The Student Affairs Blog

They Don't Know What They Don't Know

Students and new staff members will frequently ask me about surveying their students.  They often seem very matter-of-fact and self assured that they've found an answer to one of their pressing programming  issues:  what to present on campus.

It makes sense at first glance.  Wondering what to program on campus?  Ask your students!  Brilliant.  And wrong.

Here's the problem with surveying your students in order to plan your programs:  They don't know what they don't know.

The vast majority of the students on any campus are blissfully unaware of the universe of student activities programs that are available.  They don't attend APCA and NACA conferences.  They don't read Student Activities Journal, Programming  or Campus Activities magazines.  They don't even read this blog.

They essentially have no idea of what's available in the marketplace.  They don't know what they don't know.

Ask them what bands to book, they'll tell you "My Morning Jacket" or "Fall Out Boy."  If you ask about comedy, they'll tell you Chris Rock or Dane Cook.  Odds are, your campus can't afford those acts.  Or at least not all of them.  So you haven't gained much from your survey.

But more importantly,  my original premise:   They don't know what they don't know. 

Ask your students:  would you like to stick your hands in different colors of hot, molten wax?  Really?

Yet we've all seen students at conferences line up for hours, waiting to produce their very own "Wax Hands."

Ask your students:  would you like to see a ventriloquist?  Really?

Many students may not even know what the word means.  Yet we've all seen students rolling in laughter over Dan Horn, Jeff Dunham, or Taylor Mason.

I often liken entertainment surveys to asking children about dinner.  If you ask the average child what he or she wants for dinner, they'll tell you what they know:  they want a Happy Meal.  And if that's what you always give them, they never learn to appreciate more exotic food like broccoli or sushi.  Don't we all know college students whose diet consists of burgers and chicken strips-- because it's the only food they learned to like?

Take your co-curricular duties to heart.  Remember that you serve an important teaching function on your campus.  Avoid a regular diet of "Happy Meals" for your students.  Book some unusual programs, events that aren't even on the students' radar.  Your students-- and your campus-- will be better for it.

The Gap Between Faculty and Student Affairs

A recently added post on The Chronicle of Higher Education website discussed the opinion of a few faculty members on the effectiveness (or in their view, lack of effectiveness) of student programming. In fact, they were not only making the case that student programming is not effective, but it is counter productive, and hurts, their classroom work:

[H]alf my time is spent unraveling the messages, axioms, and truisms of the diversity trainer when students must confront, again intellectually, difference, power, and oppression. Some conundrums cannot be ended with a group hug, unfortunately.

The biggest voice of opposition, or citation, for the post is blogger, Oso Raro. I'm not completely clear if O.R. is blaming the problems on the type and quality of student programming or the gap between faculty and student activities. This quote tends to lean toward the latter:

[T]he Student Life professional represents a new cadre in the academy, one imbued with considerable power and influence over the structuring of students’ social lives and, consequently, some of their relationship to the dynamics of the classroom.

O.R. seems to think there is a power struggle between the two sides and student affairs is sided with the administration:

They are a competing power centre in the institution, and they tend to be allied directly or indirectly with the concerns of administration..

The belief in a limited pie that everyone is grabbing at is dangerous in education. In the end, the goal should be 100% focus on the growth of the students. It does sound hookie to say win-win, and to increase the size of the pie, but that's the ideal situation.

O.R. makes a great point about how student affairs rarely reaches out to the enormous amount of faculty knowledge and experience:

Parallel Programming— At a former institution there was quite a strong student centre for LGBT students, run by an efficient and well-organised Student Life professional who was also gay. However, any connection or co-programming between faculty who taught in these areas and the student centre were practically non-existent. In fact, there seemed to be a mild antipathy between faculty and Student Life around any co-programming. Once, I met with the Student Life professional who ran the student centre to offer my help in whatever events my presence could be relevant. The Student Life professional was courteous but guarded, declaring at one point that attempts to connect faculty to programming had been met in the past with disinterest, and hence dropped. So, this incredible social resource for students was effectively divorced from whatever might be going on in their classrooms. This same Student Life professional later directed a disgruntled student in my class to the Dean, bypassing both either a conversation with me or with my chair (and therefore university policy as well), underlining an open antagonism towards faculty that I found bothersome at the time, but had I been more vulnerable would have been much more dangerous.

How often do you dip into your faculty to run a diversity training or leadership retreat? I don't think the problem is student activities programming, or lack of faculty interest, but instead the real problem is the gap between the two parties.

