapter briefly features some research conducted in 2005 with two colleagues at NC State University on this very topic. (I regret to this day that we never published it, but our NASPA presentation and the survey instrument are online.)

I found myself wishing for more up to date numbers, hence the Twitter poll on the one question about technology leadership.

What Do the Numbers Mean?

Well, first the usual caveat that Twitter polls are informal, and not scholarly research! We have no way to know who answered, if they answered accurately, if more than one person from an institution answered, and so on. Also, the Twitter poll did not allow for enough text to provide a more specific definition of “technology leadership” or “student affairs” organization. So, comparing the fairly rigorous 2005 study to this 2010 Twitter poll is not quite like comparing “apples and oranges” but more like “red delicious and granny smith.”

That being said, the results from the Twitter poll are fairly similar to our 2005 research. Beyond that, I hesitate to interpret the numbers any further. But it is certainly interesting data.

What’s Next?

Good question! I’m not sure. I’d like to replicate the 2005 study at some point. There were several tweets in response to this poll suggesting that the student affairs profession should more clearly define this role. Maybe that’s a good task for the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community. Also tweeted was that the technology leadership role is “not tech support/IT purchasing.” I would amend that to be that it is “not JUST tech support/IT purchasing.” I do think that in many cases student affairs organizations are better off controlling their own destiny with internal tech support instead of relying on outsourcing to central campus IT. That being said, clearly there is a need for someone in the student affairs organization to truly understand technology, its impact on students and their behavior, and how technology can be used to provide student services and developmental programs.

Your feedback most welcome!