• The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 is the latest report from EDUCAUSE’s research arm focusing on undergraduate students and their use and perceptions of technology.  It’s always a well-done study and EDUCAUSE makes the full study (2.7 MB pdf) freely available to everyone so you should take a few minutes to glance over at least the Key Findings (330 KB pdf).
• The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2008 Summary Report is another report released by EDUCAUSE this week.  As the name implies, it’s a summary of results from the last round of data collection in the Core Data Service, EDUCAUSE’s database of educational technology information.  This document is one of the best (and often the only) publicly-available empirical source of information on technology in higher education, particularly if you’re looking for campus-based statistics such as how much money is spent on technology, how many people are employed to support it, and what kinds of practices and technologies are being used.
• The Department of Education has released its final rules (2.12 MB pdf; search for “copyright” to find the specific areas of interest) specifying how to interpret the laws passed this summer requiring (Title IV-participating) colleges and universities to actively combat online copyright infringement.  At first glance, the final rules do not appear to differ from the proposed rules.

I hope to find time to dig into all three of these documents in the next couple of days.  I recommend that you do the same.

EDUCAUSE, the 900 pound gorilla of higher education technology organizations, has created an online component of their annual conference to be held in November in Denver.  Not only are several events in Denver being simulcast online but they’ve created several events exclusive to the online conference.  This is a wonderful option for those whose travel budgets have been adversely impacted by the economy.  I wish that many other organizations would make similar offerings but I also recognize the infrastructure and expertise necessary to put this together, resources that EDUCAUSE has but many other organizations do not.  However, many of the necessary technical resources are cheap and easily available so hopefully other smaller and less-technically-inclined organizations will pursue similar creative options.

NASPA is changing its official journal from the NASPA Journal to the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice.  I’m not privy to all of the details of the change and the reasons for it.  But one of the changes is that they are broadening the scope of the review section to include resources other than just books.  Specifically:

Media Reviews summarize and analyze the full range of resources (e.g., blogs, websites, video, books, reports) available to student affairs educators. Media Review manuscripts, informative and critical, allow student affairs educators to learn of media useful to their work. Media reviews, invited and solicited by the Editor, should not exceed 1,200 words, and are to be discussed with the Associate Editor for Media Reviews in advance of submission. NASPA members are invited to suggest cutting edge and novel media to be reviewed in JSARP.

The new editors are actively soliciting reviews so feel free to submit one.

Finally, ACUHO-I is also changing its journal.  As with the change at NASPA, I’m not privy to all of the details but I’m excited about what I know.  The changes being made by ACUHO-I, however, are not near as big the changes made by NASPA.  The Journal of College and University Student Housing has previously been published twice a year but beginning next year it will only be published once a year.  Content won’t be reduced, however, so each issue will be twice as large as previous issues.  Most interesting is that the editors will be including a “study guide” aimed at helping practitioners make use of each article.  Research conducted by my colleagues in the ResNet Applied Research Group should be included in the next issue of this journal.

When discussing diversity between institutions, several common measures or characteristics often arise (at my research shop we call these and other common characteristics “the usual suspects” since we use them in so many of our analyses): the various Carnegie Classifications, governance/sector (public or private), geographic region, urbanicity, and selectivity.  We could view our panel as diverse if they have experiences from a broad number of different categories listed above.  It stands to reason that many or all of those characteristics may have an impact on how student affairs staff collaborate with technology professionals.  For example, many of those characteristics are related to institutional wealth which surely affects how units on campus collaborate.  It may be easier for wealthier campuses to employ more specialized personnel (e.g. hire more technical staff in the student affairs units rather than depend on or collaborate with other technology units).

It might also be valuable to judge the diversity of the panel by their experiences.  This, of course, brings us further down the rabbit hole because now we have to define what we mean by “diverse experiences.”  One approach that seems to have been useful and practical was to ask what kind of collaborations potential panelists had experienced and categorize those experiences.  Some had experienced a collaboration focused on a single large project.  Others had regularly collaborated with technology professionals on projects large and small as part of their regular, assigned job responsibilities.  And others have experienced collaborations primarily as ad hoc adventures as the department’s most technology-savvy employee.

