Mistaken Goal: Where Student Affairs & Technology Meet

Three very recent publications in student affairs literature discuss technology:

1. I have a brief article in the current issue of Leadership Exchange, NASPA’s quarterly magazine for senior student affairs officers. The article is entitled “The Offline Challenges of Online Video” (which is a much better title than the one I had for it) and it’s in the Technology Center section. NASPA members can access entire volumes of Leadership Exchange via the NASPA website after logging in. For those who are not NASPA members, here is the article as it was submitted to the editor; it was substantially shortened and the references removed as befitting the type of publication and audience. We were hoping the article would serve as a small promotional or awareness piece for the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community but I think that link got lost in the editorial process.  It’s also worth noting that the article was written before the University of Florida “Don’t taze me bro!” incident that was captured and spread via YouTube.
2. M. Leslie Sadle discusses Facebook in a NASPA NetResults article entitled “Freedom and Responsibility: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills to Facebook Users.” The article is available to NASPA member. If enough people express interest to the author, perhaps he or she will release it in a publicly-available location (when I last published a NetResults article, I was not asked to sign over copyright to NASPA).
3. David M. Eberhardt also discusses Facebook in “Facing up to Facebook” in the current issue of AboutCampus. It’s an ACPA publication that is mailed to all ACPA members and I don’t know if it’s available online.

The problem I have with all three of these articles, including mine, is that they are descriptive and theoretical. We’ve been spending way too much time making predictions and theorizing and far too little time conducting the necessary research to see if our predictions and theories hold water. That’s the primary reason I quit my full-time job to return to school full-time and earn a PhD: to stop guessing and waving my hands in the air and start conducting research so I can start saying something with some level of assuredness. I acknowledge and embrace the necessary role played by these and similar articles but I have a burning desire and need to move beyond them to formal experimentation and observation. Now I just need to make the time, money, and patience to follow through…

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One of my current projects is an examination of the history of student-used communication and entertainment technologies in American college and university residence halls. Examples of such technologies include buzzers, telephones, televisions, computer labs, and in-room computer network connections. I’ve still got a lot of work to do, particularly on the older technologies, as those resources are more challenging to identify and locate. This is serious historical research complete with examinations of dusty old papers and searches for hand-scrawled notes and letters (it’s not Indiana Jones-type work as it’s all 20th century material but it’s still fun and exciting, especially for a computer geek). I am trying to anchor the research in the history of student affairs/college student personnel but as most of the student affairs technology literature is both (a) recent (so far, my oldest document in my literature review is from the 60s) and (b) very focused on the here-and-now I have even that portion of my job cut out for me.

That is all very vague so let me share with you a few questions related to residential computer networks that either I am working to answer or that have arisen in the course of this research:

1. Were most networks preceded by computer labs in residence halls? It is clear that in many cases computer labs (sometimes referred to as “clusters” instead of labs), composed of dumb terminals, preceded in-room network connections. However, I don’t know how prevalent this was nor do I think that I may be able to answer that question except in particular cases. And that’s okay as the question really seems to get at the historical evolution of computers in residence halls. So the question really reduces to “Did those institutions who were the pioneers of in-room network connections have computer labs before they installed in-room connections?” Of course, that means that I have to identify the “pioneers.” That question is easy to dodge answer by simply stating that those institutions for whom I have the earliest records are, as far as I can tell, the pioneers. I can only work with the information that I can locate but if I do a good job hunting for information then my answer should be okay.
2. What role, if any, did the 1984 divestiture of AT&T have on the development of American college and university campus computer networks and telecommunications, particularly computer networks installed in residence halls? I know from the primary and secondary sources that in-room connections were being explored and piloted by several institutions in the mid 80s. Was it just coincidence that these experiments were being tried right after the telephone monopoly was broken? Was innovation stirred by the AT&T breakup or were old habits and mindsets shaken loose? Or was it just a coincidence? Of course, this is complicated by the fact that networking technology and minicomputers were becoming mature enough for these experiments to be tried at that same time.

