NASPA Technology Knowledge Community

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.