Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

My wife and I were having dinner with a teenage daughter of a friend recently. She mentioned that she has been trying to convince her parents to buy her an iphone so she can do some school work.  In the past, I would have dismissed the  idea that an iphone or any mobile device could be used for nothing more than texting and wasting time. However, given my personal experience the last couple of years using my iphone, ipad and just recently my chromebook,  I see the value of using mobile devices for learning. Here are some applications and ways I use my mobile devices (and you could, too) for professional development.

Social media mobile apps. I have several social media apps on my iphone including: facebook, twitter, pinterest, foursquare, google+, tweetcaster, yammer, skype, linkedin and a few others. While I do have these installed, I mainly use facebook and twitter. Personally, twitter has become my “go-to” network for learning and connecting with others.

Social bookmarking.  Diigo, a social bookmarking site provides a bookmarklet you can use to bookmark pages you find on the web. This bookmarklet provides tagging functionality to organize bookmarks.  In my case, I use a combination of diigo.com and rss to curate some content on to this blog under the resources section. This is done with minimal manual process. For a fee, my twitter favorites are copied to diigo.com daily. Here are my bookmarks.

Kindle app. I use this app to read digital books I buy and download from Amazon. For some reason, the Amazon mobile app does not have the functionality to buy kindle books so I use their mobile website. I also use the kindle app to read pdfs. I find the highlight and sharing functionality really useful.

Podcasts/Videos. The TED videos are perfect examples of how I maximize my time during the workday to learn. The videos are short (approx max of 20 mins) and so I sometime listen to them when walking from/to different locations on campus for meetings.

 Goodreads. This is a site used by readers to catalog and share the books they read.  The value of the site for me is that I can share what I read and I can also view what other folks in my profession (student affairs) are reading.  This gives me some ideas on what books I should be reading. Here is my list of books.

 G-Whizz! (Google Apps browser). This app provides access to Google+, gmail, google drive and other google apps. I use this app primarily as my RSS reader. I use Google Alerts to monitor keywords like “student affairs”, “social business”  and I have set it up for these notifications to be pushed to my gmail account.

 Blogging. With my new chromebook, I have been able to blog from a device other than my laptop at home, which I use as my desktop machine.  Maybe it’s just personal preference, but even with a keyboard, I didn’t feel comfortable using my ipad to log in to wordpress (software I use for this blog site) administrative interface.

Slideshare.  This is a good site to view presentations, including ones that have been converted from powerpoint formats. It is also a good site to share your personal presentations. Here are some of mine.

Cloud Storage.  There are several cloud storage options including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft Skydrive. I mostly use dropbox because of its automatic synching capability. I only store documents and presentations that I consider public. These include presentations I am working on and any pdf files and other presentations I find when doing research.

Mindmapping. I use a mindmapping app called iThoughtsHD on my ipad to organize my presentations and to brainstorm ideas.  I find the mindmapping process really productive when I’m just casually watching tv or when inspirations about new ideas enter my mind.

Virtual Conferencing.  I have used Skype on my iphone for informational interviews. I have also used Adobe Connect for a virtual meeting.  Google+ mobile for Hangouts is another app to consider.

What other uses for professional development have you found for your mobile devices?

At your current or previous jobs, how did you get introduced to your position and to the organization? It probably involved formal meetings, reviewing policies, reviewing printed materials and attending new employee orientations. You were probably introduced to some of your new colleagues and even a tour of your new campus. This process probably only happened in the first few days or weeks.  The process I described is called onboarding or organizational socialization. I first heard about this concept from Dr. Don Lubach, UCSB Assistant Dean of Students, at a human resources workshop at our university last week. According to Wikipedia, onboarding “refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insider.” The process of  onboarding ” lead to positive outcomes for new employees such as higher job satisfaction, better job performance, greater organizational commitment, and reduction in stress and intent to quit.” Can organizations improve this process?  I think that social media, used internally in organizations, can certainly help with the onboarding process.

Becoming effective organizational member, in my opinion, requires going beyond getting familiarized with the formal policies, organizational structures and procedures. It requires understanding the culture of the company and knowing colleagues beyond their formal titles.  Enterprise social software like Yammer, Sharepoint, IBM Connections and Telligent can enhance the onboarding process by providing new employees with additional means to understand the organization and their colleagues organically.  Consider some of the benefits of these “emergent collaboration systems” as offered by Jacob Morgan in his book The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Emerging Social and Collaborative Tools:

• Knowledge Sharing and transfer using wikis and blogs, new employees can quickly read through relevant and up-to-date information produced and maintained by a collective group.
• Identifying subject matter experts through the use of profiles. Employees can tag themselves with keywords identifying their areas of expertise. Their colleagues can also add their tags as well. These tags can then be used to search for individuals within the company for specific expertise. In addition, through the use of status updates, new employees can ask other employees who may be able to provide them with their projects or tasks.
• Listening. These platforms allow employees to understand activities and ideas from not only their own department but other departments as well.
• Cross-department, cross-company and cross-boundary communication.  Given the structured nature of organizations, compartmentalized by formal boundaries defined by functions (IT, marketing, customer service), the flow of information oftentimes does not flow organically and silos exist. New (and long time employees) in most organizations are not aware of the activities happening in other departments and even worse, new employees do not have any clue on who their colleagues are.  These enterprise platforms can breakdown silos and promote organic flows of information by providing transparent access to other parts of the organization. New employees can better understand the relationships and issues beyond their proximity.
• Building Trust and Inspiring Employees. Trust can be started by finding commonalities between individuals. Personal information shared via profiles can lead to new employees building communities based on shared interests and geographic locations. These relationships can be deepened by interactions within these communities.