Similarly, it may also be worthwhile to consider the professional roles or job responsibilities of the potential panelists.  As mentioned above, some have little or no technology component in their formal job responsibilities.  Some have technology management, oversight, or planning as part of their job portfolio.  Finally, some are technology professionals with IT project management or implementation in their position description.

Finally, we might look at the technology professionals with whom the collaboration(s) occurred.  Collaborations with departmental colleagues, student affairs technology professionals, and central IT professionals likely differ in many interesting and important ways.

So what did I do?  It might be fun to say that I carefully analyzed the above dimensions and came up with a panel that represents as many of these dimensions as possible and practical.  But the reality is that I graciously accepted nearly all of the Technology Knowledge Community members who volunteered to assist in any way.  As we moved through the process of broadly brainstorming ideas through drafting the format of the program and finally to drafting the program proposal, volunteers bowed out, found other programs or projects to work on, or simply disappeared.  In the end I was left with a core group of dedicated and experienced professionals who will make an incredible panel.  When I looked at all of the above dimensions of diversity I was pleasantly surprised to see that the panel named in the proposal is indeed quite diverse.

I am very hopeful that this proposal will be accepted and you will be able to benefit from the experiences of these wonderful professionals.  The process of putting together the proposal was very useful and interesting as it forced me to consider all of the ideas above (and more!) as I sought to put together a diverse panel.  Student affairs professionals often speak of diversity as a value and desirable goal and it’s always worthwhile to consider that idea in different contexts.

The section related to online copyright infringement is entitled “Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Copyrighted Material (§§ 668.14(b) and 668.43(a))” and it begins on page 13 of the document linked above. For those who have been following this, there aren’t really any surprises. For those who have not followed this, here’s a brief summary of what colleges and universities will have to do:

• “[Develop and implement] written plans to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network without unduly interfering with the educational and research use of the network.” This plan must include (a) “one or more technology-based deterrents,” (b) a way to educate the community about copyright, (c) disciplinary procedures, and (d) assessment procedures.
• “To the extent practicable, offer legal alternatives to illegal downloading.”
• Periodically review the alternatives available and make the results of the review available to students.

So let’s review what is new (or at least new to me):

• Related to the requirement that we inform students of copyright law, the Department of Education “will work with representatives of copyright holders and institutions to develop a summary of the civil and criminal penalties for violation of Federal copyright laws” that we can use in our educational efforts. That’s a curious statement and it will be interesting to see what comes of this. Many players in the copyright industry have developed educational materials and they have been uniformly dismal and incredibly one-sided. Many institutions have, of course, developed their own materials so it will be interesting to see if the Department collects materials and attempts to integrate them or how they will approach this. The idea of developing model language and materials is good but the execution is where it may get tricky.
• The discussion of the proposed rules makes it clear that the Department believes that institutions can and must strike a balance between combating online copyright infringement and other priorities such as network security and research purposes. Moreover, that the proposed rules give institutions some discretion in how they go about striking this balance doesn’t mean that institutions can intentionally strike a weak balance to avoid combating online copyright infringement.
• The discussion also briefly discusses the negotiations that took place regarding “student” v. “user.” Some sections of the proposed rule only apply to students or perspective students whereas other sections are intentionally applied to users, a much broader group of people. There was even some discussion about whether some of the provisions should be extended beyond students to include employees but the Department doesn’t make such extensions in this proposed rule. I don’t even know if the Department could make such extensions; as I understand it these proposed rules are supposed to interpret the law such that institutions can comply with the law, not go above and beyond to make new laws.
• It’s been a few months since I’ve thought about this legislation so I had forgotten about the requirement that institutions employ at least one “technology-based deterrent.” The discussion that accompanies this proposed rule making and the discussion that accompanied the legislation (The Statement of Managers in the Conference Report for the HEOA) lay out four categories of technology-based deterrents: (a) bandwidth shaping, (b) traffic monitoring, (c) accepting and responding to
  DMCA notices, or (d) a commercial product designed to reduce or block illegal file sharing. The discussion in the proposed rule making says that institutions can “effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material using only one of the four types.” That’s an empirical claim and I would like to know how that conclusion was reached.
• Finally, the discussion indicates that there was significant disagreement about how institutions would be required to evaluate their copyright infringement plans. The proposed rules leave it up to institutions to determine how best to evaluate their plans, an arrangement commonly sought between the federal government and colleges and universities (”We won’t tell you what to do but you have to know and you have to be able to prove that you’re doing it well!”).
  The discussion goes on to lay out some examples of acceptable evaluation criteria. Some criteria might be process-based and focus on the process an institution has developed for combating online copyright infringement. Other criteria might be outcome-based and focus on more direct measures. Some of the direct measures offered in the discussion are: “‘before and after’ comparisons of bandwidth used for peer-to-peer applications, low recidivism rates, and reductions (either in absolute or in relative numbers) in
  the number of legitimate electronic infringement notices received from rights holders.” Unfortunately, some of those measures are plain bad.

