Mistaken Goal: Where Higher Education & Technology Meet

One topic of interest among a small group of academics and students is the emerging technology known as “Digital Rights Management” or DRM. As explained by Sean Captain in his New York Times article “So Much Music, So Few Choices,” DRM is “technology that protects copyrighted works by preventing unlimited duplication.” It’s a bit more nuanced that just preventing duplication but that’s an okay generalization. One of Captain’s key points is that “the many conflicting approaches to rights management can also limit choices.” He’s right. Most people encounter DRM for the first time when files won’t move, copy, display, or print as expected: copying DVDs, fast-forwarding through the FBI warning and previews, or moving music purchased online to another computer or player.

What does DRM have to do with student affairs? Alright, it’s a bit of a stretch. It’s definitely a topic that is usually limited to discussion among computer geeks and music industry executives. It is sometimes discussed amongst librarians and scholars as they wonder about how they will continue to access resources and scholarship that are increasingly hidden behind DRM, a discussion that not only revolves around access costs but also publisher lifespans and changes in technology. Luckily for them, new rules are being put into effect to alleviate some of those problems. But others still exist.

One strong connection with student affairs and higher education is the continuing discussion about students’ online copyright infringement and possible solutions. One “solution” pushed hard by the RIAA is the employment of legitimate online entertainment services like Napster, Cdigix, and Ruckus. Those services employ DRM; it’s how they’re able to convince the publishers to allow them to “sell” the music. And what does that mean for students who are in some cases forced to pay for these services whether they use them (or are able to use them) or not? It means they’re renting the music (which is not necessarily bad). It also means no fair use rights (which is necessarily bad).

Is that important to the students? For most of them, it’s not yet important. Many of those who take issue with DRM do so almost exclusively because the music won’t play on their particular mp3 player (see this USA Today article from earlier this year for a typical example). Rarely do students take the wider view (however, I suspect that this view may gain some traction if Jenkins’ Participation Divide ever begins to close as DRM does pose a large hurdle for many reuses of culture – remixes, mashups, etc.). And it’s hard to fault them. It’s partially an issue of maturity and experience, qualities traditional college students lack by definition. But it’s also an issue of education and that’s where many of us are failing. Our institutions will fight to protect the intellectual property “owned” by our institutions and our faculty will fight bitterly to protect their fair use rights in the classroom (even to the point of going too far and unethically ignoring copyright). But who fights for the students’ fair use rights? Who tells them that they even have those rights (certainly not the Boy Scouts and the MPAA)?

So that’s my weak tie-in with student affairs: legal rights and culture trampled and unmentioned by educators bullied into “doing something!” about students’ copyright infringement. That’s why I worry about NASPA’s recently-announced RIAA partnership. One could go further and accuse institutions of literally “selling out” but given that instititution have (a) paid money to employ many of these services and (b) acted primarily out of fear (of legislators, recording industry lawsuits, and bad public images) I don’t think that’s an accurate accusation to make. But there is certainly a discussion to be had about commercialism and its role in this debate as recording industry executives push the use of services that in turn pay the recording industry for the use of their music. There are legitimate ethical, moral, and legal issues but students aren’t the only ones who should be under the microscope.

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Like several hundred other ACPA and NASPA members, I submitted a program proposal for the upcoming Joint Meeting. Like many other programs, the main topic of my proposed program was Facebook. My program specifically centered on two points:

1. Introduction and discussion of relevant historical and contemporary computer-mediated communications (CMC) research. This is important not only to bring home the point that this emerging phenomenon is not as new or emerging as many people think it is (relevant research has been conducted for several decades) but also to illuminate particular findings of interest to student affairs practitioners.
2. Discussion of proposed linkages between CMC research and student development theory.

In September, NASPA published a paper (article only available there to NASPA members; download it from my website here) that I wrote several months ago in their e-zine NetResults. In this paper, I laid out thoughts rem,similar to the ones I was proposing to layout and expand in this program. I’m pretty confident that my thoughts are important, original, and significantly contribute to the community and its understanding of this perceived new challenge.

My program proposal was rejected. Although I am stung by this rejection, it’s not so much the rejection that bothers me. My primary concern is that there was consideration given for balance, diversity, and creativity in those programs that were approved. I reviewed programs this year and I don’t recall any of the programs that I reviewed as being heavily based in theory; to the contrary, the programs I remember reviewing were heavily based in recent experiences with some including only a token mention of theory or relevant scholarship. I also know another person whose *incredibly cool* theory- and original research-based technology proposal was also rejected. These scant (!) data points combined with my own experiences are enough to make me start wondering about the value that these professional organizations place on original research and theoretical constructs that are related to technology.

