Author: admin

Zuckerberg v. Gutenberg

The Zuckerberg Revolution by Neal Gabler in the LA Times

I’ve referenced Gutenberg’s Press (as topping Time Magazine’s “Events of the Millenium”) in guest lectures to Student Affairs grad students over the years, so this article really jumped out at me.

Here are some bits that caught my attention:

  • Zuckerberg’s social in-box “…may even challenge the very idea of serious ideas.”
  • “The more we text and Twitter and “friend,” abiding by the haiku-like demands of social networking, the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways.”
  • In particular, the notion of the “haiku-like” nature of social media.
  • “That makes Zuckerberg the anti-Gutenberg. He has facilitated a typography in which complexity is all but impossible and meaninglessness reigns supreme. To the extent that ideas matter, we are no longer amusing ourselves to death. We are texting ourselves to death.”

I don’t believe that all social media is meaningless. I have experienced a tremendous sense of community through this form of communication, both personally and professionally.  I have seen great examples of writing about thorny issues on blogs (e.g, The Daily Dish , Ta-Nehisi Coats). However, I am compelled by the notion that maybe we are not as engaged in serious and complex thought, and that critical thinking may suffer. I, too, am tired of slogging through “Need some coffee!” tweets to get to the meat. But there is meat out there.

The real question for me is what exactly will be the lasting impact of social media? I’m not quite ready to sound the alarm bells of doom but it bears watching.

List of SA Tech Units and Leaders

Kevin Guidry has a great thought piece on technology in student affairs and how that fits into our current (and hopefully new) professional organizations. Joe Sabado from UC-Santa Barbara commented on that post and lamented about not knowing any other IT directors in Student Affairs.

I find myself asking myself this question all the time: Who are my peers?

I created this Google Doc to document to help capture that information. I know who a few of us are, but ask others to please add themselves to the document so we can really see who is part of this niche in the profession of student affairs. (Tip o’ the hat to the Student Affairs Collaborative – I basically just copied their Directory idea.)

As Kevin says:

There seems to be three groups of people in student affairs interested in technology: administrators who manage technology projects and groups in student affairs departments and divisions, student affairs scholars who study technology and its uses and impact, and student affairs professionals with interests in technology but a different primary focus.

Certainly the third group is very broad, and we know many of them follow the various blogs and hashtags on the topic, and many are members of the NASPA Tech Knowledge Community. The second group is likely very small…but would it be worth seeing who identifies themselves as such?

So, this is an effort to capture that first group: the geeky admins…some of us may be SA professionals first and geeks second. Others might be geeks first and SA staff second. In either case, identifying the members of this community might be helpful to us all.

Poll Results: Tech Leadership in Student Affairs

I put out a Twitter Poll on November 30, 2010 about technology leadership in student affairs. It ran for one week, and here are the final numbers. (Thanks to Eric Stoller for featuring this on his blog, and to Student Affairs Collaborative for making it the Tuesday Talley!)

Why This Poll?

I am co-authoring a chapter in a book scheduled to be published this spring by Stylus. The tentative book title is “New Realities: Emerging Specialist Roles and Structures in Student Affairs Organizations” and our chapter is on the “Technology Officer” position. (Other chapters include Chief of Staff, Development, Assessment and several other leadership roles.) My co-author is Kyle Johnson, Associate Provost for Information and Learning Technology at SUNY Institute of Technology.

The chapter briefly features some research conducted in 2005 with two colleagues at NC State University on this very topic. (I regret to this day that we never published it, but our NASPA presentation and the survey instrument are online.)

I found myself wishing for more up to date numbers, hence the Twitter poll on the one question about technology leadership.

What Do the Numbers Mean?

Well, first the usual caveat that Twitter polls are informal, and not scholarly research! We have no way to know who answered, if they answered accurately, if more than one person from an institution answered, and so on. Also, the Twitter poll did not allow for enough text to provide a more specific definition of “technology leadership” or “student affairs” organization. So, comparing the fairly rigorous 2005 study to this 2010 Twitter poll is not quite like comparing “apples and oranges” but more like “red delicious and granny smith.”

That being said, the results from the Twitter poll are fairly similar to our 2005 research. Beyond that, I hesitate to interpret the numbers any further. But it is certainly interesting data.

What’s Next?

Good question! I’m not sure. I’d like to replicate the 2005 study at some point. There were several tweets in response to this poll suggesting that the student affairs profession should more clearly define this role. Maybe that’s a good task for the NASPA Technology Knowledge Community. Also tweeted was that the technology leadership role is “not tech support/IT purchasing.” I would amend that to be that it is “not JUST tech support/IT purchasing.” I do think that in many cases student affairs organizations are better off controlling their own destiny with internal tech support instead of relying on outsourcing to central campus IT. That being said, clearly there is a need for someone in the student affairs organization to truly understand technology, its impact on students and their behavior, and how technology can be used to provide student services and developmental programs.

Your feedback most welcome!