Student activities should extend the branch first and invite the faculty to take part in events. This will not only allow us to utilize their skills and save money, but it will also get greater understanding from faculty that we are all working together for the same cause.

The article cites another blogger, Jonathan Sterne of Super Bon!, who reiterates the missed opportunities from the gap:

[P]rogressive faculty probably have a whole group of allies in this other wing of the university of whom we don’t even know to avail ourselves. Having once worked in academic advising, I, at least, should know better.

So think about your upcoming events and retreats, and think about how you can include faculty members beyond hoping they give extra credit to their class for attending an event.
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Update - Take the time to read the comments under O.R.'s post. They are fantastic!

Fifty Low-Cost Program Ideas in Fifty-minutes

It started out with the ambitious goal of soliciting 50 low-cost program ideas in a little less than an hour.  Fifty minutes later, the delegates at the APCA National Advisors' Summit in Las Vegas had suggested 91 ideas!

Ashley captured these for you, and I wanted to make sure they got posted.  If you weren't there, then some of the ideas may sound odd (or make no sense at all).  If that's the case, drop me a note and I'll explain it to you.

Fifty Ninety-One Ideas in Fifty Minutes

1. Grocery Bingo

2. Medallian Hunt

3. Life-Size Monopoly

4. Game Hunting

5. Pot Luck Dinner

6. Video Gaming

7. Iron Chef Dorm Room/Ramen Noodle cook-off

8. Game Show Contest

9. Poetry Slam

10. Day of the Dead

11. Dark Side of Oz (Pink Floyd & film)

12. Walk-in movie

13. Dive-in movie(pool)

14. American Idol

15. Talent Show

16. Bed Race

17. Bean Bag Toss

18. Themed Dances

19. Halloween Contests

20. Live Haunted House

21. Campus Ghost tours

22. Halloween Casino

23. Recycle plastic bottles into planters (Arbor day)

24. Leadership retreats

25. Water World  (slip ‘n slide)

26. Movie on the Lawn

27. Bonfire & S’mores

28. Themed movies

29. Stress-Free Spa Day

30. Chair Massages

31. Oreo Stacking (Guinness Records)

32. Star Gazing (astronomy club)

33. Leap Frog

34. Twister

35. Reflective Movies

36. Commit a Random Act of Kindness

37. Family Fest

38. Canned Food  Sculptures

39. Food Bank Drive

40. Frozen turkey bowling

41. Campus Fear Factor

42. Photos with Christmas mascot

43. Easter Bunny Pictures

44. Dogoween (pet costume contest at Halloween)

45. Scavenger Picture Hunt

46. Campus Idol

47. Parking space lottery

48. Campus Safety (self-defense)

49. Sleep-out

50. T-Shirt relocation (collect rival school T-shirts and take to Salvation Army in another city!)

51. Clothesline project

52. Women’s forum

53. Cultural showcases

54. “Get Into Your Genes”; Too small Blue Jean give away

55. Campaign for real beauty (acceptance of normal bodies)

56. Mary Kay (or Avon) day

57. Financial Education

58. Monster.com (Free financial planning)

59. “Girls” or “Guys” Night out

60. $2 Movies in town

61. Mock weddings

62. YouTube Contest

63. Hillbilly Olympics

64. Human auction

65. Mentoring

66. Study night with pizza

67. Midnight Breakfast   

68. President for a day

69. Parking ticket raffle (pay your fines)

70. Pre-release movies

71. Unhomecoming Faculty King and Queen

72. Kiss the Pig (Spam loaf)

73. Pageant and formal dinner auction

74. Pie a professor

75. Hot topic lunch

76. Glow in the dark easter egg hunt

77. Pie your RA

78. Recycle drive with prize

79. “Big dog on Campus” Fun Olympics (Bulldog is school mascot...)

80. Cinderella project (Prom Dresses for high school girls)

81. Graffiti party

82. Change drive into mosaic

83. Car show

84. Speed dating ideas

85. Cow patty bingo

86. Mardi Gras Sidewalk Parade

87. Art festival/contest

88. Nametag Day (everybody wears a name tag)

89. Parking lot sale (like rummage sale)

90. Pumpkin Carving Contest

91. Holiday Window Decorating

Don't Forget About Night Time Programming

Palomar College reviewed their current programming and realized that almost all their student activities occur between 10am and 2pm. The problem is 5,000 to 7,500 of their students strictly take evening classes.With a FTE of 30,000, night goers make up nearly 25% of the student body, but yet were receiving almost 0% of the student activities.