Eric Stoller echoes some of my thoughts in a blog entry in which he writes: “Can someone please inform ACPA and NASPA that technology is not an ‘emerging discussion.’ It is this kind of language which causes student affairs administrators to remain stuck in 1995.” In another entry he discusses an online professional development course he (accurately, judging from the description) labels a “fear session.” His question “Why do we not think holistically about technology?” is a fantastic question that I believe most have at best ignored and at worst disdained. Eric is presenting a session at a two-day professional development opportunity in January but judging by the titles of some of the other sessions (“Virtual Affliction: Understand the Power and Addiction to the Internet” and “Crossing the Line Online: How Cybersex, Cyberaffairs, and Pornography live in the shadows of the Net”) it’s clear that we have a lot more work ahead of this to counterbalance these fear sessions.

I know there’s a lot of interest in the student affairs world in practical experiences and discussions but I really think we can (and in many ways are working to) back ourselves into a corner unless we remain open to wider viewpoints. We owe it to those who have come before us to apply what they discovered to emerging phenomena. Consciously and deliberately applying these old theories to new phenomema and situations allows us to measure what we know of new phenomena using measuring sticks of known length. Further, it allows us the unique opportunity to reevaluate our assumed and received knowledge and, as appropriate, build on and modify that knowledge.

I assert that, like nearly everyone else, our viewpoint is rather narrow. What we view as emerging and new phenomena are rarely as emerging or new as we may believe. Most are, like all other inventions or innovations, built on earlier works. And guess what? There are pretty good odds that several people have conducted significant and insightful research focused on those earlier works! The works and insights by danah boyd, Fred Stutzman, Nicole Ellison, and others did not spring forth from their head fully-formed and -armed like Athena from Zeus; like other scholars, they have built on what has come before them (the “References,” footnotes, and endnotes ain’t there to pad their papers!).

And that’s all I want to do: build on what others have built before me. Those others may not necessarily be or have been student affairs practitioners, student development researchers, or higher education scholars. Some are psychologists, sociologists, or IT practitioners. Some ply their craft in communications, new media, informatics, or information science. But they’ve all discovered and proposed insights that can help us understand what are to us “emerging phenomenon” because to them it’s old hat and merely the next step in an evolution they’ve been tracking for a long time. We, in turn, can contribute our hard-earned understanding of young people and the pervasive culture of higher education to view their findings in the unique lens of our own education and experiences.

If this sounds like a deep insight or a desperate plea to link these disparate fields, it’s not. It’s merely an idea whose time has come. Some are undoubtedly already doing it. Some have already done it. If they’re out there, I want to find and join them – it sounds like a lot of fun!

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Jakob Nielsen‘s latest “Alertbox” article is entitled “Digital Divide: The Three Stages.” In this (very brief) article, Nielsen posits three types or stages of divides that “alienate huge population groups who miss out on the Internet’s potential:”

1. Economic Divide
2. Usability Divide
3. Empowerment Divide

Nielsen argues that the Economic Divide is largely a non-issue in modern America. His other two divides are very similar to Jenkins’ Participatory Divide. In short, both of these researchers believe that significant divides still exist between (a) Internet users and non-users and (b) different groups of Internet users. The two researchers differ in some ways on the exact form and causes of those differences but those differences appear to be more in point of view than significant and substantive differences. As a usability researcher, Nielsen concentrates largely on the user experience and how users interact with particular tools, suites of tools, and technologies. Thus his focus is often on how someone can or cannot use something to perform a particular task. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a communications researcher whose focus lies more on the sociological impact of technologies and societal changes or influences caused, aided, or disrupted by technologies.

One subtlety that is masked by the label “divide” is that these divides are more like continuums than binary, black-and-white issues. Whether one speaks of Nielsen’s Usability Divide or Empowerment Divide or Jenkins’ Participatory Divide, these are areas in which one can have more or less (understanding, power, or rates of participation). Even the seemingly-black-and-white issue of access is a continuum wherein no possible access and high-speed, always-available, unfiltered and uncensored access lie at the endpoints of a continuum with different levels of access in between (borrowed access, slow access, filtered or censored, etc.).

