Mistaken Goal: Where Student Affairs & Technology Meet

(This is largely a note for myself.  I had an epiphany while showering this morning and I don’t want to forget it!)

I haven’t touched it for a while but for a few years I’ve been working on historical research focused on entertainment and communications technologies in American college and university residence halls. As is often the case, I began this research as it was a topic of interest to me; I placed only superficial thought on practical applications and implications. In other words, I did it only because I liked it and it interested me. But that won’t convince others to care about this research, to listen to me discuss it, or allow me to publish it.

This morning I finally found my hook. This will be the first time I’ve written it down so let’s see how it looks in print:

Understanding the history of entertainment and communications technologies in residence halls provides us with a means for understanding the tapestry of forces that have shaped not only residence halls but academia in the United States. These technologies provide rich examples of innovations motivated by economic competitiveness, cultural expectations, and academic experimentation.

Not only does this provide me with a much-needed organizational framework for this work but it also provides others with a motivation for understanding and supporting this historical research.

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A few days ago, I submitted a proposal to the NASPA Board of Directors requesting that student members be allowed to fully participate should the issue of ACPA/NASPA consolidation come to a vote before the NASPA membership.  As things stand right now, the Board interprets the NASPA bylaws as not permitting students to participate in any votes.  This blog post is about some of my personal emotions regarding this situation, emotions that purposely and prudently are not fully reflected in the proposal and related professional communications.

Although I did my very best to keep my emotions in check as I worked on this proposal, this proposal was primarily motivated by emotions:  Incredulity.  Frustration.  Anger.  Disbelief.

First and foremost, I am appalled that NASPA denies me the right of full participation in this and other issues while never hesitating to ask for my time and money.  I am furious that my right to vote in this and many other matters was stripped from me when I made the audacious decision to return to school for my doctorate.  This anger is driven not only by the fact that my voice is being silenced but that it is being silenced by educators who not only purport to value education but also profess to have a deep concern for students and the future.  I don’t know how to reconcile those professional values with a set of bylaws that explicitly denies student members – including students who have many years of professional service within NASPA and many students whom NASPA has worked very hard to recruit – a voice in the most important decisions affecting the organization.

Moreover, unless I’ve made a mistake or missed something, student members are not even represented in any of the Divisions or the Board of Directors.  Not even one student member is listed in these groups on the NASPA website!  This complete lack of representation in these powerful groups is so out of line with our professional values that it beggars belief and I sincerely hope that I’ve made a mistake or looked in the wrong places on the website.  Not only does this lack of representation present a profound problem with respect to representation and diversity in these groups but it also denies student members incredibly valuable opportunities for professional development and education.

My tremendous disappointment in NASPA is tempered by the personal actions of the senior members who have guided me and my colleagues in putting together our proposal.  This is a terribly political issue so I will not write their names here (I’ve already thanked them in private) but I am tremendously grateful for their time and the knowledge and experience they shared with us.  Although I am profoundly confused and frustrated, I retain some hope that NASPA will correct its course and align its actions with its values because I have some trust in the influential and experienced people who provided us with guidance.  NASPA must learn to practice what its members preach.

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My first set of surveys is printed, packaged, and awaiting pickup by the FedEx man.  In other words: HOLY SHIT I’M REALLY STARTING MY DISSERTATION!

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(I will write more in a little while expressing my conflicting emotions regarding this proposal but I want to keep my personal emotions separate from the more interesting and important material below.)

A few weeks ago, I described how NASPA will not allow student members to vote on the issue of ACPA/NASPA consolidation if the issue is put to a vote by the NASPA membership.  Last night, I sent the following message to Dr. Elizabeth Griego, president of NASPA, and Ms. Gwen Dungy, Executive Director of NASPA.

Ladies,

Please find attached a proposed resolution for the NASPA Board of Directors to consider at its next meeting.  We trust that you and the Board will act on the spirit and merits of this proposed resolution, smoothing over any technical flaws or procedural missteps we may have made.

As previously discussed with both of you, this proposal requests that Student Affiliates be allowed full participation in any vote of the NASPA membership on the issue of ACPA/NASPA consolidation.  The signatories of this proposal are experienced, dedicated members of NASPA who firmly believe that our voices must be heard on this issue and given equal consideration.  We care deeply about NASPA and student affairs and we believe it unjust and unethical that our voices will be silenced on this important issue merely because we are currently pursuing further education.

