Mistaken Goal: Where Student Affairs & Technology Meet

ECAR, EDUCAUSE’s research arm, recently released the results of their 2006 Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. While most ECAR documents are only available to ECAR subscribers and those who specifically purchase them, ECAR released this study to the public “because of the topic’s critical importance.” While I recommend everyone read through at least the Key Findings, let’s take a look at some of the findings, place them in context with other research, and try to extract some additional meaning from them.

First, without downplaying its strengths and essential validity, we must note the limitations of this study. Freshmen and seniors at 96 institutions were invited to participate (and each institution had to seek IRB approval - 96 separate IRB approvals for one study). The response rate was about 11% for a total of nearly 29,000 students. While that is a large number of respondents the researchers correctly state that their findings may only be directly applicable to the participating institutions and generalizing these results even to those institutions should be done with extreme caution. As with most surveys, the survey also suffered from self-selection bias. However, ECAR also conducted focus groups at 5 participating institutions to gather qualitative data which may have helped to offset some of these limitations. But enough about the methodology - let’s get on to some of the results.

One of the most striking findings of this survey is that computer ownership among respondents is nearly ubiquitous: 97.8% own at least one computer with over one-third (37.2%) of respondents owning both desktop and laptop computers. However, just as we’re finding in American society at large, there is also a very small minority of students who avoid or choose not to use technology. This is a separate group from those who can not afford technology or at least the level of technology they would like. Both of these groups not only present some difficulties for technical support personnel (who must support aging computers, users with uncommonly low technical skills or knowledge, etc.) but they also reveal a segment of American society who may never cross the Participation Gap, never mind the Digital Divide.

Another finding relevant for college and university administrators is that “overwhelmingly…students prefer e-mail [for institutional communication].” This finding should not be surprising. While we know that young people prefer to use Instant Messaging and other media such as social networking sites to communicate with their friends, they view e-mail as something for “old people” and a medium to be used to communicate with “institutions.” Without discussing whether the choice of medium is appropriate (there are very strong arguments that it is), we must admit to ourselves that we are indeed “old people” who work for “institutions.” Thus we can conclude that e-mail is most likely the correct medium for communicating most information to students.

Throughout the study, differences between male and female respondents are reported. For example, when discussing self-reported skill levels, the researchers note that “gender…is an influential factor in explaining perceived differences in skill levels: being male is associated with higher reported levels of skills.” Female respondents (as well as younger respondents) indicated a preference for less technology in their courses. Not surprisingly, “male [respondents] are more likely to be gamers, reporting higher usage of computer and online games.” While there is some evidence that many of these differences can be explained by factors other than gender (personal interests, academic major, economic status, etc.), this study provides evidence supporting the common sense notion that males and females use technology differently. (This is a fascinating area of scholarship)

ResNet professionals may be interested to learn that more than one-third (36.1%) of respondents reported owning a wireless “hub” (quotation marks are necessary as hub is a technical term often misused and likely incorrect in this context). While the report does not break down the different levels of ownership among on- and off-campus residents it does show that the level appears to correlate with age - the older a respondent the more likely he or she is to own a wireless “hub.” Based on that, I suspect the level of ownership may be higher among off-campus residents. But that may be wishful thinking. We know that despite students’ desire for ubiquitous wireless is far from being a reality in residence halls. We also know that wireless is perceived by many ResNet professionals as one of their top challenges. These issues are all summed up by the ECAR researchers who state that “the 1990s battle cry of a ‘port per pillow’ may be getting supplemented this century with ‘a router for every room, or at least a hub for every home!’” We’ll have to discuss the security ramifications of this later.

One surprising item in this study is that “more than 70% [of respondents] use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.” Although there is significant qualitative data in this study supporting the assertion that usage is very high, this survey’s quantitative data regarding reported usage of social networking sites is much lower than reported in most other studies of this specific topic of which I am aware. Why the disparity? Perhaps the data is “stale” (i.e. too old to reflect current trends). Or, more likely, the demographics of this group of respondents differ very significantly from those in the other studies with which I am familiar. For example, this is the only study of which I am aware that included students in 2-year institutions. Given the differences between “typical” students at 2-year institutions and 4-year institutions, many illuminated and discussed in this study, this may explain some or much of the difference. Although I am initially inclined to lend more weight to the larger body of evidence presented by those who specifically study this phenomenon, the sample size of the ECAR study is much larger than most other studies and surveys which lends it considerable weight. In any case, whether it’s “more than 70%” or closer to 90% or 100%, usage is still very high.