For us, it’s very important to remember that our students will come from both sides of these divides and all places in between. I don’t have good data at my fingertips but I have no doubt that traditional measures of diversity such as race, ethnicity, SES, age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. play huge roles in where one lies in these issues. The role of SES should be obvious. In his exploration of fan culture, Jenkins has noted the role of gender and the differences in how men and women interact with and use technology to interact and collaborate. danah boyd, herself a noted researcher in these areas, speaks of the role that communications technologies (specifically, IRC) played in her experiences as a young queer woman, technologies that may not been available to her had circumstances (location, finances, experiences, etc.) been different. It’s very important for us to begin to understand how (a) access or lack of access to, (b) understanding or lack of understanding of, and (c) use or non-use of these technologies – technologies ubiquitous and essential for many young people – is shaping and influencing youths in America (see the recent debate about DOPA for a great discussion of these issues). I assert that we don’t understand this right now as it’s complex and changing very rapidly. I further believe that applying what we know about young people (both through our experiences and through our research i.e. student development theory) we can uniquely contribute to this discussion and begin to understand its importance.

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Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have released a brief paper outlining some Facebook research entitled “Rhythms of social interaction: messaging within a massive online network.” They worked with a huge data sets: “headers of 362 million messages exchanged by 4.2 million users of Facebook…during a 26 month interval.” Wow! It’s a good paper and it’s relatively short (the main body is only 13 pages) – read it.

One finding of this research is, as the title suggests, the discovery of several consistent patterns of use on a daily or weekly basis. The patterns discovered by these researchers will not be a surprise to anyone who has worked with college students, particularly those in closest contact with them such as residence life staff. As a ResNet researcher, I would like to point out to readers that this kind of data is available at nearly every institution. If you want an extremely solid, reliable method of analyzing or discovering some of the patterns of your on-campus residents, ask your networking folks to analyze the network traffic in the residence halls. As the ResNet Coordinator at a medium-sized institution, I had direct access to this data and the patterns were clear. For example, it was pretty clear that many residents didn’t go to bed until between 2:00 and 4:00 am. That’s no surprise but the point is that I had data that supported that assertion. I don’t know of anyone who has really used that kind of data but I suspect there are a significant amount of data and implications for someone motivated and clever enough to analyze it.

Other interesting findings in this research:

• The median number of “friends” was 144, a figure very much in line with previous research conducted by others. This is also close to the “magic number” of 150, a number sometimes cited as the maximum number of friends one can have (a number that was “discovered” in primate research).
• Nearly half (41.6%) of the messages sent are to users in a school different from the user sending the message, a finding that supports the assertion that Facebook plays a larger role in maintaining previously-established social ties than in forming new ones.
• An analysis of message and poke traffic shows that there appear to be two main patterns of use: Mid-Sunday through mid-Friday (weekdays) and mid-Friday through mid-Sunday (the weekend).
• A comparison of the messaging habits of college students with those of employees in a large corporation shows that both groups exhibit different usage patterns on the weekend (and both groups define the “weekend” differently as noted above). But more importantly is that college students’ weekend pattern of usage still includes high usage of (Facebook) messaging whereas the corporate employees’ pattern does not. Or, as the researchers put it, “college students have a schedule in which they integrate computer use into most of their waking hours.”

There are, of course, other interesting findings in this paper. It is gratifying that there are no surprises in this paper. So far, we seem to be on the right track so far with respect to understanding students’ use of this tool. If only we could figure out how *we* should be using this tool…

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North Carolina State University’s Division of Student Affairs has announced that they are hosting a panel discussing “The Facebook Phenomenon” on January 30, 2007. They will be webcasting the panel and attendance, real or virtual, is free. The will be five panelists, four of whom are from NCSU and one of whom is from UNC. I am unfamilar with three of the panelists but not the other two. One of the panelists, the only student on the panel, is Whil Piavis. Better known as the “Pirate Captain,” Piavis was elected student body president for the 2004-2005 with a large portion of his campaign conducted via Facebook. Another panelist, Fred Stutzman, is a Ph.D. student from UNC and one of the leading researchers of Facebook and college students’ use of it.

It’s free and it should be good. Register and find more information at http://www.ncsu.edu/facebook/.

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Two relatively recent news items discuss college students’ technical know-how (actually, the report is more limited – more on that in a bit) and students’ and employers’ preferences for distance education.

