For several days I participated in conversations centered around academic advising and technology, particularly web-based communications strategies in the form of social media.
A wise, but not technically-savvy, bird outside the Coronado Resort
By day, I masquerade as a mild-mannered (well, most of the time) academic advisor. By night/weekend, however, I turn into a WordPress and social media warrior.
But over the last week, those things got rolled up into one epic cartoon battle when I jumped on a plane and went to the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) annual conference in Orlando. While there, in addition to the usual talk about student matters and advising, the conversation often turned to websites, WordPress and, social media – all stuff that I love, but don’t usually get to talk much about in my day job!
In my experience, despite our reliance on online tools to do our jobs, many academic advisors aren’t comfortable talking about technology. It might be a generational thing, or maybe just that technology training and innovation often isn’t considered a priority.
So it was fun tweeting about the conference and talking to fellow advisors about using the internet more actively in our jobs. One of my favorite parts of the conference, in fact, was getting to hear Rey Junco‘s Sunday night keynote, when he described ways social media can improve academic advising.
Here are a few of my tweets about Rey’s comments, both at his keynote and at his follow-up discussion on Monday:
- @reyjunco: Whuffie, coined by @Doctorow = connections with people in order to do good. No whuffie, students aren’t engaged.
- @reyjunco: Research showed correlation between real-life engagement & online engagement. Students do better when engaged. Soooo…
- @reyjunco: if using social media in advising provide info on mult channels (FB, twitter, email) for max engagement.
- @reyjunco: concerning FB & twitter: “if it makes your life easier, DO IT.”
I was really glad to hear him legitimize the use of social media in the context of academia, and in particular explain how it can improve students’ engagement in the classroom as well as their interactions with their academic advisors.
His comments excited me because many of my colleagues, both on my campus and elsewhere, are skeptical of social media. No, strike that. They’re afraid. They feel the magnetic pull of Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Flickr, and whatever’s around the corner, because they know students communicate with each other online. It’s “where the students are.”
So advisors want to step into this world, but many don’t understand how it works, and that makes them afraid to use it. What if students say bad things about their advisors? What if we don’t have time to keep up with all the traffic? What if we learn new technology, but then it becomes obsolete? What if students find out something personal about their professors or advisors because we’re using social media too?
In their worrying about all the downsides, my colleagues miss an important point: social media is simply another tool for communication. Students can send nasty emails, or tell all their friends at a party about their advisors, if they’re so inclined. And when the students use those channels, we’ll never know, and we’ll never get a chance to respond.
What social media offers, however, is a different conversation. It allows students to communicate with each other in a collective sense: they share ideas, ask questions, even express their frustration, all within a public space. In 17th-century England, coffeehouses offered a new venue for intellectual and political discourse outside the control of royal censorship. People could discuss ideas openly and engage with each other in a radically new way. Social media is the 21st century version of those coffeehouses: it allows students to share ideas widely outside of the confines of the ivory tower and beyond the control of university administration.
So those conversations are occurring no matter what we do. Yet if we, as advisors, engage students in these public spaces, we can participate in that conversation too. And in doing so, we can help students contextualize their individual situations, collaborate and learn from each other, and hopefully, have a more rewarding academic experience.
So what do I take away from Rey Junco, and discussions with other NACADA members?
- If you decide to enter this world of social media, be sincere, and welcome interaction and engagement from others, in whatever form that comes. Will comments all be positive? Probably not. But by opening yourself up to a dialogue, you’re more likely to win over the detractors. Certainly more than if you let them grumble far away, at any rate.
- You need to realistically assess the time and interest of your staff to maintain a social media presence. A half-hearted effort is likely worse than none at all.
- Remember the whuffie. If you’re not engaging students, if you only want one-way conversations, or you’re doing it just to impress administrators, you’re doing it wrong.
- Don’t jump too quickly to the conclusion that since our students are using social media, we must go there too. There is no mandate that advisors need to immediately blog and tweet and have Facebook groups. It’s important to ask what social media can do for you. Like Rey said, “if it makes your life easier, DO IT.” Otherwise, move on.
Oh and one more thing:
- Don’t be afraid to try new things. Seriously, when you give up learning, you might as well pick out your tombstone.
Are you an advisor (or a student)? Or just an avid user of social media? Let me know what you think!
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