The Benefits of Relationships in the Information Age

An emerging line of thinking for me revolves around how we analyze information. It is no secret that society is accumulating more and more information at faster and faster rates. Thanks to some colleagues I learned recently that I could download material from iTunes, including audio books, to my Blackberry Bold. I quickly discovered that I could download Chris Anderson's Free for free. In the book, Anderson talks about how information wants to become free, but the trade-off is that the time we have available to view this information, our attention, becomes increasingly scarce. It is at this intersection of how we accumulate information and analyze it that I see an opportunity for student affairs.

Some of you may have seen the popular video called A Vision of Students Today that was created by Professor Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students in one of his classes at Kansas State University. Wesch recently gave a TEDTalk where he refers back to the video he created with his students.

In the TEDTalk Wesch uses his experience working with a group of people in New Guinea who were truly off the grid when it comes electricity, the internet and information from the wider world. What Wesch learns is how relationships form the basis of everything that happened for these people. The culture changed when new information was brought to the people because some members of the group became literate. The change that took place for these people in New Guinea illustrates a point that relates to student affairs because of the role we can, and do, play in fostering relationships.

At this point you might ask: How does the analysis of information and relationship development connect? In my mind an area where student affairs professionals excel is facilitating the development of relationships. Think about all of the training, team building activities and mentoring that flows from our work. The content of the relationships in our world is certainly different then for the people in New Guinea that Wesch studied, but the parallel is that they also excelled at developing relationships. 


In his TEDTalk Wesch shows how the villages in New Guinea were first organized in what may appear to be a hap hazard way and how they evolved to be neatly ordered.  While the structure helped provide answers for some, mainly in government, it caused problems for the people in the village.  He then illustrates a lecture hall setting with its rows upon rows of seats and states that it does not benefit students. It is efficient and provides order, which has some value, but he suggests that it causes students to focus on the things that do not matter as much.

A lecture hall has an efficient set up for disseminating information, which is needed, but that information needs to be understood for it to have real value. Student affairs can play a role here in helping students develop the skills to analyze the information. To effectively analyze information students should be able to identify themes, mixed messages, gaps in the information, and how the information is relevant now and in the future. Students can learn how to use all of this to make smart decisions.

Student affairs already excels in developing relationships and this can be leveraged to help our students learn the increasingly valuable skills of analysis and problem solving.  We already do this to a degree but with more and more information comes more opportunities that we can take advantage of.