To curtail the imbalance and to seize the opportunity:

The college's Associated Student Government hosted its first "Coffeehouse Night" last month, during which students heading to class in the twilight were treated to coffee, cookies and the sounds of an acoustic guitar, as played by a fellow student.

"People drop by, grab a cup of coffee and listen for a little," said Jesse Lyn, student government president. "Many night students come straight from work, so they need an opportunity to unwind before class."

More than 100 students stopped by within the first hour of the event and were "thrilled" by the break from class, Lyn said

Commuter campuses, like Palomar, are known for their large percentage of evening or non-traditional students. Sherry Titus, interim director for student affairs, said:

"They get here after work, take a class and get home to get dinner
started," she said. "They have no buy-in (to the college) besides the
educational one."

Coffeehouse events give these students an
opportunity to become a part of the Palomar community, even if it's
just for a few moments, Titus said. Students are entertained by their
peers or can use the venue to showcase their own talents, including
music, poetry and dance, she said.

So don't forget about your night time students. How are you servicing them with the same student activities fees that everyone else is paying?

Your Facebook Network(Tips and Tricks)

I'm sure by now you are fairly familiar with the Facebook interface.  Many users don't use all of Facebook's features.

The Network page can be a very powerful tool, but the Facebook interface does not allow the Network page to reach it's full potential.  The reason?  The only way to access your network is by clicking the network link at the top of the page.

It doesn't really jump out at you.   I think it would be a lot more effective if the News Feed dedicated a portion of the page to list Network Activity.

So what does the Network Page do?

• The Networks page lists
• Shows all the upcoming events in your network.
• Shows all the recently posted items in your network.
• Shows all the recently active groups among members of your network.
• Shows all the items in your networks marketplace
• Shows network statistics such as top music, movies, and Interests, TV shows, Books, and also displays percentages such as sex, political views, and relationship status .
• Shows nearby Networks
• Provides a discussion board and a wall.

So what can I do with all this?

Let's start with the groups. 

While searching through the active groups in your network you may stumble upon one titled Fall 2007 Freshmen, or something of the sort.  This is a great place to promote, and Recruit.  Tom recently posted a blog discussing this The Strange Power of the Go Getter Freshmen.

There may be other great active groups in your network you can promote with.  Take a look, just don't over advertise, because nobody likes spam, and overuse of these groups will begin to look like spam.

Let's move on to the people in your network. 

Near the top of the Network page six random members of your network will be displayed.  Above these six members will display how many people are in your network, and a couple links to search or browse within your network.  I don't see much use with the browse feature, as it only displays ten random people in your network.

Click the search link, and then continue on and click the advanced link.  I'm sure you have seen the advanced page before, but have you ever used it for student affairs networking?  The advanced search page allows you to search within every portion of a Facebook profile.  From the basic info to contact info, personal info, education info, and work info.  If you are looking for any particular characteristic to promote, or recruit  from you can easily search it from here.

Have you ever wondered which staff and faculty members have signed up for Facebook?  Well it's fairly easy to find out.  Scroll down till you see education info, and in the school status drop down menu you will see staff, and faculty.  select whichever one you would like to search, and click the advanced search button at the bottom of the page

What do your students like to do? what are their interests?  Sounds like you need to put out another survey.  No not at all, Facebook already did the Assessment for you!!  Check the Network Statistics page and you may find what you are looking for.  The best part is you can click each particular interest and get a list of the people who have added that interest to their profile.

How can you use this?  Look at each category, is there something that jumps out at you that you can create an event about?  perhaps if there is a particular type of music that is popular you can have a dance focusing on that type of music.  Maybe under interests you see a sport such as ultimate frisbee, why not host a tournament.  Look under the movies category, why not play one of the top movies for your students?  Be creative, and you can put together a great event.

Does anyone else have any networking, promotional or recruiting tips or tricks that they use with Facebook?

The Strange Power of The Go-Getter Frehsman

Students use Facebook for communication more than e-mail. Anecdotally, I hear about students deleting official institution e-mail all the time. They just don't think it is relevant.

So what do you do to get a quick message out to all your incoming freshmen?

You could try to friend them all, but this would take forever . . .

At every school on our fall tour there has been a "Class of 2011" group on Facebook.

Just like this one:

This particular freshmen group has 239 members (roughly 70% of the entire freshmen class - it's a small school):

What do they talk about? Well, all kinds of stuff. Sure, there is party talk, but there are also bright spots, such as random peer tech support:

And students taking student activities organization into their own hands:

The activity on these groups, it's possibilities and limitations, deserves its own post.