Here’s something that will make many student affairs professionals nod their head and smile: When discussing self-reported skill levels, the researchers noted that “students who report learning a skill for employment or personal interest also report higher levels of learning.” Preceding this comment is a brief discussion of students who possess skills not learned or taught in their coursework but acquired through employment, personal interests, or other means. The researchers even included a quote from a student who talks about skills learned through volunteer work with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Score one for internships, co-ops, volunteer opportunities, (reasonable) employment, and other experiential learning opportunities and those who support and encourage students in finding those opportunities.

Finally, when asked to select where institutions should invest more money in IT, if money were available, nearly 28% of all respondents selected “Music (Napster subscription, etc.).” Moreover, there is a very clear trend that younger respondents selected this response much more frequently than older respondents. While this is an interesting finding, I assert that the methodology significantly weakens this finding as the respondents were asked to select three responses from a pre-defined list of ten possible responses. Nevertheless, this is an interesting finding as the research into entertainment services has thus far been very limited and found mixed results.

There’s a lot more in the full report and I’m sure there any many interesting and important findings that I could not or did not discuss here. It’s a good study and the report is well-written so read it when you have the time.

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Given students’ (perhaps unwarranted) expectations of privacy and boundaries, should college and university administrators use social networking sites to communicate and interact with students? If the answer is “yes,” how can we effectively and ethically use those tools and interact with students (and others) in those spaces?

There aren’t easy answers to either of those questions. Further, those two questions are intimately intertwined and very difficult or impossible to consider separately. Let’s explore a few issues and resources recently written about those issues that may offer some answers and provide guidance.

First is a recent post to the MacArthur Foundation’s digital media and learning initiative Spotlight blog. The piece was written by folks with Global Kids who work within Teen Second Life. It’s centered on a few brief comments from teens explaining their view of (the Global Kids) adults’ presence in Teen Second Life. I don’t know how representative the views expressed are of the views of teens at large or even just the teens who use Teen Second Life. There also arises the question of how or if one can extrapolate those views from Teen Second Life and its participants to the teen population at large and its participants in social networking services.

Second is another discussion of users’ (false?) expectation of privacy and the perceived erosion of privacy on the Internet. This small part of a much longer and ongoing discussion began with a blog post entitled “Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever.” The post was also linked to from Slashdot where the discussion continued. While I am not familiar with the website on which the original post was written or its author, it’s clearly an emotionally-charged opinion piece. Stripped of the hyperbole and vitriol, the basic gist of the article is one that is a real concern for many people and one with which many student affairs administrators are familiar: some people have an unrealistic expectation of privacy when posting information on the Internet. Although this expectation is clearly unwarranted, those using social networking services to interact with or “reach” traditional college students should bear this expectation in mind. Even if the expectation is groundless, violating it wins no points with those who hold it.

(I don’t know how much and how quickly these expectations of privacy are changing. My feeling is that these expectations are, at least in the very public arenas where the expectations are clearly unwarranted, changing rapidly and are not held by most college-aged persons. However, I do not know if these realistic expectations extend to all Internet activity or just to the most visible ones. In other words, I don’t know if the general lack of privacy in most Internet transactions and activity is apparent to most people or if they limit that awareness to specific activities. My sense is the latter. In all honesty, I don’t even know if the original assumption that people expect “privacy” in all of their Internet activities is valid and proven, even among the young.  It seems reasonable but it’s an assumption.)

Putting together these discussions and observations one is led to the idea of context. Even those who hold realistic expectations of privacy and technology expect others to be cognizant of context and respectful when crossing contextual and social barriers. Fred Stutzman’s recent suggestions for using “Facebook as a Tool for Learning Engagement” repeatedly emphasize awareness of and respect for context. While Fred’s recommendations are aimed primarily at faculty they are just as applicable to and useful for student affairs and other administrators.

