Mistaken Goal: Where Student Affairs & Technology Meet

Yesterday, my colleagues and I posted the following message to several higher education IT support listservs:

Earlier this year, the ResNet Applied Research Group solicited participation in the 2008 ResNet Survey. This comprehensive survey focused on residential technology support groups, their responsibilities in supporting technologies to residential students, the service issues they addressed, and their organizational structure. Over 100 institutions participated and we are pleased to inform you that we have publicly released data from the survey at http://resnetsymposium.org/wiki/index.php/RARG:2008_ResNet_Survey.

We are profoundly grateful to those who participated and we look forward to answering any questions you may have as we continue this and related research.

It’s taken us quite a bit longer to release these results that we hoped and anticipated. We’re a tiny (3-person) volunteer group so when life and work call it’s easy for our research projects to become lower priorities. And we have other things going on, too, within the group.

Despite releasing data from most of the survey, we still have some work to do with the open-ended questions. Making sense of that data is more involved than tossing data into SPSS and running some calculations. We’ve done some of that work but have more to do.

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Several days ago, I submitted (and then corrected) final grades for my undergraduate online identity course. I am planning to teach the course again next semester and I’ll certainly be making some changes based on this first semester of the class.

First, Clay Shirky’s right: the first challenge when working with young students in discussions about their use of the Internet and other technologies is to help them understand just how different their uses of these technologies are compared to previous generations’. For many of the youngest students, cell phones, MySpace, and wireless Internet access have almost always existed and they have always been part of their lives. While for many of us these technologies and the ideas underlying them - flexible and changing ideas of privacy, incredibly public and intimate expressions of identity, and indexable, searchable, and permanent artifacts - are new and world-changing, for these students these ideas are old-hat and completely non-notable. Next semester, I need to work harder at the very beginning of the class to help my students understand how new and unexplored all of these technologies are for all of us. I’m not quite sure how to do that and figuring that out is my homework during the holiday break.

The final assignment elicited some surprising insight and ideas from my students. In a nutshell, they were to make policy recommendations for the use of social networking services (SNSes) for either a college admissions office or a company hiring new college graduates. The recommendations spanned the entire range of potential recommendations from “they must investigate the profile of every applicant” to “they can never investigate the profiles of applicants” with varying levels of quality support and rationale for the recommendations.

The most surprising and interesting recommendation, submitted by a few students, was that applicants should be able to decide whether or not their SNS profiles are fair game. That is not a recommendation I had anticipated and the justifications were very interesting. Essentially, these students really grabbed hold of some of the ideas we discussed and read that related to the active role we can take in shaping and understanding how we are presented and described online. I haven’t quite figured out how practical the recommendation is when scaled up to institutions or corporations that have thousands of applicants but it’s a great answer for this final assignment and it shows a wonderful grasp of some very important ideas.

I wish I had more time to tackle ideas of privacy and context.  That’s something else I will see if I can work into the course next semester although I am not very hopeful. Given the length of the course, it’s impossible to even touch on every important and interesting topic. I hope to expand the course to a full semester and teach in one of our living-learning centers next year with the hope that will allow me to add these topics and have enough time to explore them.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new half-semester 2-credit undergraduate course I’m teaching here at Indiana University. As promised, I’ve uploaded the class syllabus.

The class has met four times over the last two weeks (it meets twice a week).  It’s still too early to tell how the class is going and how much my students are getting out of the class.  Part of that is directly related to the design of the course as it’s front loaded with sociological material (Cooley & Goffman).  It’s deep, challenging material and it’s hard for some of my students to see where we’re going and how this material relates to the Internet.  “We’re getting there!” I promise them and I hope they believe me because we really are getting there.  And even though I hate that we’re running through these ideas so quickly and doing them such injustice (One day for Cooley’s Looking Glass Self?  Two days for Goffman’s ideas regarding impression management? Are you kidding me???) I believe very strongly that this will pay dividends when we get into the rest of the material by providing crucial and useful lenses and frameworks for us to use in thinking, reading, and talking about online behavior.

I try to keep this blog professional and not spend time discussing my personal trivia and emotions but I have to confess that I’m very excited to read my students’ first assignments which are due on Monday.  I’ve collected feedback from them in class so I am confident that most of them are on the right track and they’re “getting it” but you never know for sure, particularly when you throw a new instructor teaching a new class (with new, untested assignments) into the mix.

As this class continues, I hope that I’ll gain insight into my students’ beliefs and behaviors regarding online behavior and identity.  More importantly, I hope that I’ll be able to make use of and share those insights here.