We understand that some interpret the association’s bylaws as prohibiting Student Affiliates from voting on this matter.  We disagree with that interpretation.  However, even if we concede that the current bylaws prohibit Student Affiliates from voting on this issue, we assert that the bylaws are unjust and must be changed or overridden; bylaws that deny a voice to dedicated members in this critical issue are contrary to our professional and ethical values.

Finally, we hope that whatever the outcome of this resolution the Board understands and remembers that there are groups within NASPA that historically have been denied the right to vote, including Student and Associate Affiliates.  Even if circumstances do not permit the Board or the voting membership the ability to grant these groups voting rights, these groups must be allowed and encouraged to meaningfully participate in determining the future of this organization and our profession.

On behalf of my colleagues,

Kevin R. Guidry

PhD Student, Higher Education & Student Affairs Indiana University

I have privately thanked them many times but I once again offer my sincere thanks to everyone involved in putting forth this proposal.  Elizabeth Griego and Jan Walbert were extraordinarily gracious with their time in helping us put together this proposal with the full benefit of their experience, knowledge, and support.  The signatories of the proposal were wonderful in their moral and material support.  And, most importantly, my behind-the-scenes team of Dan Bureau, Nick Grainger, Chris Medrano, and Nolan Yaws were there every step of the way to keep me on the right path and ensure that this proposal expressed our emotions in a professional and respectful manner.

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My survey instrument has been through its final design process and I’ve printed the first set.  The final design process moved things around a bit to make the instrument easier to scan and added a blank space for the survey ID.

The final instrument was delivered to me not in the format I expected.  I thought it would be in a format that would allow me to easily perform a mail merge to insert the survey IDs for each survey.  Since this instrument is physically a separate sheet of paper, I have to be able to match this instrument to the main BCSSE survey instrument (because I’m using demographic information from BCSSE).  To do that matching, I am printing survey IDs on each of my surveys that correspond to the survey IDs already printed on the BCSSE surveys.  I am then physically inserting my survey into the BCSSE survey (which is a 8.5×17 sheet folded in half).  Having the same ID on both instruments will ensure that we can match the responses to these surveys even if the two instruments are separated after the students complete them.

The final instrument as I received it is exactly what is linked above.  It has a blank for the survey ID but how do I insert the ID?  More specifically, how do I easily insert the ID for hundreds of surveys?  Here is what I’m doing:

1. Create an Excel spreadsheet with the survey IDs I need to insert (each participating BCSSE institution is pre-assigned a range of survey IDs so I know them in advance).
2. Create a mail merge document in Word.  This document has only one thing in it: a mail merge field in the bottom right corner.  This document uses the previously-created spreadsheet as its data source and the field is placed on the document such that it lines up with the blank Survey ID space on the pdf of the survey instrument.
3. Complete the mail merge, generating a Word document that consists of a bunch of blank pages with survey IDs in the bottom right corner.
4. Print the mail merged document to pdf.
5. Open the new pdf and add the final survey instrument as the background of each page.

This process is not the most straight forward way to create a mail merged document but given my situation it’s not bad.  Although it’s a tiny bit convoluted it works reasonably well.  This process might not work if it had to be more precise (i.e. inserting new text into a block of existing text) but since I have a large target that is an empty box I don’t have to worry about precision.

(I was initially guided to this process – specifically the idea to use the instrument as a background image on another pdf – by this 2-year old thread on MacRumors.com.)

I’ve used this process to print the first set of 375 surveys to be mailed later today or tomorrow to an institution in New England.  It should work well for the other 3885 surveys I will be mailing to nine other institutions in the coming months.

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(This is a very brief summary of a paper a colleague and I presented on Monday, March 31, at the AIR Forum in Chicago, IL.  Both the paper and the presentation are available on the NSSE website; please consult the paper or contact us for more detailed information.  We hope to further develop this paper and submit it for publication very soon so your comments and questions are very much appreciated!)

In the paper Allison BrckaLorenz and I presented earlier this week, we used data collected with the 2009 administrations of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) to examine how often these two populations – students and faculty – use academic technologies.  We added several questions about technology to the surveys administered to some institutions.  In this paper, we examined the responses to those additional questions from senior undergraduate students and faculty who teach them at 18 institutions who participated in both NSSE and FSSE.  Specifically, we (a) compared student and faculty responses and (b) explored responses across academic disciplines.  However, to keep this blog post a manageable and readable length, I will omit most of the discussion of disciplinary differences; I encourage you to read the full paper if you are interested in those findings.