You should read the proposed rules yourself and not completely rely on what I have written. There is more in there than I discussed above and what I find interesting may not be what you find interesting or important. These rules are very far along in the process but you still have a chance to comment on them if you are so moved. I can’t imagine that comments would have much of an impact at this point but if you have something to say then please don’t let my cynicism deter you!

Special thanks go to Steve, Anna, and the rest of the EDUCAUSE staff who have done such a wonderful job keeping us all updated as this legislation has moved forward.

Edit: Steve Worona at EDUCAUSE has posted his overview of this document. In it, he also posts the dates and times of two programs discussing this new law that will be presented at the upcoming EDUCAUSE Annual Conference.

ResNet professionals work hand-in-hand with residence life, housing, and student affairs professionals. These professions share common histories, traditions, and professional and personal cultures. Learning about these professions and their cultures, particularly their specific histories and relationships with technology, will make your work easier, more efficient, and more effective. Attendees will learn how to interact with, collaborate with, and better understand these non-IT professionals.

The program was relatively well-attended and it seemed to go pretty well.  I left a lot of time for questions and discussion and the amount of time I left seemed just right.  I could tell that some of the attendees were a bit bored but I know that this topic isn’t one that speaks to all of the ResNet Symposium attendees, particularly those who are more focused on technical issues such as network management. But it’s important and often overlooked.

I believe that not only are there different personalities attracted to technology and student affairs but that the two groups have very different histories and cultures.  For these two groups to work well together, they should have some understanding of the history and culture of the other group, something that many successful professionals pick up on informally and through hard-earned experience if not through more direct training and education.  This program spoke to the technology professionals, introducing student affairs to technology professionals.  (In part spurred by a question asked by an attendee at my program, I’m currently working with several other members of NASPA’s Technology Knowledge Community to put together a program that does the opposite: presenting the culture and history of technology professionals to student affairs professionals so they can more effectively collaborate.)

The second event on Monday was the Town Hall Meeting.  Dee Childs stepped down as President and handed over her duties to Sheila Crowe.  A few other positions were shuffled around before I was handed the floor to give a brief plug for the RARG, the symposium’s research arm.  Afterward, the meeting was devoted to discussing the future of the symposium with questions and comments being taken from the floor.  I had hoped this would be an expansive discussion but the entire conversation focused on whether or not there should be a membership fee.  I really didn’t understand or follow the discussion, particularly as it seemed to go round in circles with no firm conclusion or consensus. The proposed “membership fee” seems to be an ill-defined solution in search of a problem.

The remainder of the symposium was dedicated to the vendor fair, t-shirt exchange, and closing ceremony/dinner.  They all went over very well and were enjoyable.

I wonder about the longevity of this organization and its annual event.  Attendance was down significantly this year and while that is probably largely reflective of the economy I don’t see that (the lower attendance or the economy) changing in the next year or two.  Moreover, now that many of the bigger challenges of residential computer networking have been solved (standards are more developed, equipment is more prevalent and standardized, successful support models are in place and easily copied and modified, etc.) I’m not sure that the event as it exists has enough to offer attendees, particularly newcomers.  Much of the draw seems to be based on friendship and community, conditions that are difficult to advertise and extend to those who have not attended multiple times and become familiar with those involved in the event.  I believe that the ResNet Symposium must shift or widen its focus, perhaps taking as its purview a broader view of student technology support and student supervision, if it is to remain relevant and viable.