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Yesterday afternoon, I presented a 3-hour pre-conference workshop at this year’s SIGUCCS fall conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference is a rather small one with about 350 participants and it focuses on IT support in higher education. My workshop was entitled “Web 2.0: Social Software Foundations and Implications;” for this audience I think that my session fell more into the “professional development” category than the “help me solve an immediate problem” category. Attendance was light (9 signed up; 8 attended) but I know that my approach is a bit “out there” for this audience. There aren’t many workshops or programs at this and similar conferences that are as heavy on theory and history as mine but I view those as incredibly important and necessary, particularly in the context of pre-conference workshops as many of those are explicitly devoted to professional development topics.

The PowerPoint slides from the workshop can be found here. My speaker notes, good and bad, are there too. I removed the videos from the file due to both copyright concerns and to keep the file size manageable. The file is still a bit large (7.3 mb) probably because there are 70 slides and some of them have large images culled from Flickr. Of course, the original content I developed for the workshop is all available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License (I forgot to include that in the actual session) so if you’d like to use this for non-profit work then you’re free to do so.

The content of the workshop was broken into 3 sections:

1. Web 2.0: We discussed common perceptions of Web 2.0 and then worked to come to a common definition of Web 2.0. We then compared our ideas with those of Tim O’Reilly. I then presented John Suler’s ideas about Online Disinhibition as important ideas in understanding the draw and success of Web 2.0 tools.
2. Social Network Sites (SNSes): This section was an update and compression of a pre-conference session I presented last year at ResNet. This time, however, we had several new pieces of research upon which to draw: boyd and Ellison’s JCMC article Social Network Sites: Definition, history, and scholarship and the book Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, particularly boyd’s chapter. Older research that is still informative and used in this section of my workshop includes Brett Bumgarner’s research (first an undergraduate thesis and now a First Monday article) and Matthew Vanden Boogart’s 2006 Master’s thesis.
3. Technical Foundation and Examples: The final section was an attempt to extract some technical foundations from the previous discussions and present some examples. I’m afraid this section was the weakest of the three, particularly the “technical” part. The examples are okay and I know that attendees here at SIGUCCS will have the opportunity to see many more examples of much more recent vintage at presentations here at the conference. Some of the examples were drawn from NASPA’s Tech Tools program.

The pre-conference workshop itself went well. Although the group was small the discussions were great and we all interacted very well. It was particularly interesting that in this small group over one-third of the participants were from countries other than the United States; one attendee was Canadian and two were Norwegian. I felt bad that my perspective (shaped by my experiences, education, and attention) was so American but our Canadian and Norwegian colleagues were fantastic in helping us out and sharing their experiences and perspectives.

I’m hanging out in Portland for the next few days and attending some of the programs here at SIGUCCS in between reading, writing, and other classwork (no sight-seeing for me unless those sights are in or right next to the hotel). The topics of discussion here at SIGUCCS are not challenges I face in my current position but I am about to start performing some research on full-time higher ed staff who supervise student employees so there is still a lot here for me to pick up and absorb.

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Leslie Dare at NCSU and I are the National Co-Chairs of NASPA’s Technology Knowledge Community. We’re nearing the end of our term and new leadership is being sought. It’s been a very worthwhile experience for me although I am looking forward to regaining the time I am devoting to the KC. I’d be happy to discuss the position and its commitments with anyone who is interested.

The full text of the message sent to the current Technology KC membership:

Two years ago the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community was created to help us, as an organization, focus on the many ways in which technology helps us in the work we do with students.  Under the strong leadership of our founding co-chairs, Leslie Dare and Kevin Guidry, the knowledge community has become well-established. We are now at the point of a natural transition of leadership. This provides an excellent opportunity for interested individuals to continue the good work that has begun, and to bring new ideas and expertise to our group.

The Nominating Committee for the Technology Knowledge Community is soliciting nominations for the Co-Chair leadership positions. Online elections to select these two Co-Chairs will take place in January, 2009. The term will begin at the 2009 NASPA Annual Conference, in Seattle, and last for two years.

Procedure for nomination:

1. Nominations must be submitted by Wednesday, October 22, 2008. Please send nominations to Leslie Dare at: ladare@ncsu.edu

2. The nomination should include biographical information (name, title, institution, resume, and contact information), along with a statement of philosophy, purpose, or goal for serving as the Technology KC Chair or Co-Chair (maximum 700 words).

The Technology KC ballot is open in structure.  Nominations can be submitted in a “ticket” format with two individuals who would like to run together, or individually.