The survey question on which we focused was multi-part and asked respondents how frequently (Very often, Often, Sometimes, or Never) they used some academic technologies:

1. Course management systems (WebCT, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Sakai, etc.)
2. Student response systems (clickers, wireless learning calculator systems, etc.)
3. Online portfolios
4. Blogs
5. Collaborative editing software (Wikis, Google Docs, etc.)
6. Online student video projects (using YouTube, Google Video, etc.)
7. Video games, simulations, or virtual worlds (Ayiti, EleMental, Second Life, Civilization, etc.)
8. Online survey tools (SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, etc.)
9. Videoconferencing or Internet phone chat (Skype, TeamSpeak, etc.)
10. Plagiarism detection tools (Turnitin, DOC Cop, etc.)

The average responses to this question are shown in the figure below.

A few things are apparent from this figure and the responses that it displays.  First, the only technology that students and faculty really use is course management systems (CMSs); most respondents never used the other technologies.  Second, except for Plagiarism detection tools, students are reporting more frequent use of these technologies than faculty.  This is particularly noticeable for collaborative editing software, a technology that students probably use outside of class to collaborate much more often than they use it during class or when specifically assigned to use it.

Another way to make sense of these survey responses is to use cluster analysis to group respondents together.  For students, a 4-means cluster analysis made the most sense:

The students in the High and Medium Use clusters used multiple technologies with relatively high or medium frequency (remember that most students never used most of these technologies).  Students in the Low Use cluster only used CMSs.  And students in the No Use category didn’t really use any of these academic technologies.

A 3-means cluster analysis was most appropriate for the faculty respondents:

As with the student clusters, faculty in the High Use cluster used multiple technologies with some frequency.  Faculty in the Low Use cluster only used CMSs and faculty in the No Use category didn’t really use any of these academic technologies.

From these figures, it is clear that most students and faculty are making little use of academic technologies except for course management systems like Blackboard and Sakai.  Given the resources campus have invested in these particular technologies, it is probably good that faculty and students are making frequent use of them.  However, we stop short of making a subjective judgment based on these responses as there are certainly many instances in which technology is neither helpful nor appropriate in classwork and assignments.  A better approach – one that may be impossible using self-administered surveys – would be to understand not just how often students and faculty use technologies but how often they use them appropriately and well.

More interestingly, students are reporting a higher usage of these academic technologies than faculty.  Most likely, these technologies are not be required by faculty but used by students on their own initiative to complete their work and collaborate and communicate with one another.  The differences between student and faculty responses might be a result of the methodology of this study.  But these differences are probably real and point to genuine differences in how frequently students and faculty use these and other technologies, differences that may result in tension and other differences between these two groups.

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(I started to write an e-mail to some colleagues outlining my current and upcoming projects and the e-mail was getting a bit long.  So I’m writing it all out here as perhaps some of you will be interested in one or more of these projects.)

Here are my current and upcoming projects, listed in no particular order…

• Continue editing and submit for publication (EDUCAUSE Quarterly?) the paper (A Comparison of Student and Faculty Academic Technology Use Across Disciplines) I just presented with Allison BrckaLorenz at the AIR Forum.
• Finish preparing for my ResNet 2010 assessment preconference session.
• Continue working with the ResNet 2010 hosts to schedule and conduct attendee focus groups to supplement the survey data we recently collected regarding the current state and future direction of the ResNet organization.
• Two potential AERA proposals:
  • Discourse analysis of #sachat.  I wrote a solid paper for the discourse analysis class I took in the spring but Rey Junco will be helping me to redo some of the analysis and edit the paper.
  • Historical analysis of student affairs and technology.  I have a solid draft of this paper already done (another class paper) but it’s very long and needs to be edited down to a more manageable, readable length.  Additionally, I’ve recently discovered that we have in the library stacks at Indiana University proceedings from NASPA and ACPA meetings held during the first half of the twentieth century.  I need to spend time in the library with those proceedings as I haven’t yet incorporated them into my study (I didn’t know where I could find them; I certainly didn’t expect to find them at my home institution!).
• Begin a new project analyzing the demographics of student affairs professionals.  I wanted to use these data in my Twitter research but no one has done this work in 15 years so I’ll have to do it (I hope that I’m wrong and that I simply haven’t found a current or recent source!).
• Wait to hear back from ASHE to know if our Wikipedia proposal has been accepted.  If so, then we need to do more work on it to update it and get it into shape for the conference later this year.

Of course, I have other things going on and coming up: quals in 2 months, ongoing projects at work, and beginning data collection for my dissertation.  I thought that summer – especially the summer after you finish coursework – was supposed to be quiet and relaxing?

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