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Online, Offline, and Out of Line

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Title: Online, Offline, and Out of Line


1
Online, Offline, and Out of Line
  • The interplay of emerging technologies, higher
    education, and student development at Vermont
    State University
  • A Presentation to the University Deans Council
    by
  • Jessica Belue, Director of Student Life
  • Jonathan Bove, Chief Information Officer
  • Erin K. Miller, Director of Judicial Affairs
  • Gabriel Reif, Director of Admissions
  • A submission for the 2007 StudentAffairs.com
    Online Case Study Competition from the University
    of Vermont

2
In the past six months, at VSU
  • Students with disabilities and low-income
    students have struggled with access to distance
    learning courses and courses utilizing on-line
    forums
  • Faculty have begun to incorporate blogs in their
    classroom work
  • A student was found responsible for using her
    cellular phone to receive answers to test
    questions during a final exam
  • Institutional spam has decreased by 15 due to
    novel institutional policies
  • A laptop containing 90,000 detailed alumni/ae
    records was recently stolen

3
Session Objectives
  • Familiarize staff with hot topics in technology
  • Recognize and understand the numerous benefits
    and drawbacks of such technologies
  • Utilize VSU and nationwide technological mishaps
    and successes as case studies, assisting us in
    developing policy and practices
  • Prepare staff to respond to technological issues
    within their functional areas

4
Technology and Our Mission
  • VSUs institutional mission outlines that we
    engage students and support them in their
    development
  • Students come to campus already familiar with
    many emerging technologies
  • We must incorporate these technologies into our
    work so that we can meet students where they are
    and provide them with optimal support and
    opportunities for development

5
Hot Topics We Will Highlight
  • Institutional Spam
  • Text Messaging and Other Cell Phone Capabilities
  • Information Security
  • Blogging
  • The Digital Divide

6
Institutional Spam
7
Institutional Spam Is
  • The mass e-mailing of the campus community (all
    faculty, staff, or students)
  • Institutional spam is not
  • E-mails sent over voluntary listservs
  • E-mails sent to small campus groups (e.g. biology
    majors, a student organization, a faculty
    committee)

8
Why Institutional Spam is Important to Understand
  • Many parties demand access to campus-wide e-mail
    privileges
  • Institutional spam filtering enhances
    productivity of all campus constituents
  • Lack of policies and procedures can result in
    confusion

9
VSU Policies for Institutional Spam
  • Administrative approval required
  • Submission one working day before the message is
    to be sent (unless it is an emergency e-mail)
  • Accordance with the mission of our institution
  • Compliance with federal and state laws

10
VSU Procedures for Institutional Spam
  • The IT office monitors mass e-mails
  • Requests for mass e-mails can be made on the Web
  • The following officers may approve mass e-mails
  • President mailings to entire university
  • Provost mailings to all faculty
  • Vice President for Finance mailings to staff
  • Deans mailings to faculty and/or students of
    college
  • Vice President for Student Affairs mailings to
    student body

11
Benefits ofInstitutional Spam Policies
  • Help us avoid viruses and network overload
  • Streamline campus procedures to ensure
    consistency, clarity, and understanding
  • Avoid e-mail inundation ensure campus
    constituents read necessary e-mails
  • Prevent third-parties from sending campus-wide
    e-mails
  • Ensure messages to large audiences are in
    accordance with the mission of the university

12
Drawbacks of Institutional Spam Policies
  • Change in technology will require that we
    continually reevaluate our policies and
    procedures
  • Some university offices who want control may not
    have immediate control (e.g. registrar)
  • Collaboration among involved parties can be
    difficult. IT will be the gathering point
  • University assumes responsibility for what
    messages are or are not delivered

13
Text Messaging and Other Cellular Phone
Capabilities
14
Text Messaging Is
  • Sending short messages to a cellular phone,
    pager, PDA or other handheld device. Text
    messaging implies sending short messages
    generally no more than a couple of hundred
    characters in length.
  • (P.C. Magazines pcmag.com, http//www.pcmag.com/)

15
Why Text Messaging is Important to Understand
  • Text messaging is one of the many features
    available on todays cellular phones
  • 80 of first-year students at colleges nationwide
    have cell phones (Student Monitor,
    www.studentmonitor.com)
  • Additional capabilities
  • Record and view videos
  • Capture and view photos
  • Download and listen to music
  • Record and listen to audio notes
  • Locate ones position and download maps (GPS)
  • Watch TV shows/movies

16
Texting the College Campus Issues to Consider
  • Academic Integrity
  • Safety
  • Marketing Communication

17
Text Messaging Academic Integrity
  • Drawbacks
  • December 2002 Cheating scheme uncovered during
    final-exam week at the University of Maryand,
    College Park. A dozen students were caught
    (Wired News, http//www.wired.com)
  • In 2005, a 9 increase in cheating was reported
    over the previous year due to mobile phone use
    (Curtis, 2005)
  • In the United Kingdom, the number one cited
    cheating offense is inappropriate use of mobile
    phones (Curtis, 2005)
  • Examples of inappropriate use may include taking
    pictures of exams with camera phones, or storing
    notes or formulas in phones

