Taking Orientation Online

I am fortunate to work with some highly committed and innovative people who produce some great programs, activities and services. One such area that has made great strides in recent years has been the orientation program. In fact, the O-team was approached by Academic Impressions to participate in a webcast so they can share some of the innovative approaches they used to develop their online orientation strategy this past year. The webcast is being offered in March 2010. Click here to find out more.

Painting the Picture of Higher Education's Future

Taken together the two article below paint one possible picture of the future for higher education. Jeffery Simpson's Tough times for public institutions provides a clear outline for one of the core challenges that colleges and universities in Canada, among other public institutions, must face in order to solidify their financial foundation. My Provost has made the same point on more than one occasion.

In Reigning in College Costs, Micheal Bassis describes a new model that he suggests will improve quality while cutting costs by leveraging new technology that is now available. Michael Bassis is the president of Westminster College in Salt Lake City.

To me it certainly seems like higher education is at the beginning or in the midst of some significant change if you consider the funding shortfalls and new technology available today that can (& will) enhance learning. One of my blog posts from this past February, called Student Affairs Needs Fundraising Staff, showed that funding for higher education in Canada has been falling for four decades and the recent recession would seem to indicate that it will not be reversed anytime soon.

The following quote from Bassis' article suggests that Student Affairs could have a place in his model because of our expertise in high touch interactions, "instruction combining online and face-to-face elements (called hybrid or blended learning) was more effective than either purely face-to-face instruction or purely online instruction. In short, the report documented that high tech plus high touch works best. " Student Affairs must make strategic choices to take advantage of this opportunity because, as Bassis points out "Ultimately, it is not the technology but the new practices that the technology enables which will revolutionize learning."

Are You Using Your Whuffie?

Was watching an episode of TVO's The Agenda a couple months back titled Wired 24/7 and one of the panelists was a Saskatchewan-born Marketing Consultant & author Tara Hunt. I had never heard of her before, but I was impressed with some of the things she had to say and I discovered that she had recently published a book. Curious to find out more I ordered her book which is called The Whuffie Factor.

After completing the first chapter I thought I'd share a few of my observations and thoughts on how I believe it can be applied to the work of student affairs professionals. Hunt has clearly written the book for business, especially those in marketing, but the concepts can easily be applied to higher ed.

She talks about using many Web 2.0 tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. At first I thought she was not going to introduce many new concepts or ideas, but she started to share the little things people are doing to leverage the power of these tools. To many people these subtle changes in approach would not mean much, but its becoming clear to me that they can be quite powerful. For example, Hunt used her online network of people to help design the cover of her book. At first this may not seem like any great feat, but her approach increased her confidence in the message she was trying to convey, allowed her to leverage the expertise of others and she increased the sense of ownership others felt for her project. Outcomes many of us look for in our work.

She outlines whuffie as follows, "Relationships and connections over time lead to trust, which is the key to capital formation. The capital I'm talking about, though, is not of the monetary variety. It is social capital, aka whuffie, and a social capitalist is one who builds and nurtures a community, thereby increasing whuffie." This explanation seems pretty straight forward, but if we examine our approach to increasing whuffie in higher ed using Web 2.0 I think we would realize its not as easy as it may seem at first.

Let me wrap up this post by sharing one realization I've had about student affairs professionals using Web 2.0 to increase whuffie. One of the primary roles of a student affairs professional is to develop community at their school. In general this is accomplished by getting students and other community members together in a face-to-face environment. When it comes to using Web 2.0 we use it to support our traditional approach of bringing people together face-to-face. This is all fine and good, but Web 2.0 tools have a ton of potential to do more and create community in other ways. If you look at student affairs job postings today versus a few years back you likely would not see any substantial changes. Perhaps a phrase or duty has been added about using Web 2.0 tools, but no jobs have been posted with the purpose of creating a digital community. The unfortunate part is that their are thriving digital communities all over the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace etc, but Student Affairs professionals have tended to join these communities rather than create them.

For those of you following along on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn you can also read other posts at http://wepps.blogspot.com/

Product or Service?

I was recently writing a paper and I bumped into an issue that I have been contemplating ever since: Is education a product or service or should it be considered as a separate category?

This question is usually reserved for clasifying profit making companies. With the lines blurring between education and business I thought it might be interesting to share my internal debate with others to hear additional thoughts and ideas.

I usually consider a product to be tangible good that is exchanged for money whereas a service is something that is intangible that is given to one person or group for money. A quick google search reveals that service can be defined as "work done by one person or group that benefits another."

To my way of thinking education does not seem to fall nicely into either category. Nothing tangible exchanges hands, other than a degree or diploma at the end, so education is not a product. Staff and faculty certainly provide a service to learners and they share their knowledge, but students must actively participate in the process for learning to actually take place. Customers buying a service from a business do not have to put forward the kind of effort, if any, that students must put into their studies to make it worthwhile.