Finally, allow me to offer a few brief warnings. Some social networking services’ terms of service prohibit accounts that represent organizations instead of people. Among others, the University of Kentucky Libraries’ Facebook account was shut down several months ago as they were held to be in violation of Facebooks’ Terms of Use. In addition, some services may also claim ownership (copyright) of any material posted or uploaded to their service. Without discussing the legality of such claims, it is an issue of which one should be aware. The most prominent example of this particular issue is several years old but the issue lingers on.

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Several days ago, the Associated Press (AP) wrote about a recent survey conducted by the AP and AOL about Americans’ use Instant Messaging (IM). The results of this survey should not be a surprise to anyone who follows the research or simply pays attention to what has been going on the last few years. Two years ago, I even wrote about IM in the specific context of student affairs.

I personally ran into (and was swallowed by) this divide a few years ago. I was inexplicably invited to a meeting between mid-level and senior administrators to discuss how we can better conduct business during the first few weeks of class. A primary concern was that the normal lines of communication, primarily the telephone, were ineffective during that very busy time. Most of the desired communication revolved around relatively short and quick questions that would hopefully help us avoid sending a student or a parent to another office or building. When I suggested that we should explore IM as an alternative communication media many attendees at the meeting stared at me like I was an alien. Although a few attendees agreed that it was a good idea and that or their staff used IM in just this manner, the idea was tabled and never mentioned again. And I was never invited back for another meeting.

The lesson to learn here has little to do with IM. The real lesson is connected to the gap between students’ expectations and uses of technology and our own expectations (of one another and of students’) and uses of technology. To explore this lesson a bit more, let’s briefly look at e-mail.

We can look at some of the same research referenced above in the IM discussion (supplemented, of course, with additional research) to get an idea of students’ uses and perceptions of e-mail. We can also see that our own perceptions, broadly speaking, differ from our students’. For many of us, e-mail was the “killer app” that drove networking and desktop computing. We use e-mail to keep in touch with everyone - staff, colleagues (to how many listservs are you subscribed?), friends, and family. Teens and young adults, however, typically use e-mail to (a) stay in touch with their older e-mail-reliant contacts and large groups of people and (b) conduct formal or official business. Likely explanations for their behavior include the prevelance of alternative forms of communication common amongst their contacts (i.e. everyone has an AIM screenname, Facebook account, or MySpace account) and the overwhelming presence of spam in their e-mail. For us, spam is a relatively new phenomenon that is foreign to the medium of e-mail. For younger generations, spam is an inherent part of e-mail; e-mail, to them, has always had a very low signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, for many of us e-mail is seen as the primary and often the only way to communicate on the Internet. Younger generations know that is not true and are (clumsily, at times) learning to select more appropriate media and take advantage of new ones.

This certainly has implications for colleges and universities. Obviously, this affects (or should affect; too often, it doesn’t) how we communicate with prospective and current students and alumni. Not only do we display our own limitations and biases when we use the wrong medium, we also risk our message getting lost, ignored, misinterpreted, or miscontextualized. As persons whose bottom line is directly affected by how well they communicate with members of these younger generations, admissions and public relations folks are getting the message and, more importantly, tailoring their message and its medium. Let’s make sure we in student affairs and IT are doing the same.

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Many people view the Internet as a “disruptive technology.” For many people, that carries a negative connotation. Let’s take a brief look at one current example of this phenomenon.

The issue of privacy for students who live in on-campus residence halls is a familiar issue to most campus administrators. It’s a topic that nearly all student affairs administrators examine though their education and professional development as it makes for a great discussion of both a familiar ethical concept and unfamiliar case law. Another familiar issue that of students who are unhappy with their perceived lack of privacy in the residence halls, particularly when that perceived lack of privacy includes campus law enforcement personnel and their ability (or lack thereof) to patrol residence halls, make arrests, enter students rooms, etc.

Students at UMass at Amherst are unhappy about this issue. Instead of focusing on the legalities of this issue or how the campus is handling it, let’s focus briefly on how these events in Massachusetts are being reported to, noticed by, and discussed by folks from around the country almost in real-time.

This first came to my attention when someone on a discussion forum posted a link to Tuesday’s Boston Globe article. Within minutes, members of that forum read the article and began discussing it (later, updates to the discussion thread included posts from students on the campus and involved in the protests). Similarly, InsideHigherEd’s article from today has also been seen by many people far removed from this one campus, some of whom have left comments or engaged in discussion about the article at the bottom of the InsideHigherEd webpage. It’s to be expected that many who publicly participate in those discussions have very strong opinions but that, too, is not the topic of this discussion (but what a topic it would be!).