If you have questions, please send them to: ladare@ncsu.edu

Thank you,
Leslie Dare, Kirk Manning, and Gail Cole-Avent

I strongly encourage those who are interested and eligible (gotta be a NASPA member) to throw their hat in the ring. It’s a great way to greatly expand one’s professional network and connect with others who share similar interests and concerns.  Of course, it’s also a great way to give back to the community and NASPA in particular.

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This semester I’ll be teaching EDUC-U 212 Virtually Real: Myths and Realities of Online Identities. It’s a 2-credit class for undergraduates that is scheduled for the second half of the fall semester. I’m still finalizing the syllabus and I’ll make it available here when it’s finalized.

In the class, we’re going to explore how youths and young adults use online tools such as Facebook and MySpace to explore and exhibit personal identity. It’s a short course so it will be very focused on identity, mediated communication, and Social Network Sites (SNS). Although it will be firmly grounded in theory and current research, the class will have a very practical bent as students should leave the class better prepared to understand not only their own online actions but also some of the forces shaping those actions. At the end of the class, students should be able to:

• Recognize and describe ways in which people present themselves online
• Describe properties of online communication
• Describe and critically evaluate popular views and (mis)conceptions of online communication and behavior
• Make thoughtful, appropriate, and practical analysis of and recommendations regarding young adults’ use of online communication tools

For those interested in the gory details, we’ll be using Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life as the primary touchstone regarding identity and how identity is performed. We won’t have time to read more than a chapter or two but it’s a very insightful book with powerful but accessible ideas. We’ll also spend time looking at Suler’s Online Disinhibition Effect. Although I perceive some significant flaws in Suler’s ideas (there’s a strong feeling of determinism from which I instinctively cringe) it’s an accessible summary of some important ideas. We’ll also be looking at some of the current research regarding SNS use among youths and undergraduates.

Interested IU undergraduates should be able to sign up for the course using OneStart. If you have any trouble signing up for the course or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at kguidry@indiana.edu.

Edit: I’ve received a few questions and it may be helpful to answer them here, too. The class is scheduled to meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5:00 until 6:15 in Foster SH021. The section number is 33403. And you don’t have to be an active user of Facebook or MySpace to enroll in and benefit from the class assuming that you have some knowledge of those tools and how others are using them.

Update: I’ve uploaded the syllabus.

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In the current issue of Student Affairs Online, I have an article titled “Exploding a Myth: Student Affairs’ Historical Relationship with Technology.” The contents and premise of the article should not be a surprise to anyone who is reading this blog. I’m very appreciative to Stu Brown, StudentAffairs.com’s head honcho, for inviting me to publish a regular article in Student Affairs Online.

I’d like to 2 points make about the article recently published:

1. Del Suggs pointed out to me that I made at least one mistake in the article. In the article I write:
   

   Radio has also seen use as an civic engagement tool as demonstrated by a program hosted by Furman University’s Dean of Women where women students were given explicit permission to “stay up late” to watch and listen to returns from the 1970 presidential election (Furman University, 1970).

   Del correctly notes that “there was no presidential election in 1970, at least not in the United States. The election of 1968 pitted Richard Nixon against Hubert Humphrey, and the election of 1972 was Richard Nixon against George McGovern.”

   Guilty as charged, Del; that is definitely a mistake on my part. The document was in a folder labeled “1970″ but the document itself is not necessarily from that year. The document explicitly says that the event was held on Tuesday, November 7, which seems to point to it actually being from 1972, and I should have caught that. The joy of working with undated primary sources, eh?

2. In the article I also write:
   

   Many campuses began student-operated radio stations in the late 1940s but these stations were typically associated with academic units, primarily electrical engineering or broadcasting and journalism programs (Bryant, 1981).

   As I continue my research, I am becoming less sure of this conclusion. I’m not yet sure if I am running into a difficulty caused by a gap in the existing literature or merely my own ignorance. What is causing me to become unsure of this conclusion is that I have come across a number of documents from the 1960s and 1970s that indicate that, at least on some campuses, the student government organizations in residence halls played significant roles in creating and funding student-run radio stations.

   In the 1960s, students at several institutions began radio stations, typically serving only one residence hall by transmitting over the electrical wiring (”carrier current”), including the University of Missouri (NACURH, 1963), Kansas State University (NACURH, 1966), Long Beach State College (NACURH, 1965), the University of Missouri-Columbia (NACURH, 1974). The radio station begun in the residence halls at the University of Missouri-Columbia later became “the first totally student owned and operated FM station in the country” (p. 4, NACURH, 1997).

