Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

credit - prdaily.com

Student leaders should play a greater role in any higher educational institution’s social media efforts towards engagement and dialogue with their student communities. This group includes (but not limited to) orientation leaders, peer advisors, student organization officers, campus tour guides and resident assistants.  These student leaders can connect with their contemporaries in a way that in some ways are more effective than even the most social media savvy staff, faculty and administrators can. It is not so much that students  necessarily know how to use social media more appropriately or with more fluency than those of us in our professional roles, but more so because they understand student culture and they are considered part of the student community. Their participation and opinions will probably be better accepted and more favorably by other students since they are members of the student community. These student leaders should already have the knowledge on campus resources, policies and acceptable community conducts gained through their trainings as part of their positions.

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I suppose it’s so easy to get comfortable when we reach a certain level of success at personal and/or organizational level.  It is important to celebrate our accomplishments and all the things that got us to where we are, but there’s a danger in stagnating, being conservative.  But the world does not wait for anyone.  Specifically in student affairs, our world is changing quickly. Driven by our changing student demographics,  economic difficulties and technologies, the way our organizations operate must change, at least try to keep up, or we fail to serve our students.

I spend a lot of time following trends in how higher education and our students use technology, including social media and mobile computing.   This comes from the realization that if my organization (a student affairs IT shop) fails to realize the demands and wishes of our constituents, I would not be doing my job as a leader in my organization. Does that mean that we can and will always meet our constituents’ demands and wishes? Of course not. There are always more work to be done relative to our resources. It’s hard enough to provide day-to-day support and “keeping the lights on”,  tasks that while our users may not always see are critical. As difficult as it is to change our ways, to go beyond what we can support, the reality is that if we fail to look at what the customers demand of us, our organization is in danger of being replaced with other options. We no longer live in the world when our customers must go through IT for every single technology requests. Cheap or even free cloud based services are now viable solutions. Our customers use their mobile devices  to access the web and social networks.  As an IT organization, do we take the role of the department that is seen as obstructionist to a point where customers no longer want to work with us or one that is a willing partner to progress?

I feel considerably lucky that we have a person at the top of our organization, Vice Chancellor Dr. Young, who is a champion of change and a true student advocate. He is a visionary who will freely admit that while he may not always know how to get to where we need to get to, he does know when it’s time to change, to take a new direction.  An organization’s ability to be open and accepting to change is rooted in its culture and leaders like Dr. Young plays a huge influence on how the culture is shaped. As those working in our organizations, I also think we have personal responsibilities to be open to change. Failure to change has its consequences.

Eric Stoller wrote a blog post about the topic of  student affairs graduate programs and technology on InsideHighered.com. Specifically, he wanted to know which graduate programs are leading the way when it comes to including technology in their curricula.  Below is the comment I shared coming from someone who does not have a Master’s degree in Student Affairs but does have several years of experience working from both the functional and IT sides of student affairs.

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Thanks for asking this question Eric. The topic of technology in student affairs is indeed very big and as you pointed out, bigger than social media. To get an idea of what technologies are used in student affairs, here is the information systems portfolio (http://sist.sa.ucsb.edu/Portfolio.aspx) of the central student affairs IT at UCSB where I work. I apologize that this is still in pdf (for now).

There are aspects to technology  that should be studied including policies, practices, staffing and the technologies themselves. Dr.Will Barratt from Indian State University wrote about the topic of Managing IT in Student Affairs in May, 2001. Here’s the article: http://studentaffairs.com/ejournal/Spring_2001/will2.html.

Leslie Dare, the Director of Student Affairs Technology Services at NC State University discussed the topic of Technology, Student Affairs and Graduate Programs on Highered Live with Eric himself  – http://higheredlive.com/technology-student-affairs-and-graduate-programs/. She actually taught a course on Technology in Student Affairs as well. Here’s the description – http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ladare/eac595/.

I don’t have a Master’s degree in student affairs, so I can only offer my perspective from my several years of experience in both functional and IT units in student affairs. Please take my perspective with a grain of salt.

