Student Affairs and Technology

It's almost time for the NASPA Annual Conference. As usual, I've browsed through the conference schedule for those sessions that relate back to this blog. This year's slate of sessions features an impressive line-up of topics.

It's different. It's shiny. It's the fairly new hotness. Yes, it's time for me to ponder Pinterest. Like almost every other social media service that came before it, Pinterest is riding a massive wave of adoption and excitement. Student Affairs, which has gotten on the social media train, is experimenting with Pinterest from several different angles.

Student Affairs Divisions, Units, Departments, and Offices have been using Facebook Pages as communications and engagement platforms for almost as long as there have been Facebook Pages. In many ways, Facebook Pages have become our outposts for engagement.

When I first spoke with representatives from Harrison College (HC), they emphasized a "sense of place" with their KnowU learning platform. The platform went live last month with 164 online students who were slated to use KnowU.

Initially, I was going to title this post "Top 10 Student Affairs Graduate Programs That Get Technology." However, when I started to ponder which programs actually are leading the way when it comes to technology in Student Affairs, I couldn't think of any programs.

Beginning on March 1st, Google will eliminate more than 60 separate privacy policies and replace them with a single privacy policy for all of their services. A shiver ran across my back when I watched Google's Privacy Policy Update video and read their rationale for the policy change.

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) was the only higher education institution to be included in Fast Company's 2012 list of "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies." Whether or not that is a "good thing" or a "bad thing" is a matter of debate. SNHU's inclusion does showcase the visionary leadership of their president, especially when it comes to their goal of becoming "the country’s biggest online not-for-profit education system."

Is digital identity development part of your institution's orientation program? It's understandable if it isn't. After all, orientation programs are generally at capacity and an extra addition to the schedule is nearly impossible. However, I suspect that eventually, digital identity development will be present at almost all orientation programs.