   These radio stations were owned and funded by student groups or associations (often the Residence Hall Association) and run during limited hours. These stations were described by students as important parts of their communication strategies (NACURH, 1965). A 1966 report of a NACURH group discussion of radio stations in residence halls concluded that “[radio stations] could be an excellent way of improving communication and publicity on residence hall projects and people” (p. 1, NACURH, 1966). At least one institution, Georgia Institute of Technology, began using sub-carrier and carrier current radio in residence halls in 1978, ostensibly with an academic focus (”any student who can afford an AM radio can have a language lab in his own Residence Hall room” (p. 3, NACURH, 1978)).

The work in these areas - student-used technologies in residence halls and the broader topic of student affairs’ relationship with technology - continues. The documents referenced in this post and in the article illustrate one approach I am taking to get at these topics. Right now, much of my work in these areas is focused on locating and analyzing primary historical documents located in various archives. The NACURH documents referenced above are one particularly rich as they are all student-written documents and I haven’t found many of those in the traditional archives I’ve visited.

References

Brant, B. G. (1981). The college radio handbook. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: TAB Books.

Furman University. (1970). Potpourri [newsletter]. Greenville, SC: Furman University. Furman University Special Collections and Archives, Assistance Vice President for Student Affairs 1974 & Before, Box 1, Communications with Student 1970 folder.

NACURH. (1963). Residence hall communication at the University of Missouri. NACURH Nation Information Center document 63.41. National Student Affairs Archives. NACURH box, folder 6-89 Radio Station.

NACURH. (1965). Communications – Where & why do they break down. NACURH National Information Center document 65.37. Bowling Green State University Center for Archival Collections National Student Affairs Archives. NACURH box, folder 6-11 RH Communication.

NACURH. (1966). Group discussion report: The campus radio station and the residence hall. NACURH National Information Center document 66.22. Bowling Green State University Center for Archival Collections National Student Affairs Archives. NACURH box, folder 6-11 RH Communication.

NACURH. (1974). KCOU 88.3 FM. NACURH National Information Center document N25G-74-006-02.

NACURH. (1978). Uses of sub-carrier radio in residence hall. NACURH National Information Center document N25G-78-003-04.

NACURH. (1997). KCOU and RHA – How poor communications helped members re-evaluate their needs University of Missouri-Columbia 22 May 1997. NACURH National Information Center N16-181.

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A few days ago, P2P Blog reported that Napster is withdrawing from college and university campuses by ending its “Napster on Campus” program. This comes about a year and a half after Cdigix withdrew from this market. I can’t seem to find an official announcement from Napster but Vanderbilt and American University have their own announcements. Napster appears to be suffering internal troubles; I’m completely out of my element trying to understand that document but others have characterized it as Napster “put[ting ] itself up for sale again.”

In mid July, one of my colleagues at another institution posted to a public listserv that Ruckus has new sponsors and is changing direction.  In particular, they no longer have a sales or marketing department which means no more posters or advertising materials sent to participating institutions. I have not yet found independent corroboration of these assertions.

I would love to pontificate at length and offer observations but I’m afraid that there just isn’t enough information to offer much substantive, meaningful opinions other than the obvious ones: (a) it’s damn hard to compete with free and (b) your music damn well better work with everyone’s computers and mp3 players. I am, however, hopeful that the continued demise of these services will remind colleges and universities that their job isn’t to provide free or reduced music to students but to educate them. Even if students want free music and Congress pushes institutions to offer free music, institutions need to stand firm and treat students as intelligent citizens responsible for their own actions and not as captive consumers to be mollified with treats unrelated to education.

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NASPA and ASJA (the Association for Student Judicial Affairs) are presenting a webinar in October entitled “The First Amendment and Online Issues in Higher Education.”  The abstract:

College and university student use of online technologies and forums can present challenges for student affairs administrators at every level.  The expanding terrain of cyberspace brings forth questions about student conduct, attitudes and freedoms in online forums such as social networks.  Participants of this Webinar will explore how the law applies to administrators monitoring and responding to online student misconduct.

The event is scheduled for October 10 from 1:30 to 3:00 Eastern.  More info, including pricing, can be found on NASPA’s website.

I’m disappointed that the webinar costs as much as it does (early registration would cost me $75 as a student member of NASPA; that’s $75 for an hour-and-a-half webinar!) but I might try to fit this into my schedule and budget.  I would be interested not only in what the presenters have to say about the law but also in what they choose to discuss as a measure of what technology and legal issues are important to student affairs and higher education.

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