18
Text Messaging Safety
  • Drawbacks
  • A New York Post survey found that 30 of teens
    age 13-18 have engaged in unhealthy stalking
    behavior via text messaging (Delfiner, 2007)
  • Text messaging enables the exponential increase
    of students involved in large-scale campus
    incidents via instantaneous communication
  • Benefits
  • Text messaging allows individuals to remain
    connected to others at all times, even when alone

19
Text Messaging Marketing Communication
  • Benefits
  • Baruch College - CUNY has started a service that
    allows people to access class information easily
    through text messages (e.g., homework
    assignments, computer lab availability, course
    surveys)
  • University of Maryland Student Government (2005)
    sponsored Mobile Campus, a text messaging service
    that allows students to receive campus updates
    from student organization leaders, faculty, and
    administration. (Carnevale, 2005)

20
Information Security
21
Information Security is
  • The protection and management of crucial data
  • One can repeatedly read in the Chronicle of
    Higher Education of security incidents where data
    was lost or stolen
  • Colleges are repositories of personal
    information, and this makes them prime targets of
    identity thieves
  • Students, as a group, are less likely to keep
    diligent track of their online bank accounts
  • Alumni/ae, as a group, are more likely to be
    considered rich targets because of the assumption
    that they have money to give away

22
Why Information Security is Important to
Understand
  • As our campus stores more and more personal
    information electronically, our data becomes a
    higher profile target for hacking, phishing (fake
    e-mailing), and information thieves
  • You may not think youre a target, but that most
    likely makes you more of one

23
Steps to Heightening Our Information Security
  • Educate our staff
  • IT is launching a set of digital self-defense
    sessions open to all staff
  • Keep secret information secret
  • Switch to systems that use alternate identifiers,
    not social security numbers
  • Know each type of attack and how to defend
    against it
  • Hacking, viruses, and malicious software
  • Phishing use of a fake e-mail or website as a
    lure
  • Physical theft

24
Benefits of Heightened Information Security
  • Secure information and well-managed data prevent
    a loss of faith in the university
  • Every precaution we take individually improves
    the overall security of the entire campus
  • Awareness of the issue makes us more secure and
    savvy users

25
The Not-So-Distant Future of Information Security
  • There is no single solution that protects against
    all threats
  • A layered defense is the best approach one
    solution for each threat
  • Campus constituents must realize the need for and
    be educated to use each new layer of defense as
    it is added or updated

26
Blogging
27
A Blog Is
  • A weblog or online journal commonly used to
    express personal, political, or scholarly opinion
  • Blogs are becoming increasing popular among
    college students, faculty, and admissions office

28
Blogging Example
29
Why Blogging is Important to Understand
  • Blogs have become infused in the work of the
    campus
  • Diverse users and uses on campus
  • Students
  • Using blogs to communicate and network
  • Faculty
  • Utilizing blogs for scholarly debate and
    publishing
  • Integrating blog use into student assignments
  • College admissions offices
  • Current students posting blogs to reveal student
    life on campus
  • Prospective and current students communicating
    through blogs

30
Diverse Users and Uses of Blogs Students
  • Sites like Xanga, Angelfire, Blogspot enable
    students to create blogs
  • Blogs are personal or shared, private or public
  • Students comment on one anothers blogs
  • Blog topics include anything and everything
  • Students use blogging as a way to journal and
    connect to their peers
  • Social networking websites like Facebook and
    MySpace have blog-like features called Walls

31
Blogs and Students Social Networking
  • Benefits
  • Facilitates communication between students,
    leading to the important development of mature
    interpersonal relationships (Chickering
    Reisser, 1993)
  • Creates venue for open expression, dialogue, and
    developmental friction
  • Drawbacks
  • Potential distraction from more educational
    endeavors
  • Public blogs can be read by anyone poses safety
    threat
  • Students unaware of what speech is and is not
    protected under First Amendment

32
Diverse Users and Uses of Blogs Faculty
  • Professors use the blogosphere as venue to post
    scholarly blogs, debate and exchange ideas
  • Faculty incorporate blogs into coursework for
    students

33
Blogs and FacultyScholarly Blogs
  • Benefits
  • Serve as instantaneous publishing opportunities
  • Create connection between professors and wide
    public audience
  • Expedite academic discourse that could take years
    through other media
  • Provide faculty a venue to establish reputation
    in discipline
  • Drawbacks
  • Blogs viewed by many as superfluous and
    inappropriate for academic work
  • Content can have negative impact on non-tenured
    faculty or individuals seeking employment

34
Blogs and Faculty Incorporating Blogs into
Coursework
  • Benefits
  • Familiar medium available to many students
  • Introverted students comfortable with
    asynchronous nature of blogs and become invested
    in education, thereby improving their experiences
    (Astin, 1984)
  • Professors have easy access to submitted work
  • Convenient forum for student interaction and
    out-of-class discussion
  • Drawbacks
  • Access to and fluency with blogs is not universal
    among college students
  • Blogs do not help writers interact (Krause, 2005)
  • Blogs not conducive for editing process (Krause,
    2005)