The point is that people who have never seen or read a physical copy of the Boston Globe and could not pick our Massachusetts on a map have heard about this incident. I don’t know what impression this incident has left on those people (Rowdy college students hold silly protest? Campus police invade privacy?) but that they have any impression at all of an event that is now occurring on a campus they’ve never visited involving students and administrators they’ve never met is quite remarkable. Without going to Friedman-like extremes and asserting that the world is flat, we can certainly conclude that we’re interconnected in unexpected and often-uncontrollable ways.

And don’t ever think that this is just an issue for your campus public relations or communications department! This specific incident involved policies set by campus police with significant input from housing and student affairs. Other incidents that have gained nationwide attention have focused specifically on other rules, policies, and related actions or reactions by student affairs staff. Just ask the Housing and Residence Life staff at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire or the deans of students involved in the affirmative action brownie sales. Will actions taken by or policies set by you or your staff be the next caught on a cell phone camera, uploaded to YouTube, written about in hundreds of blogs and discussion forums, and discussed by people around the world?

Update: Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, said that “there is no more local” in a recent speech discussing the transformation of the media industry and how people get their news. It’s not higher ed-specific but it is a speech well worth reading for those interested in those topics.

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A few weeks ago, Xingpu Yuan and Mary Madden of the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a memo with the results of a recent survey they conducted about “Virtual Tours.” Although they don’t seem to give a strict definition of “virtual tour,” their data indicate that over half of American Internet users have participated in a virtual tour. They break down their numbers using some demographic variables but there are too many complicating factors to put a lot of weight into the demographic analysis. The authors even specifically mention “colleges and universities” as “areas of personal interest” for which “people are increasingly turning to the internet to get a feel.”

Within student affairs, this may be of the most interest to housing and residence life professionals. I don’t know of any data regarding the prevalence of virtual tours on university websites or as used by various departments on campuses. There do appear to be a sizeable number of institutions offering virtual tours of their entire campus and I also remember seeing several housing departments that offered virtual tours of their residence halls when I researched this topic a few years ago. In my experience, those two “arenas” (the main campus’ web presence and that of the housing department) differ from one another significantly on most campuses are more extensive and focused resources are typically available for the main campus web presence than for an individual department, with a handful of high-profile exceptions such as admisions and donor relations.  I also I imagine that the on-campus housing “market” differs from many other facilities on-campus as operations that are “forced” on students (required housing and meal plans is common on many American campuses, particularly for freshmen) are not necessarily responsive to market forces. In other words, a housing operation that is “guaranteed” occupants each year may not work as hard to advertise their spaces with “extras amenities” like virtual tours. Summer conferences, a (money-making) staple on many campuses, also play a huge role in this but that’s another complex topic altogether with management of and responsibility for those events sometimes resting in odd places or divided among different groups.

This kind of data may also be of interest to others who manage facilities on campus, many of whom are in student affairs. Potential spaces include interviewing space, entertainment venues, meeting spaces, dining spaces, and recreational spaces. As noted above, virtual tours may be of high value for those who manage revenue-generating spaces.

Still, this research seems to be pretty clear: A majority of American users know what virtual tours are and use them. It’s natural to assume that they may come to expect them, too.

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I’ve recently been thinking about the state of ResNet outsourcing. There is very little data about this topic and it doesn’t seem to come up very often in the ResNet community but it’s out there. Allow me to take you on a brief tour of the available data and my thoughts.

A few recent items have mentioned this topic. Actually, they’ve more generally mentioned IT outsourcing. The first of these is the just-released EDUCAUSE Core Data Service FY2005 Summary. I (briefly) discussed this in my previous post. This document notes that “the use of external suppliers to run a campus IT function appears not to be a common practice overall.” More specifically, only 3.1% of respondents are outsourcing their ResNet. Another recent item that mentions outsourcing is the just-released results of University Business’ Technology Spending Survey 2007. The reported results of this survey are more general but 20% of respondents outsource their “IT Support” and 15% outsource their “Help Desk.” The extent of the outsourcing and other details don’t appear to be available in either of these documents (they’re broad, general surveys; there is no way to construct them to answer the questions or concerns of every niche or specialty).