For the moment, I want to focus on this person:

Because of the way Facebook works, the creator of the group can message everyone in the group through Facebook. That means that this person, this one, random freshman who happened to start the "class of 2011" group at their school first, is the only person who can message most of the freshmen through the medium they use most.

This one person has their finger on probably the most effective communication delivery mechanism currently available to schools.

This is hilarious.

In a non-scientific sampling, these folks are diverse. Sometimes they are geeks/ computerish folks. Sometimes they just got accepted early to the school and happened to be bored one night.

I think that you as an activities advisor should makes friends with this person.

Of course, you could perhaps talk them into spamming everyone for the school, but that wouldn't do that kid any favors. Being a stooge is no good for anyone's rep.

Some creativity is needed. Maybe that kid becomes the editor of the once a month freshmen news letter? And you as the activities department get a good shot at including your info . . .

Point is, if you use the student to spam the group he or she created, you will make everyone look bad.

If you can empower the student to see the power they have (most don't realize it) and make positive use of it, then the student can be pulled into the student leadership position and everyone wins.

Either way, at every campus across the country, there is one person that can Facebook the majority of their class. This is a strange power lying dormant.

Emergency Text Messaging Part 2: Who should I choose?(A comparison analysis of four services)

This day and age it seems like everyone has a cell phone, many schools are beginning to tap into that technology, and use text messaging to inform students when needed.

Since the Tragedy at Virginia Tech, many schools are trying to get an emergency contact system in place.  What better method than text messaging.  Individuals usually carry their cell phones around with them, and a text message can deliver an immediate detailed message.

Many companies offer features that allow organizations, and clubs on a college campus to sent out updates, announce meetings, or advertise upcoming events.

This comparison analysis will compare and contrast some of the top text messaging services.

The Services

E2Campus

Costs $1 per user per year, is a good deal for smaller campuses, but can get pricey with a large population.

Offers unlimited groups. Which can include emergencies, events, sports teams, and can even include different campuses of a college.

Allows for unlimited group admins

Access to the E2Campus application is available from your PC, mobile phone, or a PDA

 
Informz

Has a one time setup fee of $300

Annual Licensing fee is $2,000

Text messages can be purchased in blocks, and range between 6 and 8 cents depending on how many blocks you purchase.

 

With all the setup fees this product can get pricey, It may be efficient for a larger campus to afford this, but may be way out of the budget of a smaller school.

Gives you the option to purchase a dedicated short code for $14,000 a year, which means you will get your own 5 digit number to be texted.

For $1200 a month you can purchase a custom vanity code, which allows you to chose a short code so it is easier to remember.

 

Mobile Campus

Offers a free service, but will spam you with text message advertisements which will burn out the medium very quickly, and may result in negative effect on text message alerts from your students.

 

Jyngle

Offers two services.  The Standard "Free" service is designed for smaller groups.  The standard service does have a banner at the bottom of the text which says"Powered by Jyngle".  This banner is designed to spread the word of the service, but a representative at Jyngle informs me that it may be used for ad space in the future.  Still for being free I would not complain about the tiny ad at the bottom of the message.

The second service Jyngle offers is the Enterprise service.  This is a pay per message service, and does not contain the banner at the bottom of the message.  The rates for this service are $0.03 per voice message and $0.06 per SMS.  Jyngle offers the Enterprise Service to schools for free for emergency use.

Pricing Comparison

This chart compares pricing of the four services.

This chart compares each service prices based on the size of a student population.  Note Informz block pricing is based upon 10 texts per student.

There are other services available which I was unable to acquire the pricing for.  Some of these include

Rave

clearTXT

PromoTXT

If you have any experiences dealing with any of the vendors mentioned, or any vendor not listed above please share them.

Alter Ego Productions

Lower your costs. Increase your hipness. Who can argue w/ that?

We've been running our Alter Ego Series for about the last six years. It all started w/ the idea of supporting local music. This is the setup. Each show is themed - pop punk, metal, alt, etc. We do four bands per show, and charge $5 at the door. Each band gets 15% of door sales, but we also give the bands tickets to sell in advance. That's where they can really make some money. For those tickets, we tell them we need to get $2 back for every ticket they sell. So they can keep up to 60% or they can discount the tickets (to motivate fans to buy in advance). We use a ticket consignment form, and settle up w/ them before the show starts. This setup works for us because the bands do a large share of the promotion, and we can't lose money on the show.

Another important piece is the name/branding of the series. In the beginning, we created "Alter Ego Productions" to downplay the fact that this is a student group. We wanted to give the impression that we were an independent group who is renting out space at the college. Over the years, that has pretty much gone by the wayside, but we still don't put "Student Activities Program Board" on any of the promotion. Alter Ego Productions maintains the reputation for being a cool place to play or see a show within the local music scene.