For these reasons it seems to me that education is neither a product nor service, but a separate category altogether. Do you agree or disagree?

For those of you following along on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn you can also read other posts at http://wepps.blogspot.com/

Expanding My World

Over the last few weeks I have had the good fortune of being able to attend two very good conferences within walking distance from my office:

1. Prepared Minds, Prepared Places - Hosted by the YMCA
   
2. Internationalization Effectiveness: Strategies for Success - Hosted by CBIE

One of the most impressive parts about each conference was the fact that participants came from all across Canada and beyond and a large number of people came from outside higher education. For instance, the Prepared Minds, Prepared Places conference had attendees come from the US and several European countries while the CBIE conference had a large contingent come from China and others from the US, Norway, Australia and other countries.

I took advantage of Twitter to share some of my thoughts already, but I wanted to highlight two of the speakers as they were the most memorable to me. Tricia Jenkins was one of the keynotes at the first conference. She has built a very impressive program that has helped several students reach PSE that would likely never have had that chance without her work. Check out Professor Fluffy to understand a little more about the reach of her work.

Dr John Hudzik, who is the Acting Provost at Michigan State University and President of the Association of International Educators, participated in a panel discussion at the CBIE conference. The panel was discussing how the current economic situation was impacting higher education. Dr Hudzik only had 15 minutes to speak and he took full advantage of the time. I took a few notes, but it was hard to keep up. I'm looking forward to accessing his PowerPoint notes once they are posted. He made the following statement, which I believe conveys a clear, concise and powerful idea about higher education for the coming century: To be an institution of value & distinction in the 21st century requires global reach & engagement.

Adapting to a New Network

How Much Are You Worth to Facebook? is an article by Adam L. Penenberg in the October 2009 issue of Fast Company. Penenberg adapted the article from his book Viral Loop where he explores how people will spread a message, usually on behalf of someone else, to their friends, family and colleagues because of their strong interest in the service/product/idea.

The article highlights how marketers use a few key pieces of information about people, such as age, gender and postal/zip code, that can found on a social network and direct a message at them. A few examples are used to highlight how effective this approach can be in spreading a message. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook and its current CEO, is quoted to strengthen this point, "The message you get, in a lot of ways, is less important than whom you get it from."

While reading the aricle I tried to adapt it to the higher education environment, especially to the work that is done outside the classroom. We have a tremendous amount of information on students yet we study it very little, especially in Canada, and I'm not familar with anyone taking advantage of viral loops on a social networking site to share a message or advertise an event. This presents opportunities for those who hope to reach students in new and deeper ways. Student Life staff have a ton of experience spreading messages through networks at a peer level so it may not take much to adapt.

Learning from Harper

Let me be clear from the beginning: I'm not a supporter of Stephen Harper's politics. However, he has achieved success in that he has been our Prime Minister since February 2006. As such, I believe one can learn from his rise to power. Last week I finished reading Harper's Team by University of Calgary Professor Tom Flanagan who worked for Harper as his Chief of Staff during his campaign to become leader of the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party of Canada.

Some points from the book can be applied to many people or organizations, including a student affairs division in a college or university. Here are some of the points I pulled from the book:

• Collecting & Managing Data - Harper and his team develop a powerful set of data on his supporters which is used quite effectively to help him progress to leader and eventually Prime Minister.
  
• Understanding Grassroots Support - In his bid to gain the leadership of the Canadian Alliance and then the Conservative Party his resources largely come from grassroots support as opposed to corporations.
  
• Relationship Building - Harper does not have the knack for building bridges beyond his base, but he has been quite effective at relationship building within conservative circles. Flanagan points out that this has never been an easy task for Canadian conservative leaders with the exception of Sir John A. MacDonald. (We'll see if Harper can maintain his relationships over time)
• Using Strategy & Tactics - Harper is known widely for his strategic skills and the book highlights some points where he used them wisely and other times where he learned from mistakes.
  

In recent years assessment has become a hot topic in student affairs. To increase our influence and demonstrate the value that our work has outside the classroom, we need to collect more data and study it. This analysis will allow us to show the value we can bring to higher education. Furthermore, by sharing this information with our students we can seek them as partners in telling the story of the important work that happens outside the classroom, just as Harper understood and leveraged the support from his base.

Relationship building is one of our strengths, but our focus tends to be inward and it will become increasingly important to look beyond our traditional partners. For me this includes faculty and especially people and organizations beyond a school's borders. Experiential learning is one way we are doing this already, but seeking resources, such as funding, is one largely untested area for our field.

It would be hard to suggest that we do not use strategy and tactics in our work now. Every person in our field will undoubtedly have a few good stories to share. The coming years will stretch our thinking to new levels as resources continue to shrink and the academic core of a school will continue to press their case for having the lion's share of the resources. Therefore, we must continue to adapt, support one another and most importantly share our stories widely to show the powerful impact we have on learning.