The EDUCAUSE data are very similar to to the data in the 2005 ResNet Survey. Only 2% of the respondents to that survey indicated that they were, at the time of the survey (spring of 2005), outsourcing their ResNet; an additional 22% have considered or were considering it.

In addition to these surveys, I also recall seeing several EDUCAUSE programs and presentations related to ResNet outsourcing. The vast majority of them, however, are all related to one company: Apogee. While I am, in general, very skeptical of outsourcing ResNet, almost everything that Apogee’s clients have said about Apogee has been very positive. While it doesn’t appear that Apogee has a large number of clients, some of them are very large and significant (University of Texas (see clarification below in Update 3) and Florida State University). Their list of clients is certainly larger than I remembered it from the last time I looked into this issue and this company and they appear, from my outsider’s perspective, to be experiencing some level of success.

So that’s the trail that I followed when trying to figure out the current state of ResNet outsourcing. If I wanted to be even more thorough, I would search the archives of the ResNet listserv and perhaps post a message asking for help, insight, or input. I monitor that list pretty carefully and have been doing so for several years and thus consider such a search unnecessary for this brief, non-scholarly overview.

I don’t care to go into a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of ResNet outsourcing. As mentioned above, many of my colleagues who have actually pursued this option appear to be pretty pleased with their decision. I’m sure that of the 4,000+ institutions of higher education in the United States nearly every possible decision is the right decision for some of those institutions. I am wary of surrendering the incredible (but often untapped) educational value of an institutionally-run ResNet program, including the student employment and leadership opportunities possible through a well-run ResNet program. On the other hand, I am very sympathetic to those institutions whose priorities differ and who do not have or care to dedicate the resources to maintain a ResNet.

Please accept my apologies for not being able to give you a succinct, well-written, and well-researched discussion of the causes, effects, and viability of outsourcing your ResNet. As a ResNet researcher, I am acutely aware of the dearth of data in this area. I am also aware of the immense variety among American institutions of higher education. Without a significant amount of data, attempting to generalize the few focused, single-institution discussions to every institution appears to be very foolhardy and unwise. We have quite a bit more work to do in conducting descriptive research before we can think of making prescriptions.

Update: The Chronicle has a short article about the perceived increase in IT outsourcing based on data from the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service and the Campus Computing Project (a survey I did not mention as it (a) doesn’t really have much ResNet- or student affairs-specific material and (b) has only a brief executive summary with the rest of the data reserved for paying customers). The Chronicle article isn’t bad for what it is but some of the numbers are pretty small and do I have to wonder about statistical significance as the article does appear to be trying to extrapolate these surveys’ findings onto the entire population. But the gist of the article - outsourcing is slowly increasing - appears to be correct, in general.

Update 2: InsideHigherEd also mentioned the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service and the perceived increase in outsourcing. I’m puzzled why a topic that is only briefly mentioned with no fanfare a handful of times in a 121 page document is attracting so much attention (relatively speaking).

Update 3: William C. Green, Director of Networking at the University of Texas at Austin, asked me to clarify his institution’s relationship with Apogee: “The University of Texas at Austin residence network is provided by university.  It is not now, nor has it ever been, outsourced to Apogee….Apogee does provide services to off campus private dorms and apartments.  And at one point had a contract to market that service through the university.”  Thanks for the clarification William!

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Earlier this week, NASPA approved a new Technology Knowledge Community. Within NASPA, Knowledge Communities are self-organized groups dedicated to particular topics or areas of knowledge. Knowledge Communities gain access to NASPA resources such as webspace, listservs, and limited funding for educational programs and resources. Apparently there was previously a Technology Knowledge Community but it folded after a few years after struggling to define itself and its focus. Leslie Dare published an article in Student Affairs On-Line entitled “Technology in Student Affairs: Seeking Knowledge, Craving Community” describing the previous NASPA Technology Knowledge Community and the need for it to be revived and reinstated. Several NASPA members, including myself, contacted Leslie after reading the article to offer our assistance. We recently organized ourselves, formalized our proposal, and submitted it to NASPA.

The NASPA Board of Directors unanimously approved our proposal during their December meeting. Leslie and I are co-chairing the Knowledge Community and busily trying to organize the rest of the leadership. Putting together the leadership team is a rather bureacratic process involving many people from across the nation; I’m sure it works once it’s in place but it’s a bear to get set up initially.