Ultimately, these enterprise social platforms are just tools that enable collaborations and communications within organizations. For these platforms to be effective as they relate to onboarding, organizations must have a culture of trust, transparency, and openness.  If organizations are committed to the success of their new employees, organizations should consider using social enterprise platforms to enhance the onboarding process.

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A comprehensive social media plan should identify the target audience(s), define goals, strategies, and technologies to use. A social strategy framework that addresses all the components I mentioned is the POST method introduced by Charlene Li in her book Groundswell. POST is an acronym for People, Objectives, Strategies, Technology. I find this framework to be a very sensible and practical when assisting organizations and colleagues with their social media plans. [pullquote]Whether your goals are to engage with your external customers for marketing or to use social media as part of your external and internal business processes, this framework is applicable.[/pullquote]

Below are some considerations using the POST method. The content of this post is a compilation of ideas I have read and  have found to make sense.

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Summer orientation programs for many universities have either started or about to start. These orientation programs introduce incoming students and their families to the university through a series of events and activities.  Universities can take advantage of mobile and social media to enhance the orientation experience of these new students. [pullquote]According to a study released in April 2012 on mobile internet use by Pew Research, 46% of American adults (18+) own a smartphone.[/pullquote] The research organization comScore estimates that 30% of mobile users, with almost 40 million in the US, access social networking sites daily on their mobile phones. Orientation programs can also benefit by using these technologies to gather attendee feedback as well as for their staff to document their experience.

Listed below are a few ideas to start with and I would love to hear your ideas as well.

Customer Support

• “Listen” to conversations on social networks related to your program. Use Google Alerts to be notified either via email or to an rss reader when keywords you define appear on the web. Another site to use is SocialMention.
• Answer questions on a facebook page or create an account/ hashtag on twitter for attendees to follow and use.
• Provide real-time information such as change of venues/schedules.
• Provide guides to attendees such as schedules and map for mobile devices. An example is Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) use of  Guidebook.

Marketing

• Use Location Based Services (LBS)  like Foursquare and SCVNGR to encourage attendees to visit locations and post photos/comments about your campus. Boston University and Dean of Students Kenn Elmore is one example.
• Share facts/info about your campus using social networks such as Pinterest and Facebook. Here are some examples of how universities are using Pinterest.

Community Building

• Use groups or facebook apps like Inigral Schools App to provide attendees the forum to connect based on interests and demographics. Providing new students the opportunity to connect even before they attend orientation makes their experience more comfortable as they already know other students.
• Software like OrgSync provide universities  to build communities amongst incoming students as well. In addition, orientation staff can communicate with the students via email and text messages as well as collect feedback from orientation leaders and students alike.
• Utilizing student leaders as social media ambassadors is a good way to welcome and introduce incoming students to the campus.

Event Coverage

• Staff and attendees can use twitter backchannels to ask/share additional information related to the topic discussed at the events. Through the backchannels, Orientation staff can also get some feedback on how the attendees perceived the events.

Document Events/Experience

• Orientation staff (including students) can document their experience, lessons learned for assessments and future staff using blogs and wikis.
• Curate attendees’ comments/feedback/experience provided on various social networks using Storify. Christopher Conzen (@clconzen) uses Storify to document his NASPA Region II MidManager’s Institute experience.

General Campus Info/Other Uses

• Provide campus mobile websites to campus services, maps, academic information (schedule of classes, course catalog) so attendees can browse while they are waiting for events and while they are registering for courses. Browse through a higher ed mobile directory by Dave Olsen (@dmolsen) to get an idea of how universities are using mobile.
• Provide staff with mobile devices and mobile applications to conduct business away from their desks. These could include: check-in/check-out, access student information, communicate with other staff (via text, email, twitter, etc), access to schedules and other program info.

Orientation programs are where new students get introduced to their upcoming  university lives and academic careers.  Campuses should use this opportunity to educate the students with the concept of digital identity and how their activities online can have both negative and positive impacts on their careers, rather than waiting until they are about to graduate from their universities. Eric Stoller (@ericstoller) introduces this idea on his blog post  Digital Identity Development: Orientation and Career Services.

While I offer some suggestions on using social media and mobile for Orientation use, I am cognizant of the fact that not all students have access nor the resources and familiarity to utilize these technologies. Orientation programs should use these technologies appropriately and not severely disadvantage some students by not providing the essential services to all.

What other ideas can you suggest?

Social media presents challenges and opportunities for universities in the way they communicate and provide services to students, enhance their educational experiences, and prepare them for the workforce. Social media can be defined as a set of online tools that people use to share content, opinions, and ideas that create potential interactions. The most popular social media sites are facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs.  Combined with mobile devices and cloud computing, all known as consumer technologies, social media has enabled students to have access to information anytime, anywhere.

The majority of college students are members of the Millennial Generation, those between the ages of 18-29 years old. They are also known as the Net Generation because of their generally increased use and familiarity with communications media and technology. According to a study conducted in 2011 by Pew Internet Center, 61% of online Americans under the age of 30 use social network sites on a typical day. A 2010 survey conducted by Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania found that of the 800 students and faculty that responded, roughly 20 % of the respondents spent between 11 and 20 hours a week using social media.

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