I took detailed notes for most of the sessions I attended but I feel that too much time has passed for me to write detailed descriptions of each session.  I like to do that right away to help me reflect on what I learned.  But this time around I made more of an effort to socialize, network, and enjoy time with my colleagues and friends so I spent more of my time doing that and less time on my computer engaged in solitary activity.  Of course, having my own presentation on the last day of the conference and spending time each night to continue preparing for it also significantly impinged on the amount of time available for reflection and writing.

As I become more experienced and professionally mature, I find my interests and ideas changing.  Those changing interests led me to pay more attention this year to trying to ascertain the maturity of the programs and services represented at this year’s conference.  In particular, I was interested in seeing (a) the maturity of the assessment activities carried out by ResNet programs and (b) the levels of strategic planning and how well those plans are integrated with other plans (campus-wide, divisional, etc.).  In general, it seems that even the most mature of the programs represented at this conference are still in a relatively early stage of performing assessment as they are still heavily rooted in measuring opinion and input/output (number and type of computers, number and frequency of computer lab logins, amount of bandwidth consumed, etc.).  Learning outcomes seems to have not penetrated to many of these programs, perhaps because many seem to see themselves primarily as service centers with minor auxiliary educational responsibilities.  On the strategic planning side, it’s hard to gauge the level of depth and integration of these programs’ plans given the focus of many of these programs and the interests of the participants.

Brief reflections on some of the specific sessions I attended:

1. Keynote address: Leading Geeks

   Paul Glenn, Computer World columnist and author of How to Manage and Lead People Who Deliver Technology presented the keynote address at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. His talk focused on explaining how “geeks” are different from other people and how to lead geeks in an organization. I’ve become a complete academic snob so I didn’t really enjoy this talk as the depth of his research was very shallow. Luckily, much of what he said is relatively close to what the real research says (yes, there is actual research into the social and cultural phenomenon of “geeks” … and “nerds”). If you’re interested in learning more about Glenn’s thoughts about leading geeks, he maintains a website at leadinggeeks.com.

2. Session 1: From Labs to Learning Space: Enabling Student Use of Technology

   Beth McCullough, Learning Spaces Manager for Stanford’s Academic Computing group, led a practical discussion of learning space concerns. Much of her discussion focused on her attempts to maintain and rehabilitate computer labs in Stanford residence halls. I greatly liked how much of her presentation and the decisions she has made are tied to data collected from and about Stanford residents as too often we make decisions in a void (see above regarding the current state of assessment in most ResNet shops). The most interesting discussion related to working with housing professionals in understanding and trying to reconceptualize how they understand (and use and fund and label and maintain and…) study spaces that happen to have computers.

3. Session 2: Strategic Planning: Transforming Ideas Into Reality

   The second session I attended was presented by my good friend from Northern Illinois University, Jan Gerenstein. Jan is an Associate Director in their housing department and a former colleague in the ResNet Applied Research Group (RARG). She discussed with us how her group – Residential Technology – is participating in and integrating themselves into their division’s strategic planning process. This was a very interesting session for me as I strongly suspect that it would have been very different if Jan’s group were housed in a technology division instead of student affairs. Based on several years of observation, the cultural differences between these two groups – ResNet operations housed in central IT vs. those in housing – are clear (a topic that was the basis for my own program at this year’s ResNet Symposium and a potential program for NASPA’s 2010 conference). But I wonder if the different planning and assessment skills and emphases and driving these two groups farther away in terms of their goals and services. The reason why we ask about the program’s parent group (central IT, housing, etc.) on the ResNet surveys is because we – or at least I – strongly believe this to be one of the key lens through which we can and should examine and understand residential computing.