What I think should be considered as an approach in student affairs graduate programs with regards to technology is to examine technology in the context of theoretical frameworks and practices and apply them in what I consider realities of today (changing demographics, advancement in technology, budgetary constraints). I think this perspective is similar to Kevin Guidry’s point.

I work full-time in IT and I even I don’t have enough time to learn all the different areas such as database management, server/network support, security, procurement, accessibility and software development. These areas don’t even include having to learn emerging technologies, which in my case, I spend time learning at night. I wouldn’t expect practitioners to spend their time learning all these technologies in addition to the demands of their business duties. The question of how much should practitioners know to be considered competent is another topic in itself.

From an IT perspective, what has been really helpful when working with functional units is when practitioners have been able to articulate their business processes/needs, the “why” questions/answers.  If they can provide us with some ideas on how to build it, even better, but not required. I think as technology becomes even more significant in student affairs, more so than today, practitioners who have the knowledge in business process analysis, on top of practical experience/understanding of theoretical frameworks will be the ones in demand. Regardless if the technical solution sought is to be developed by IT, bought from a vendor, or utilize free services on the web, there is still the need to understand how these solutions would address business needs. Let’s take social media. I think it’s just a matter of time when student affairs will start to adopt social media for other uses beyond marketing and engaging with customers. I can see student affairs using social media for operational and student service uses.

Personally, I’ve always relied on the knowledge of our functional units to guide my team and I in how to approach a technology solution. There’s the ideal technical solution that IT may want to build and provide but then there’s the solution(s) that meets the realities and demands of day-to-day activities.

Kevin Guidry shared his research on the history of technology and student affairs with me months ago and it is interesting that given the significant role of technology in student affairs throughout its history that we’re still asking this question.

As an aside, I had also asked some feedback on twitter, facebook, google+ andlinkedin asking how student affairs practitioners use technology in their line of work. Unfortunately, I only received 10 responses. I’m left wondering too if it was wrong timing, the topic is not interesting or I just posed the questions wrong. In any case, If you happen to be reading this, I would love to have some of your time to answer a few questions here: https://joesabado.com/articles/technology/student-affairs-technology-questionnaire/.

thanks:)
Joe

I welcome 2012 with optimism and with gratitude! I am in a middle of a revolution that’s bigger than technology. I am not sure how to define it, but society is changing fast, in part brought on by technologies like social media and mobile.  The last time I experienced this change so rapid and exciting was in the mid 1990’s when web became mainstream.  I found 2011 to be a year of transformation for the  IT organization I work for and based on general observations, this seems to be true for IT organizations in general. As one in a leadership/management position of having to maintain legacy systems,  accommodate the changing needs of our customers and the consumerization of IT, it was a year wherein I had to spend an average of 3 hours at night learning/thinking about social media, mobile and how our roles as an IT organization are changing.  I spent some time thinking about how technology will transform our society in general and specifically about student affairs, the area of the university I work in. I learned many lessons along the way, not just about technology but how I will approach my leadership role moving forward.

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“Even though we’re operating with the best of intentions in social media, we are still operating from silos. The customer however, does not see silos, they see the company as one.” – Brian Solis, The End of Business as Usual.

credit - socialware.com

I have only been active on popular social media sites like facebook and twitter the last year or so and much of what I have read about how organizations use social media in that time revolves around marketing, communicating and engaging with customers, those external to organizations. However, in the last few months, I have noticed more mentions of social business, which Michael Brito describes as “any company that has integrated and operationalized social media within every job function (and process) internally.” IBM describes social business as “one that embraces and cultivates a spirit of collaboration and community throughout its organization—both internally and externally.” Several companies have already embraced this concept per this report Research Summary: Introducing The 43 Use Cases For Social Business (Social Enterprise) by Constellation Org. Advocates of social business including Mr. Brito, Mr. Owyang, Mr. Solis and Mr Bradley/Mr MacDonald all emphasize the following points in some form: 1) social business goes beyond technology, it involves people, processes and culture 2) embracing the power of collective wisdom from internal employees and customers and 3) holistic approach – no single unit owns social efforts and customer service belongs to everyone in the organization.

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