Our audience numbers range from 50 to 150, which we consider a sellout for that room. These shows also create a following for the Alter Ego brand, and really help when we do our bigger concerts which typically sell out at 600 people.

Another perk, especially for community colleges like us, is that we do get some high schoolers at our shows which is a great way to get them on your campus and leave them with a "cool" image of the school.

Have Trouble Getting a Hold of Groups? Here's a Fix!

Tom K. discovered a great new Web 2.0 service the other day and I think it would be a terrific addition to the toolset for advisors and their student leaders.

In short, it allows you to set up one number that rings on many phones (cell or office) simultaneously. Each user can pick it up or ignore it. If all ignore it, the call goes to voicemail which gets e-mailed where ever you want. There are lots of other cool features, bells and whistles which you might find creative uses for.

Great way to make everyone accessible.

Best of all (ready for this?) it's free! Ahhh the internet.

I see student groups skipping office hours all the time. Especially in that critical logistics moment right before events, where everyone is at the event and no one is in the actual office to answer that critical question . . .

This would solve it.

Check it out, it's called Grand Central:

(It took Tom about 10 minutes to set up Swift Kick.)

Breaking (Down) the Meh: Columbia Basin Case Study

Posted b: Kevin Prentiss - Swift Kick

Columbia Basin College is a typical two year college in many ways. It is staffed by professionals that care and home to a core of student leaders that would love to get more people involved.

We talked about the 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement report that said 84% of students at two year institutions will never participate in college sponsored activities. The students felt that this number was a little low for them.

In dance floor theory, we describe these folk as the "neutrals" on the dance floor. They are the ones on the wall. Not engaged, not involved, often making fun of the students who are engaged. They make up the "meh".

After a quick 2 hour DFT training we met with a smaller group of student leaders and staff to focus on concrete action steps.

The conversation started with - "We know that there are good reasons for people not being involved, kids, jobs, etc. We know that there are categories within the "meh" - let's break them down and see what we can do to help each group find their X+1, then focus on the things we can implement now."

I scrambled to keep up at the white board and the end result looked like this:

Making it prettier on the plane home, this is what the students and staff at CBC came up with:

I think this graph is pretty dang close to true for most of the two year schools that Swift Kick has been at.

This is an extremely useful step. While it might seem a little complicated at first, the analysis takes a feeling "no one cares" and creates the possibility for a task list to address very real issues. It makes a bad feeling actionable. It inspires the leaders to more effective work instead of motivation sapping frustration.

We then broke the categories into a matrix and talked about the specific challenge for each "meh" sub-group. The staff and students debated some, and luckily many of the students could speak from their own experience, i.e. "I'm a single mom . . . " or "My first year I just didn't know about anything, it didn't occur to me to get involved . . ." and the live success stories from apathy to engagement helped us all think through how we might help other members of that sub-group.

Again, making it pretty on the plane, the final matrix looked like this:

If you think these slides would be useful for you, you can download them here. (They are Keynote, a mac program) Please attribute.

In the "Primary Challenges" column, a couple of notes:

- It was too easy just to say parents were busy. The single mother challenged the whole group: "Of course everyone is busy, but it's a matter of values. Once I saw, and felt, that getting involved helped my education, I made time for it like I do homework. No one is too busy, we can't use that as an excuse to write them off." Amen.

- The "Don't Know" group. Students can easily tune out posters and e-mails if they think it is not relevant. Though many leaders find it hard to believe, after they put so much energy into "getting the word out", students genuinely say they "didn't know." Our sub-group rep said she never noticed until she sat next to a student leader named Larry, who she liked, who told her about things. While the info was on the wall, she didn't see it until her relationship with Larry made the info worth her attention.

The group came up with directions for further exploration, with the main action steps a two pronged strategy, 1) tie in student government and student groups, share this understanding with them and build relationships so that the groups can work together 2) market to the "meh" sub-groups, let them know you know about them. We talked about putting a demographic map up in the main quad showing the diversity of the school and then offering group / activity choices for them with a contact e-mail or phone number.

The over all them was to reduce the isolation of those in the "meh" category. Increase the relevance of communication so that the students knew that the student government knew and cared about them and their special situation, whether it was high-school students in the running start program or non-traditional students.

It was an enjoyable day and I left feeling like the group had a road map for many many engagement projects. Some of which are sure to help reduce the "meh".

Update just for John: slides in .ppt for pc (warning: the graphics get a little raggedy.)