4. Session 3: Millennial Misconceptions: How to Work Successfully with Generation X

   I didn’t take very many notes during this session. Karen McRitchie of Grinnell College did a great job with this program but I struggle mightily with programs that seem to arbitrarily lump together so many people and draw conclusions about those people from limited and flawed data (is my bias and academic snobbery showing?). During my darkest, bleakest moments in these sessions, I want to bludgeon Howe and Strauss with their own book. Karen was very complimentary of the students with whom she works and I was very happy that this was explicitly not a session that bemoaned the fate of the world today with Generation X taking the helm. I was most interested in this session as it closely mirrors so many (so many!) programs at student affairs conferences I’ve attended.

5. Session 4: Adventures in Cyber Security: Tufts and Yale

   Judi Renni from Tufts and Loriann Higashi from Yale are ResNet old timers and they presented a wonderfully entertaining and informative session describing their latest efforts at getting students interested in and aware of better security practices. Unlike most ResNet Symposium programs, this one was not videotaped; the presenters showed us several videos that made fair use of copyrighted material and they (and their lawyers) didn’t want those videos to be recorded and distributed. Judi and Lori also took advantage of the privacy offered their session by sharing with us frank (but not disrespectful, disparaging, or unprofessional!) evaluations of their entire processes from start to finish. We very much appreciated their honesty, particularly when they were brave enough to share with us their challenges and failures. Some of the Tufts materials can be viewed online as can the Yale materials.

The common view – one which I shared until recently – is that college students view Facebook as “their” space and resent intrusions into their space by faculty, administrators, parents, and other non-students and old people.  The willingness of students in my online identity classes to recommend that employers and college admissions administrators actively use Facebook to investigate young people contradicts the common view. Perhaps as a result of our discussions or simply as an acceptance of the inevitable growth of SNSes to include non-students, many of the students in my classes did not exhibit “ownership” of Facebook and accepted as natural the presence of non-students.

The final project for the first semester of my online identity class was to recommend a policy for employers’ or universities’ use of SNSes in evaluating new hires or applicants, respectively.  For the second semester, I limited the assignments to only including college and university admissions, omitting the employer option as unnecessarily complicating the assignment.  In both cases, the responses covered the entire range of possibilities from “No, they should never use them!” to “Of course, they should use them!  And they shouldn’t even tell the applicant beforehand!”  Most of the assignments were reasonably well-crafted and supported by rationales indicating a solid grasp on the course materials as reasonable people can easily make different recommendations.

The plurality of recommendations in both semesters recommended that employers or college admission officers use SNSes to investigate applicants.  Some recommendations even explicitly noted that applicants didn’t need to be told. This surprised me.  I expected the exact opposite, guessing that my students would use this opportunity to argue for more privacy and respect for perceived boundaries.  Even several of the “don’t use SNSes” and “use SNSes only if…” recommendations did not focus on privacy, instead focusing on issues related to misinformation and lack of context to interpret SNS content.  From those responses, it’s clear that even if many of my students don’t necessarily welcome non-students into Facebook they know and expect it to happen anyway, accepting it as inevitable.

Some possible explanations or interpretations:

1. The selected materials and ensuing discussions led many students to this conclusion.  Some of the materials and discussions did indeed focus on the growing amount of information available about each of us (the chapter on “digital dossiers” from Born Digital immediately jumps to mind).  The general topic of many of the discussions was “our identity is being shaped online whether we like it or actively participate; what do we do now?”  These discussions may have led some of my students to embrace a (pessimistic or realistic?) view of “the information is there so we all may as well use it!”  Unfortunately, I did not explicitly ask my students about their specific views on this topic at the beginning of the class so it’s hard to judge the impact of the class on their thinking.
2. Younger students have different privacy expectations than older students.  Not only have the younger students been using them from a younger age and thus have likely formed different expectations and usage patterns, Facebook has been open to non-students for much longer (perhaps “always” for some).

Whatever the explanation – and it’s probably a bit of all of these and several more – it seems that many of the students in my classes had different privacy expectations than commonly presented as the norm among most college students.  My students may have grown into their expectations through discussions and readings focused specifically on SNSes. But it’s also possible that many of the ownership issues related specifically to Facebook were relatively short-lived and largely an artifact of its introduction as a student-only space.  Just as we are exploring how different people use SNSes differently, we must also explore how their uses and expectations change over time as both the SNSes and their users change and (hopefully) mature.