First, ETS recently released preliminary findings from their new Information and Communication Technology Literacy Assessment. The results aren’t surprising for anyone who has followed information literacy trends: students fall short of information literacy expectations. Before I discuss the meat of the findings and implications, a few notes about how these results were presented. First, InsideHigherEd’s title for the article (“Are College Students Techno Idiots?“) discussing these findings is not only wrong but also unnecessarily inflammatory. “Technical know-how” is unrelated to “information literacy” and I expect those who claim to specialize in higher education issues to know the difference. I also understand that it’s their job to attract attention and readers but insulting our students is the wrong way to go about it. Second, while ETS did issue a press-release-like statement about their preliminary findings, their “additional info” document (the first link in this paragraph) is a pdf of a PowerPoint presentation. While I appreciate those that place their presentations online I hope this is just that – a presentation they conducted and are now sharing with us – rather than the “real” document. Others have discussed the inappropriate use of Powerpoint far better than I can so I’m going to move on.

There are at least two novel reasons I am interested in college students’ information literacy. First,I see strong and obvious connections between college students’ information literacy skills and their technical skills and knowledge (an ill-defined phrase if I ever saw one). There is also a strong connection between how many perceive college students’ information literacy and their tech skills and knowledge. In both cases, many seem to assume that because students know how to use the tools (Google, Word, Powerpoint, etc.) they know when to use them and appropriate uses for them. In my experience, many students’ knowledge of these tools is very superficial (and college students aren’t unique in this). Second, the growth of the information literacy movement and how its proponents have succeeded in moving this topic into the limelight can teach us all lessons about how to effectively advocate for something. What was once merely the concern of a few academic librarians is now a national issue. I don’t know all of the history behind this movement and the lessons it can teach us but what I do know fascinates me.

Second, Eduventures has released the results of a survey that claims to demonstrate that “more employers prefer online training to traditional classroom learning when it comes to college and university certificate programs for their workers.” I would post a link to the survey results but according to this Chronicle article it’s only available to subscribers (as is the Chronicle article – irony?). It’s impossible to comment on this survey or its results without more information. I understand the dilemma researchers face when figuring out how best to release their research results as it’s always a balance between access, resources, and ensuring the integrity of the research and those involved. Unfortunately, when research gets released via press release or news article and that’s the only way I can access it, I have to file it away in the “that’s interesting but unverifiable and thus unusable” pile. The claims made in the Chronicle article are very interesting but unfortunately without further details, particularly their methodology, they’re all irrelevant.

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Three recent items related to the issues of copyright, fair use, and how colleges and universities deal with and relate to those issues have appeared lately.

The first item is a revision of a white paper released in 2003 entitled “Background Discussion of Copyright Law and Potential Liability for Students Engaged in P2P File Sharing on University Networks.” This paper is a work of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities; other works by this group, including related congressional testimony, can be found on the American Association of Universities website; materials related to the technology task force are hosted by EDUCAUSE. The white paper is a 20 page document summarizing copyright and potential student and institutional liability for student copyright infringement. It’s a pretty good summary of a pretty dense, complex, and (for most people) uninteresting topic. Despite InsideHigherEd’s headline labeling this paper as one about “File Sharing” it actually focuses more on the possible effects of illicit file sharing than on the technology or other issues. What the paper does not do, except for one brief section at the very end, is give concrete policy guidance to colleges and universities on how to confront this challenge. I don’t necessarily fault the task force for not tackling that in this paper; it’s not the purpose of this paper (but it is the purpose of this paper). Further, it’s a pretty complex topic with little research underlying and supporting or refuting the possible solutions. Unfortunately, I don’t think many people want to hear that “it’s hard;” they want answers and concrete recommendations. This is especially true of our legislators.

Speaking of legislators: since the Democrats will control the next session of Congress they will be in charge of all of the committees and subcommittees. Of particular interest is the leadership and composition of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. The Democrats offer leadership to committees by seniority. So Howard Berman, representative of California’s 28 district, will have right of first refusal. As perhaps befitting one who represents many who work in or close to the film industry, he is a strong proponent of strong copyright laws and the rights of copyright holders. If he were to become chair of this subcommittee, the one that has taken the most interest in how universities and colleges respond to this challenge, I do not think he would be sympathetic. As our institutions are by nature slow to change, generally respectful of students’ rights and privacy (how many times have we told one another that “en loco parentis is dead!” ?), and extremely independent, we could be putting ourselves into a bad position with Rep. Berman as these traditional strengths could be viewed as resistance and refusal to act.

