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

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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

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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

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Institutional Spam
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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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
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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/)

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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

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Texting the College Campus Issues to Consider

• Academic Integrity
• Safety
• Marketing Communication

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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

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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

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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)

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Information Security
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Blogging
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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

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Blogging Example
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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The Digital Divide
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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

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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)

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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).

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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 )
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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

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Next Steps
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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

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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