Oct
25
Social Networking Technologies: A ‘Poke’ for Campus Services
October 25, 2007 |
Educause 2007 - Wednesday 24 October
Presenters: Joanne E Berg – Vice Provost and Registrar, University of Wisconsin Madison; Lori Berquam – Dean of Students; Kathy Christoph – Director Academic Technology
The presentation was a re-run of material presented in the Match/.April edition of the Educause magazine.
Students use all sorts of new tech to keep in touch and universities need to understand what they do and how they can use these technologies themselves. Whilst social networking technologies may not be natural for many in management they need to appreciate that social networking technology is also about social engagement. Interestingly the speakers asked how many in the hall had a Facebook page (a majority) but when asked a minority felt they used them in the same way as their students.
Institutions also need to decide whether they feel social technology makes communications more efficient or more fun …it may be that we are just observing the chaos at present and trying to make sense of it for the future. We need to help organise the chaos and the techniques for filtering the information. The PowerPoint of the presentation (due to be posted on the Educause site) contains a diagram trying to chart this chaos. The diagram tries to show that we have more info than we can handle and that we need order for the information in order to make sense of the chaos – how do we ascribe levels of trust to the info?
The presenters asked the room about how they used to find sessions at college? How did they learn about them and who did they interact with? This was an interesting exercise trying to get 400 people to have an informal chat…. with questionable success. The point was that the old ways are largely no longer as relevant as they were – there were many less resources but they were all mostly trusted as they were all there was.
Now students are looking for that last piece of info to see if they should take the course etc. Also students now use many resources simultaneously – online schedules, course guides, social software, advisors etc – some of these are of doubtful trust and are incomplete. This requires an amassing of info and application of filtering to make sense. There is no use in Universities banning specific sites – students will use them anyhow.
The presenters again tried get a two way discussion with 400 people going on what students want and what service providers are prepared to offer. (There did seem something wrong with this sort of discussion amongst middle aged managers) But there was an interesting (ish) debate about the challenges between what students might expect, what service providers might be prepared to offer and the questions that arise – what are all the possible resources, what about the validity of these resources, how is the information being filtered, how did you fee about the experience?
Students want help and guidance to filter the information and universities need to manage their fear of the technologies, listen to what students need (rising expectations, simplicity, transparency) and learn how to work differently
‘Today’s IT leaders face multiple challenges united by a common thread – determining when to provide custom IT services for students, when to facilitate their use of external IT services and when to simply get out of the students way’ – Educause webinar quote from Sept 07