35
Diverse Users and Uses of Blogs Admissions
Offices
  • Admissions offices recruit current students to
    post blogs that reflect life on campus, targeting
    prospective students
  • Prospective and current students communicate
    through blogs

36
Blogs and College Admissions Recruitment
  • Benefits
  • Accessible and comfortable arena for many
    college-goers
  • Cost-effective recruitment tool
  • Forum for open exchange regarding all aspects of
    student experience
  • Drawbacks
  • Administrators lose control of often uncensored
    message being conveyed to prospective students

37
The Not-So-Distant Future of Blogging
  • Enhanced role of blogs in instruction
  • Increases in e-recruitment
  • Expanded definition of blog
  • Audio blogs
  • Photo blogs
  • Video blogs

38
The Digital Divide
39
The Digital Divide Is
  • Harvard University Political Scientist Pippa
    Norris (2001) describes three main components of
    the digital divide
  • The global divide between the countries with
    commonplace Internet access and those without
  • The social divide in each country of those with
    access and those without it
  • The democratic divide between those who use
    technology to participate in public life and
    those who do not

40
The Digital Divide Is
  • Michael Bugeja adds a fourth component, an
    interpersonal divide that concerns the social
    gap that develops when individuals misperceive
    reality because of media overconsumption and
    misinterpret others because of technology
    overuse.
  • (2005, p. 6)

41
Why Digital Divide Is Important to Understand
  • Students without computers lack convenient access
    to a growing number of blended courses (featuring
    an online component) and online university
    systems (registration, finances, etc.)
  • Without access to social networking Web sites and
    cellular phones, students may have difficulty
    generating social capital and connecting to their
    peers

42
Implications for A Socially Just Educational
Climate
  • Emerging educational technologies enhance
    learning opportunities for many students, while
    widening the gap for traditionally
    underrepresented groups
  • Van Dusen elaborates
  • There is a more ominous consequence of these new
    education opportunities. They present a new set
    of barriers for the traditionally
    underrepresented in higher education because
    computers are less likely to be in the schools
    and homes of low-income families (2000, p. 11).

43
Potential Barriers to Access
  • Household type
  • Physical disabilities
  • Learning disabilities
  • Geography and access to the internet
  • Age
  • Income
  • Gender
  • Lack of computer and technology training

These barriers not only impact student success in
traditional learning environments but also limit
the access of these groups to the online
classroom and its associated virtual communities.
(Van Dusen, 2000, Novak Hoffman, 1998 )
44
Bridging the Divide Suggestions for VSU
  • Ensure faculty awareness of the implications of
    limited technological access for their students
  • Extend hours for campus computer labs
  • Offer sections featuring both blended and
    traditional instructional methods for all
    required university courses
  • Include optional training on Web-based university
    systems during New Transfer Student Orientation

45
Next Steps
46
What Can You Do?
  • Contact us to present to your department
  • Attend workshops sponsored by the IT department
  • Stay up-to-date on emerging trends
  • Talk to students
  • Consult literature
  • Experiment with new technologies

47
Works Cited
  • Astin, A. W. (1984). Student involvement A
    developmental theory for higher education.
    Journal of College Student Personnel, 25,
    297-308.
  • Bugeja, M. (2005). Interpersonal divide The
    search for community in a technological age. New
    York Oxford University Press.
  • Carnevale, D. (2006, October 6). E-mail is for
    old people. The Chronicle of Higher Education
    Online version. Retrieved February 17, 2007
    from http//chronicle.com/
  • Chickering, A. W., Reisser, L. (1993).
    Education and identity (2nd ed.). San Francisco
    Jossey-Bass.
  • Curtis, P. (2005, April 15). Pupils use mobile
    phones to cheat on exams. The Guardian Unlimited.
    Retrieved February 15, 2007 from
    http//education.guardian.co.uk/
  • Delfiner, R. (2007, February 9). Tech stalking
    Teen epidemic. The New York Post. Retrieved
    February 15, 2007 from http//www.nypost.com
  • Krause, S. D. (2005, June 24). Blogs as a tool
    for teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
  • Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide. Cambridge,
    England Cambridge University Press.
  • Novak, T. P. Hoffman, D.L. (1998). Bridging
    the digital divide The impact of race on
    computer access and internet use. Retrieved
    November 17, 2005 from http//elab.vanderbilt.edu/
    research_papers.htm
  • Student Monitor. Retrieved February 16, 2007
    from http//www.studentmonitor.com/
  • Text Messaging (Definition). P.C. Magazine
    Online. Retrieved February 16, 2007 from
    http//www.pcmag.com/
  • Van Dusen, G.C. (2000). Digital dilemma Issues
    of access, cost, and quality in media enhanced
    and distance education. ASHE-ERIC Higher
    Education Report 27(5). Retrieved November 2,
    2005, from ERIC
  • Wired News. Students Called on SMS Cheating.
    Retrieved February 16, 2007, from
    http//www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,57484,00.h
    tml
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