Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

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 grew up believing that “challenging” authority (elders, teachers, bosses) was considered rude and disrespectful.  By default, those in authority should be respected. I went through half my life, even early on in my career following orders and keeping my opinions to myself because of this belief. I was not supposed to “make waves” as their are consequences. I think I have come a long way from that person who was too polite to voice his opinions.  It took me some painful experiences to realize I had to change my way of thinking. Whether these self beliefs from personal experiences or imposed by society, I think there’s value in re-examining our own self limiting beliefs for a more fulfilling life.

In his book Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins, he shared some stories of self limiting beliefs.  One example are adult elephants that are physically capable of breaking away from a chain links tied to posts but they don’t do so. This is because as young elephants, they were tied to the same chain links and when they tried to break away from them, they were not physically strong enough and so growing up, they were conditioned to not even try. How many opportunities in our lifetimes have we failed to take advantage of because of our own self limiting beliefs?

Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier on May 6, 1954. For years prior to that date, the general belief was that it was impossible to accomplish that feat. Thousands of runners have run faster than Bannister since he broke that barrier. As I read somewhere, “everything is impossible, until it is possible.”

As a student affairs professional, I wonder what self limiting beliefs we have as a profession that maybe preventing us from advancing, looking at our profession in a different light? In my role as a technologist intent on promoting the use of mobile web and social media, one of the biggest push back against using these technologies are the fear of potential FERPA/HIPAA violations, security breaches, disclosure of confidential information. As someone who is in the position of responsibility to enforce policies and guard student records as well as other confidential information, I am very aware of the consequences, including penalties that could result from these incidents. I remember having the same concerns expressed to me in mid 1990’s when I started building web sites or when email became the primary form of communication. I also remember a colleague who refused to acknowledge the possibility of using the web to conduct financial aid transactions because he felt the web will never be as robust as desktop applications.

New technological advances bring higher expectations from our customers for our institutions to provide services the way they are accustomed to getting in their personal lives via consumer technologies.  How long, as a profession, can we continue to cling on to our self limiting beliefs of “that’s how we have always done it” or our skepticism against new ways of providing services to our students?

At a personal level, what are some beliefs you may have that are self limiting? How about student affairs?

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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credit - helpingmedia

Trying to keep up and learn new mobile web design principles and frameworks is getting harder to do. Since last year, I have been doing quite a bit of research on mobile web for my work and for personal curiosity. Yet, I know I still have a long way to fully understanding what and how to properly go about approaching mobile web development.  There are many articles discussing design and development principles like adaptive, responsive web design, progressive enhancements, mobile first, and server side vs. client side adaptations.  Frameworks to develop upon are introduced from time to time as well.  A framework I am very familiar with is the UCLA Mobile Web Framework (MWF)  used by multiple University of California campuses including UC Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC San Diego. New ideas will undoubtedly come out in the next few months.  Questions I have had to think about and discussed with colleagues include “Should we have one site that can be displayed several ways depending on the device?”,  “Should we have separate desktop and mobile websites?” or “Are we also developing native apps?” I have quite a list of resources if you’re interested. I have tried to read, learn and experiment including creating a prototype site but it’s been a dizzying experience.

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