Finally, Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, wrote a brief opinion piece for CNET News about the Consumer Electronics Association and other groups’ recently-announced “Digital Freedom” campaign. The title of the piece (“The farce behind ‘Digital Freedom’”) may have given some readers and those-who-don’t-want-to-read-a-Carey-piece a mistaken impression. I agree that Sherman’s organization has done and continues to do a lot of things wrong and significant and lasting damage to America through their actions and stances related to copyright. But his point in this particular article is completely valid: we, consumers and citizens, should be as cautious of those for-profit (and even the not-for-profit) organizations who wave the “Fair Use Banner” as we are of the large copyright holders. The “Digital Freedom” campaign is likely as much or more about meeting the financial needs of its members and sponsors as it is about protecting our rights. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is much too simplistic and naive to live by in real life, much less in politics.

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We’re all struggling with copyright infringment and our students’ changing views of and relationship with copyright. Although there are still some who have not made the necessary and proper investment in the equipment, training, and skills necessary to deal with most of the bandwidth issues (with a tiny handful throwing in the towel completely and outsourcing), most of us are doing okay except for the occasional blips and never-ending game of small-time “whack a mole.” Some (many?) have given up or never attempted to classify network traffic and instead give each resident a quota or percentage of the available bandwidth. Data on these particular practices are available but they’re not my focus today. The point is that the technical issues are largely black-and-white and most are solveable or already solved.

But the legal and ethical issues are unsolved and largely unsolveable. And I want to focus on one specific legal and ethical issue that I believe has been overlooked as colleges and universities have implemented their policies regarding and reactions to students’ alleged copyright infringement: due process.

Based on my experiences, interactions with others, and informal research, it appears to me that very few (if any) institutions afford their students due process when a student is accused of copyright infringement. I believe this stems from two phenomena:

1. The actions that most institutions take when a student is accused, via a DMCA takedown notice, of copyright infringement are naturally motivated almost entirely or in large part because of the DMCA. Although some have tried to argue that the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA don’t really require institutions to do *anything*, I think most of us agree that the DMCA is pretty clear that we do have take some actions. However, few IT professionals are well-versed in the law (we even invented a well-used abbreviation to remind one another that “I Am Not A Lawyer”: IANAL). Even many of our legal counsels are not well-versed in copyright. I don’t blame either of those parties for not knowing the intricacies of this one branch of law but that lack of knowledge and familiarity engenders the most conservative of reactions and policies. It also encourages us to focus on this one issue without taking into account the larger context and history (because we don’t *know* the larger context or history – we’re unfamiliar with this, right?).
2. At many institutions, these policies are crafted and enforcement takes place without meaningful (or *any*) input from student affairs administrators, including those familiar with similar legal or educational situations. In the specific case of copyright infringement, librarians or other professionals (at my current institution, our copyright “experts” work in Print Services where they help faculty obtain clearance for material to be used in course packets) may also be qualified to provide guidance. In short, although IT or ResNet may bear the brunt of this problem – see the traffic flow, receive the DMCA takedown notices, and track down the student associated with the reported IP address – there are many skills and areas of knowledge necessary to effectively and ethically confront this particular problem that IT professionals may not (and often do not) possess.

So what this usually results in is an automatic presumption of guilt for students who are named or whose computer is linked to a DMCA takedown notice. Nevermind the legal requirement that those who are accused of copyright infringement via a DMCA takedown notice must be affored the opportunity to file a counterclaim, a requirement that schools may or may not afford students or even inform them. The concern I have is that institutions do not afford students due process and assume they are guilty of copyright infringement merely because someone else has accused them of it. It doesn’t matter that most of the students *are* responsible for the alleged copyright (not “guilty;” this is often a civil issue – another complication to be addressed at a different time). Let’s also ignore the immense ethical and legal problems that many of these large copyright holders have encountered. Right now, I don’t even care that due process a legal principle with many years of history and significant case law. It’s an ethical imperative that we not assume our students are unethical or criminals based on the unchallenged word of an interested third-party.

If we take someone else’s word over our students with no investigation or affording our students any due process then we’ve already lost our students and failed to meet this challenge. Make no mistake – this is a much bigger issue than just songs and movies. But that’s where it has started and we meet this challenge one student at a time. If we treat them like automatically-guilty criminals then they’ll behave like criminals. How about we try treating them like adults, responsible for their own choices but also caught up in a much larger and morally ambigious situation? We have legal priniciples and guidelines to follow but we also have obligations as educators and mentors.

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