We’ll likely have an open meeting at the 2007 ACPA/NASPA Joint Meeting in Orlando among other opportunities to publicize this new group. I don’t think we’ll have trouble attracting interest or members but we must carefully define our scope and define our focus lest we suffer the same fate as the previous Technology Knowledge Community. We’ve got some ideas on how to do that but we don’t have much time before the Joint Meeting to get those ideas rolling.  I’m really eager to get past these initial steps so that we can to the business at hand and use NASPA’s resources to collaborate with one another on common challenges and interests involving student affairs and technology.

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EDUCAUSE’s Core Data Service is the premiere source of data for and about information technology in higher education. Their very-cool web interface that allows you to generate custom reports is only available to those who submit data for each institution but each year they release an Summary Report chock full of details and tables. The fiscal year 2005 Summary Report has just been released. It’s not exactly the kind of material you print out and read for fun (unless you’re a higher ed IT geek - like me!) but it’s a fantastic resource to which one can periodically refer as it’s often the best or only source of data for many of the statistics it catalogs.

There is (literally) no mention of student affairs or even student services in this summary. That’s okay - it’s a focused document with voluminous document about IT services, support, funding, staffing, infrastructure, and other IT-related topics.

There is, however, mention of a few topics that overlap with student affairs or student affairs concerns. The most prominent of these are:

• Legal online entertainment services (Ruckus, Cdigix, etc.), perceived by many as an answer to the challenges posed by accusations that students are engaged in widespread copyright infringement, rose again in prominence on this year’s survey. The authors of this summary note that while the absolute number of respondents employing these services is low (8% of all respondents), that is nearly twice the number as last year. That’s also a pretty significant uptake of a relatively new class of services. Also of note is that the percentage of respondents classified as doctoral institutions who replied that they are employing a service is much higher than the other types of institutions. Based on previous research in which I have participated on this very topic, I hypothesize that the larger research institutions are the ones who (a) perceive that they are the more likely targets of lawsuits and pressure to “do something” about this perceived problem and (b) have the resources (money, staff, infrastructure, etc.) to dedicate to fielding a potential solution.
• Several questions were specifically asked about residential computer networks. The index lists these for ease of reference although a few areas in which questions about residential networks and residence halls were asked are not listed in the index (e.g. the brief wireless section makes a mention of residence halls and the relative paucity of wireless access in them). None of the questions asked specifically about ResNet are surprising to those knowledgeable in this area. I have had not yet had time to make a thorough comparison of the results of this survey with current and recent ResNet-specific research but there are definitely several areas where the research overlaps. The most prominent of these were the questions dealing with security, particularly those about required software and network authentication. As a ResNet researcher, I am very surprised that this is the first year that EDUCAUSE has asked in the CDS about network authentication as it’s been an active area of development and deployment in residential computer networks for many years now (likely over a decade but I don’t have a reference available to clarify this point - anyone know when NetReg was first developed and deployed? It was certainly some time in the mid ’90s.).

Like other important and foundational research, this is not necessarily exciting stuff. But it’s critical and when you need it there is no substitute. It’s worth glancing at to become familiar with the kind of information that is available. If you’re interested in conducting research, it’s also worth looking at to see what kind of information is not available.

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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently released a report entitled “Spotlight on Speech Codes 2006: The State of Free Speech on our Nation’s Campuses.” The data that underlie this report come from a FIRE survey of “over 330 schools” with findings that “an overwhelming majority…explicitly prohibit speech that, outside the borders of campus, is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” FIRE is careful to note that private institutions are not typically beholden to the Constitution but usually claim similar protections or values and thus are effectively held to similar legal and ethical standards. Interestingly (and, to some, controversially), they also exclude from their analysis institutions that explicitly state that they do not assure unlimited free speech or academic freedom to their students, faculty, and staff.

Without addressing whether the claims made by FIRE are correct, there are definitely some ties between technology and speech codes. Whether they are legal or ethical, speech codes or similar policies most certainly do apply to messages communicated via electronic means. By some measure, this is actually good news as it seems logical and fair that messages communicated via electronic media be treated similar to messages communicated via any other media; that the message in question should not be prohibited regardless of the media used to communicate it is another issue altogether.

