The Student Affairs Blog

Web 2.0 "In Plain English".

These days technology is advancing so quickly it can be quite overwhelming to keep up, and understand. What exactly is a blog?  A Wiki? A Feed? What is twitter?

For some perhaps a simple introduction to these topics is the first step in embracing these technologies, and perhaps they may start utilizing these technologies on your college campus.

Twitter is the hottest new tool in the web 2.0 spectrum right now, but how does it work? and why would I ever want to use it??

I think Jon Stewart asks this question best in a recent episode of the daily show

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Twitter can provides real time updates of individuals, groups, companies, and organizations.  To better understand how twitter works Here is a great video clip.

Many colleges already use Twitter to provide updates to their students on the latest happenings on campus.  For example SUNY Cobleskill has a twitter account to update students on activities happening all over campus. 

Twitter is very easy to use, and can be updated from just about anywhere.  Aside from your computer you can use text messaging, Ims, Iphones, and blackberry's to update your twitter status.



Wikis function much differently than Twitter does.  Wiki's are collaborative software that makes putting data, or a project together very easy if you are working with others.

This video will describe wikis so that anyone can easily understand.


The University of Wisconsin Madison has created a wiki to provide information about their university. The wiki covers everything from courses to housing to athletics to campus life.  Alone this would be a difficult and seemingly endless task.  But since they are all collaborating together they are able to put an amazing resource together with ease.

There are other aspects of Web 2.0 I haven't covered, but I would like to share the "in plain english" videos for them.

Social Media In Plain English
RSS In Plain English
Social Networking In Plain English
Blogs In Plain English
Social Bookmarking In Plain English
Online Photo Sharing In Plain English
Podcasting In Plain English

Got Game?

At the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience, I was excited to attend a session with Loriann Irving, of Kutztown University. Loriann has built a creative portfolio of exercises for use in her first-year seminar course that she changes up to appeal to the different learning styles of students in her first-year seminar. Thinking along the lines of Scene It or Cranium, games with a variety of tasks, you have many options for interactive learning in your next course.

Sharing Props: Seek a volunteer from the class and invite them to reach into a pre-assembled basket of "props" and select an item. Gather your props ahead of time, looking for random items that could have potential beyond their intended use. Examples could be a chip clip, kitchen sponge, nametag lanyard, pocket pencil protector, mousepad...you get the idea, whatever may be around your home or office. Ask the student volunteer to share uses for the selected item. Following the prop suggestions, discuss with students that different uses for the props allow us to see things through different lenses. Just as perception of material in a class can differ from student to student, we learn and visualize in contrasting methods. This is a great introduction to learning styles and useful for students early in the transition to college.

Can You Hear Me Now: For a lesson that appeals to auditory learners, identify 4-5 audio clips from inspirational speeches or movies and play them for the class. Loriann shared clips from a Martin Luther King speech, Mr. Holland's Opus, and The Pursuit of Happyness in her presentation.  Following each clip, ask students to individually identify who was speaking and how it could be motivational or inspirational for them in their quest for a college degree. As you ask students to share their responses, link to educational goals and aspirations and what students hope to achieve.

Visualize This: Any PowerPoint presentation is helpful for vision-based learners, but making it interactive is the challenge. Loriann uiltized basic Photoshop techniques to distort common images related to the first college year. Creating distorted filter overlays that are slowly peeled back to reveal an alarm clock, student planner, wall calendar, and student ID card can be fun ways to introduce time management and responsibility. 

Can't Touch This: Using Scrabble tiles or paper letter squares to create word scrambles is a tactile game for engaging students in group problem solving. Distribute letter tiles that create words related to the first-year of college. Examples would be "dreams', "calendar", "organize", "grade point", "homework". Invite groups to share the importance of their word when the letters are unscrambled.

Interactive learning in the first-year seminar keeps students engaged and builds community. Another fun Loriann Irving classroom idea can be found here. 

What's your game?

Economic Crisis and Student Affairs

You may have heard, but apparently the sky is falling.  As a masters student in student affairs, I think if I hear the comment "in this current economic crisis" one more time I'm going to pull my hair out.  In a meeting last week, someone requested that we "not talk about the budget" any more.  In related news, Chicken Little has not left the building because he's worried of the sky landing on their head.

My time in student affairs is admittedly brief, but I've seen a few responses in my public research 1 university to the economic challenges facing the country and higher education.  I think there are lessons to be learned from each of these responses. 

First, the governor trimmed our budget and told us to get ready for more cuts.  Our institution responded by immediately cutting non-essential travel and by requesting us all to cut our budgets quickly and expediently.  I found the trimming of travel a little curious as there was very little discussion given to what travel was actually useful, other than that the VP of student affairs would be required to approve all travel; there was even some discussion that travel ON YOUR OWN DIME was going to be cut.  There is a lesson here though...Public perception is important and scrutiny/regulation is healthy.

Second, I have heard hundreds of discussions about trimming budgets and no discussions about raising revenue.  Most of these discussions centered around complaining about how painful it was to make cuts, but very little discussion about how cuts probably needed to be made.  I think this is why people don't want to talk about it anymore, they feel helpless to make drastic change to the system and they fear that the next axe to fall may fall on them.  The lesson here...Empowerment of people to make changes in their budgets will improve morale in difficult times.

Third, I have seen more of the costs of operation get passed on to students.  I personally find it reprehensible to take a program that was being run through state appropriated funds and transfer it to being funded by student fees.  The absurdity is that students were ALREADY PAYING a user fee to use this service; this is not budget trimming this is a shell game of hide the money.  The lesson here...poor economic times reveal character and values both institutionally and individually.

Fourth, our particular department focused on values.  It is tempting during times that are different than these to spend on infrastructure for the department ie computers or new office furniture; these expenditures are necessary and important.  However, as we saw the budget being trimmed, we decided that the student fee money that funds our department should be spent in ways that can be directly and tangibly connected to a total student experience.  We want to focus on providing the most high quality programs possible to our students at the least cost; the economic crisis helped us to reconnect with the mission and values of our department.  The lesson....we provide the best service to our university and our students when we focus on our mission and values.

I know you're probably tired of hearing about it, but don't let the economic crisis get you down.  It's a challenging time for sure, but I liken it to the Lent season of the church year.  Just like Lent, economically challenging periods are a time to cleansing and purification that will sow the seeds for times of growth and development, and they encourage us to connect to what makes us good at what we do.