Title: Online, Offline, and Out of Line
1Online, 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
2In 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
3Session 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
4Technology 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
5Hot Topics We Will Highlight
- Institutional Spam
- Text Messaging and Other Cell Phone Capabilities
- Information Security
- Blogging
- The Digital Divide
6Institutional Spam
7Institutional 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)
8Why 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
9VSU 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
10VSU 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
11Benefits 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
12Drawbacks 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
13Text Messaging and Other Cellular Phone
Capabilities
14Text 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/)
15Why 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
16Texting the College Campus Issues to Consider
- Academic Integrity
- Safety
- Marketing Communication
17Text 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
18Text 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
19Text 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)
20Information Security
21Information 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
22Why 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
23Steps 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
24Benefits 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
25The 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
26Blogging
27A 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
28Blogging Example
29Why 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
30Diverse 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
31Blogs 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
32Diverse 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
33Blogs 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
34Blogs 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)
35Diverse 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
36Blogs 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
37The 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
38The Digital Divide
39The 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
40The 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)
41Why 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
42Implications 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).
43Potential 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 )
44Bridging 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
45Next Steps
46What 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
47Works 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