The really interesting part is when prohibitions or restraints are extended to or created specifically for messages communicated via electronic media. Over a year ago, Fisher College expelled a student for “conspir[ing] to and [sic] damag[ing] the reputation” of a police officer after the student wrote disparaging remarks in Facebook. According to Erik Brady and Daniel Libit’s March USA Today article, Florida State University and the University of Kentucky “issued ultimatums to their athletes to be careful what they post” (good) but Loyola University banned athletes from joining Facebook (bad). According to a press release and other documents distributed by FIRE, a University of Central Florida student was charged with (but found “Not In Violation” of) harassment through “personal abuse” for creating a Facebook group entitled “Victor Perez is a Jerk and a Fool.”

I understand the perceived-dilemma posed by wanting to preserve free speech and academic freedom while also maintaining an open, collegial, and welcoming community. However, I often worry that my friends and colleagues in student affairs place too much emphasis on trying to protect their students and communities from “dangerous” or “bad” speech, even speech that occurs off campus or online. Their heart is in the right place but their actions are misguided. You can’t fight hatred or intolerance by banning it, even if technology seems to give you the tools to do so. Education is the answer; we know that, it’s our business. Rather, we should know that. We forget sometimes and even when we find them annoying or believe them to be wrong it’s great that organizations like FIRE exist to help remind us of some of our responsibilities.

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If we podcast, do they listen? Brock Read of the Chronicle recently touched on this topic when he mentioned a recent Business Week article and a Chronicle article both detailing some research and statistics about podcasts and how people listen to them (much of the data in the Business Week article comes from a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study - if you’re not familiar with the Pew Internet & American Life Project then you need so spend some time on their website as they do very exciting, up-to-date, and important research about Internet use). More accurately, the articles are about how people don’t listen to podcasts. While the number of people downloading and listening to podcasts has increased significantly we must carefully consider the potential costs and benefits before committing to this new technology.

For me, this has come to my mind as my institution works to implement a new web support team. Our content management system supports podcasting. But do we need to immediately utilize this technology? If so, in what areas? Let’s stick to the topic of this blog by focusing on student affairs.

In my experience, the utility of podcasts is greatest for those who travel and thus have time on their hands as they commute. As my current campus is 100% residential, our students don’t do much commuting. Even most of our staff don’t seem to commute very far. That’s why I don’t own a new mp3 player - when would I listen to it? I know that many of our students own mp3 players and listen to them often (you can’t help but see the white iPod earbuds stuck in their ears, especially in the library while they are studying). So of course to bring this discussion home to my campus we would need to talk to our students and find out what they really want and what they really do and use. But without that data we’re left speculating.

We’re back to the original question: Should we embrace this technology? To create quality podcasts requires (technical and human) resources, training, and planning. Excepting Stuart’s efforts, most of the discussions about podcasting have focused either on the academic uses (i.e. recording classes or similar material) or admissions/public relations (Dan Karleen at Thompson’s is a great source of info on these particular uses). In a paragraph entitled “Tech gimmick?” in a recent Campus Technology article, Dr. Hank Edmondson from Georgia College & State University noted that even in academic affairs, an area that arguably has greater access to IT resources and support, “[Podcasting will] make [classes] worse if you’re not ready for it. You can be a whiz technologically but shallow academically.”

Given the resources and circumstances necessary for creating podcasts, is anyone out there creating successful student affairs podcasts? I know that there are student affairs folks podcasting but are they successful and to what do they attribute their success? Is this a technology that we can all embrace or is it one that we must all selectively weigh and judge for ourselves (I bet you know where I stand on the issue!)? What are the factors we must weigh and judge?

I ask these questions because I perceive there is significant value in this technology and method of media delivery (Pew reported that 12% of all American Internet users have downloaded a podcast - that’s still several million people) but I also believe that it may be of very, very different value to different institutions and student bodies and thus the decision to dedicate resources must be made carefully. As the quote at the top of this webpage notes, technology is a tool - we must not embrace new technology merely because it is available and trendy but because it is truly beneficial for us and our students. Neither should we avoid new technologies out of fear, trepidation, or perceived lack of resources.

Update: Here’s some discussion about this topic from a higher ed marketing perspective. You can follow the trail of links and comments to find more.

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