As stated before: I still have a lot of work to do. The ultimate goal with the current project is to see if I can figure out the reasons why these technologies were introduced. That’s a difficult question to answer, particularly in a historical context. Figuring when or how something was done is rather straight-forward. Figuring out why it was done seems to be a different and more difficult challenge. The AT&T question is a rather large question and I will almost certainly put it aside for later; I need a much better grounding in the history of AT&T and telephony in America before I can adequately begin to search for the answer to that question. But it sure is an interesting question and I hope it yields interesting answers!

This appears to be a novel and underresearched topic and I feel as if I am having to build the foundation as I go along. I am spending as much time in the Indiana University archives as I am in the library or online looking for resources with the hope that the historical questions about which I can not provide general answers I may be able to provide answers for one institution. I have even found a few gems in the archives that relate to other institutions.

I hope I can report back in a few months that I have some answers. The immediate goal is to produce a final paper for one of my classes (Andrea Walton’s History of Higher Education in the 20th Century) but this topic is close to my heart. It’s a joy when I am able to pursue a project such as this for a class or for work as it serves multiple interests and needs. If it turns out well, I hope to spin the paper and other findings into a handful of articles for publication. In the meantime, I hope to begin adding the documents I am locating to my bibliography in the near-future if anyone would like to follow along or glance over my shoulder.

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In July, those of us interested in technology issues related to higher education were whipped into a frenzy by an amendment to the Higher Education Act proposed by Sen. Reid (D-NV) that would have put a spotlight on institutions that receive lots of notices alleging online copyright infringement by students and required them to adopt technological measures to reduce infringement. Many in higher education opposed this amendment and Reid dropped it rather quickly. Shortly thereafter, the Senate passed their version of the Higher Education Act.

Now it’s the House’s turn to introduce their bills to renew the Higher Education Act. Yesterday, House Republicans unveiled their version of the House bill. It’s a 409 page document but we’ll only concentrate on our narrow, niche interest of technology affecting students.

As Inside Higher Ed has reported, this bill includes one section that is identical to Reid’s contentious and subsequently withdrawn amendment. Specifically, the bill requires that those institutions identified by the Secretary of Education identity each year the 25 institutions that have received the most allegations of online copyright infringement (and a minimum of 100 notices) provide evidence to the Secretary that they:

1. Have notified students on their policies and procedures related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted materials by students
2. Undertake a review of their procedures and plans related to preventing illegal downloading and distribution to determine the program’s effectiveness and implement changes to the program if the changes are needed
3. Have developed a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property.

This section of the Republican’s bill is almost word-for-word identical to Reid’s amendment. As I see it, the primary difference between this bill and Reid’s proposed amendment are that (a) this section is part of a much larger bill, potentially making it more difficult to focus on or repudiate, (b) the bill is proposed by Republicans, the minority party, whereas Reid;s amendment was proposed by the Senate Majority Leader (and thus a Democrat), and (c) this is a House bill and the House has been much more sympathetic to copyright holders and very unsympathetic to concerns of colleges and universities.

Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, is quoted by Inside Higher Ed as saying: “Ironically, as drafted the legislation would wrap institutions in an amazing amount of new federal red tape and, at the same time, order the Secretary of Education to study ways to reduce overregulation.” Contradictory political and financial demands are neither new nor unexpected but they take on additional significance when the political demands are of unproven and dubious effectiveness. We can be sure that this portion of the bill, if passed, would increase costs and likely decrease freedom for students on campus but we have no assurances that the required technical means will have any lasting or significant effect on reducing copyright infringement or effecting a change in the ethics, actions, or beliefs of students. As demanded and rewarded by our current electoral system, these legislators are overlooking or ignoring the long-term view in favor of the short-term view that favors financial gain.

