Student Affairs and Technology

There were less than 60 kids in my graduating class in high school. At Columbus Community High School in Columbus Junction, Iowa - involvement in everything - was the norm. Athletes acted in plays. Musicians took photos for the yearbook. Everyone did everything. We didn't specialize. During my senior year of high school, I participated in marching band, concert band, jazz band, pep band, business club, science & math club, yearbook staff, newspaper staff, theater, and small/large group competitive speech.

When I agreed to speak about the "Future of Student Affairs" at Higher Ed Open Mic, I knew that I wanted to talk about three distinct topics: student affairs graduate programs, online-only students, and digital identity development. Those three areas are constantly pinging around my head. Attending multiple student affairs conferences and voraciously reading everything and anything that is related to higher education gives me ample cerebral material to digest and ponder.

This year's ACPA Annual Convention was in Las Vegas. Let's not do that ever again. Smoke-filled casino floors were like unhealthy moats that had to be crossed in order to get to sessions. Fortunately, as with every ACPA Annual Convention, opportunities for learning and connecting with fellow student affairs abounded. A unique aspect of this year's convention was the addition of a partnership with the NIRSA Annual Conference. Sharing the opening extravaganza and exhibit hall space was a nice touch.

It generally starts with a statement and then ends with a question. The statement is usually framed as: "Social media is/are a 24/7 concern." The question that follows said statement has consistently been: "What do we do about that?" There's a fascinating fear of social media that is ingrained in a lot of student affairs practitioners.

Student affairs professional association conference session topics are generally a direct reflection of practitioners in the field. Sessions at conferences span a wide array of functional areas, emerging trends, and competency-based tracks. However, there seems to be a trend at these events of favoring a certain demographic of student when it comes to session conversations. The default "student" is almost always an on-campus learner. Online learners are rarely included in session discussions.

Does your student affairs / higher education graduate program have a technology class? Have you ever hoped for a student affairs technology book? Maybe it's time to look at something outside of our usual wheelhouse. What am I talking about? Well, last October, I tweeted out a question about whether or not we should look at creating a Student Affairs Technology MOOC.

On January 16th at 9:06 AM, I liked the University of Phoenix Facebook Page. Because of my consulting practice, it makes sense for me to like a wide variety of higher-education-related pages on Facebook. Universities and colleges that I have worked with are in my list of likes as well as several other well-known schools and programs. I like seeing what they're up to on Facebook. When I liked Phoenix, I was doing it as a way to keep up on how they run their Facebook presence. Little did I realize at the time that my innocent "like" was going to be put to a use that I didn't expect.

In the past, when the University of Michigan (U-M) hosted a reception in Shanghai for admitted students and their families, about 80 people attended. Last year, the university used its profile on the popular Chinese microblogging site, Sina Weibo, to promote the event and 200 people showed up. With 400 million users, Weibo is similar to Twitter.