Looking beyond this particular section of the bill, other sections address issues of concern or interest to us:

• Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) funds would be made available for “supporting efforts to establish pilot programs and initiatives to help college campuses to reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content, in order to improve the security and integrity of campus computer networks and save bandwidth costs.”
• Several sections specifically address distance education, including sections focusing on Title III funding for Tribal Colleges and Universities and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions and another section mandating the Secretary of Education work with the National Academy of Sciences to “conduct a scientifically correct and statistically valid evaluation of the quality of distance education programs, as compared to campus-based education programs, at institutions of higher education.”
• Many sections include amendments to include or require electronically-distributed information and resources.

I am also slightly amused that several sections of this bill specifically focus on the Department of Education’s College Online Opportunities Locater (COOL) online tool. Not only do many of the recommendations seem to be micromanagerial and overly specific for a federal law but the tool itself was recently revamped and relaunched as “College Navigator.” This is another fine example of the speed with which technologies and technological tools change.

Update: EDUCAUSE has posted some talking points (Word document) for those who wish to contact their representatives and urge them to oppose this bill.

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I’ve been quite productive this weekend. One of the visible signs of my productivity is the new “Wiki” tab on my website. I’ve had a test installation of MediaWiki up for a month or two but I finally got around to getting the layout to match the rest of the website and integrating it into the navigation bar. That ties into the topic of this post as I hope to be using the wiki to work on two related and similar programs aimed at offering some basic IT education to student affairs professionals.

• On Friday, I was notified that a pre-conference program I had submitted for the upcoming NASPA 2008 Conference was accepted. Elahe Amani, Co-Chair Elect of the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community and Director of Technology Services for Student Affairs at California State University-Fullerton, will be co-presenting the session. It’s entitled “New (And Old!) Technology You Can Use” and it will be a practical introduction to and comparison of many technological tools that may be of use to student affairs professionals: e-mail, listservs, blogs, wikis, RSS, etc. You can read the program information as it was submitted to and accepted by NASPA in the wiki entry.
• Another idea that I’ve been kicking around for a month or two is that of adapting the Learning 2.0 project to a student affairs context. The Learning 2.0 project was a project created by librarians at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) in North Carolina. It was a series of weekly educational topics and exercises posted in a blog with each week’s activities focused on different “Web 2.0″ tools. The entire series was scheduled to unfold over a period of 8.5 weeks. Other organizations have adapted these exercises and the wonderful folks at PLCMC have even posted some lessons learned and tips on how to “de-PLCMC” the activities. The basic structure and content are sound and I aim to adapt the activities for student affairs professionals with the goals of (a) running the activities for a group of professionals, possibly through NASPA, and (b) making the content useful enough that institutions can take the content, tweak it, and use it on their own campuses. I’ve mentioned this idea to others and several people have expressed interest in working on this project.

Given that I hope to be collaborating with others on both of these projects, I think you can see why I am eager to use a wiki as a tool for these projects.

In addition, the two projects are very similar to one another and I sincerely hope that no one thinks that I am in any way trying to get others to do my own work for the NASPA pre-conference program! It’s inevitable that there will be significant crossover and sharing between these two projects given how close they are to one another; one could almost look at them as being the same except one program will be conducted in 3 hours in a face-to-face session in Boston in a few months and the other will occur at some time over a period of several weeks over the web.

(Here’s a brief glimpse into how I attempt to weave things together: (a) Given those already involved, I am classifying these projects as NASPA Technology Knowledge Community projects; that means that Leslie and I can put them in the Technology Knowledge Community’s upcoming board report and say “Look – we’re doing things! Productive and interesting things, too!” (b) For both projects, we’ll be able to use the wiki and this blog post as real live examples of how these tools are used by professionals working on real projects.)

On a very loosely-related note, the work I put in to get MediaWiki to look like and fit into the navigation scheme of the rest of my webpage has made me rethink the design of this website. It’s not bad but as I shove more tools into this color scheme and setup, the more shortcomings are revealed. I doubt that I will be making significant changes anytime soon as that would entail a lot of work and there is no guarantee the end result would be any better. If nothing else, maintaining and expanding this webpage is meeting one of my goals which is to continue to “get my hands dirty” with technical issues and retain some level of competence in web development and maintenance; it would be very easy to neglect those skills while in graduate school and I must actively work to retain them.

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