As a side note, the recommendations that seemed most interesting to me were those that gave applicants the option of allowing employers or admissions officers the option of investigating the applicants’ SNS profiles. This seemed to balance the inherent lack of context possessed by employers and admissions officers with the desire of applicants to use well-crafted profiles to present their identity or a portion thereof.  There are, of course, immense logistical and legal challenges with those recommendations but we didn’t address any of those topics in these classes.

Note: As part of a College Teaching and Learning class in which I am enrolled, I will be reflecting weekly on the course I am teaching. I will likely withhold some details and information from these public blog posts to respect the confidentiality and sanctity of my classroom but I hope to be frank about my own actions and emotions as I teach this course for the second time

I’ve graded the final assignments and submitted final grades (and made one correction to a final grade).  The class is over and I now have some time to try to see the big picture and reflect on the class as a whole.  I learned some very interesting things from reading the final assignments but I’ll save that for a separate post as that goes well beyond just this one course.

Taking the course as it was conceived and constructed, I am relatively pleased with how it turned it this second time around.  The material flowed much more smoothly this semester and that helped me keep the the ideas and concepts integrated as we changed topics.  Although I risked being repetitive, I constantly and intentfully reached back to material we had previously covered to tie it in with the new material and discussions.  That was a challenge for me at times but it’s a good challenge to undertake both for me and my students.  If it had been too difficult – if I had not been able to tie the ideas together on a regular basis – that would have indicated potentially severe problems with the design of the course.

Eliciting discussion was a constant challenge.  I attempted to meet that challenge by varying our activities.  I have a lot to learn about how to effectively use active learning activities, particularly those that employ different learning styles and engage more creative skills such as visual and physical skills.  In a course designed as this was (with a rather formal structure and flow), I would have liked to have employed more creative activities such as concept maps.  We made concept maps on the last day of the class as a way to reflect on everything we had discussed and learned and I was very pleased with the discussion generated by that activity.  It’s easy to blame the difficulty of engaging in discussion on the diverse makeup of the class and the general nature of U212 courses as nearly all of the students are in the course solely to pick up a few credits after having dropped another course.  It’s also easy to blame it on the fact they’re “just undergraduates” and discussion-based classes are relatively rare for many of them, particularly those still in their first couple of years.  There is truth in all of those reasons but I can’t help but view them as excuses.

Ultimately, however, I question whether the class was constructed in the most effective manner to help the students learn about identity and how it is being presented online.  Although I incorporated active learning and assessment throughout the course, it was still at its heart an instructor-led course built on the readings that I had collected and thought were interesting and insightful.  I am very inspired by the innovations of teachers like Michael Wesch and how he has structured at least one of his classes as student-led, trusting them to be not just students but partners in research and exploration.  I imagine that it’s difficult for most experts to put that level of trust in amateurs; even my language – “experts” vs. “amateurs” – betrays some of my emotions and difficulties.  But it seems like an incredibly powerful way for people to learn and I hope I can figure out how to integrate those kinds of ideas into my teaching.  I think it all comes down to trust: trusting that undergraduates can be mature partners in exploration and trusting that a class without a rigid syllabus stuffed full of pre-selected readings and content can be a meaningful learning experience.  Intellectually, I know that it’s not about content but about learning.  But that’s a difficult chasm to leap when almost all of my 20+ years of education have been content-centered.

I don’t know if I’ll want to teach this class again, at least in the near future.  Logistically, it’s been taught for two semesters and it appears that the powers-that-be want to keep the roster of U212 classes fresh.  Teaching is definitely good experience for someone aspiring to the faculty ranks but teaching undergraduates doesn’t carry near as much weight for me as teaching or working with graduate students since higher education programs only exist at the graduate level.  And as you can tell by my comments above, if I were to teach this again I would try my best to significantly change the structure of the course to make it less content-centered and instructor-led and more exploration-centered and student-led.

Discussion about the possible relationship between college students’ use of Facebook and lower grades continued this week with the publication of a First Monday article addressing this topic.  This article follows up on previous discussions that followed the widespread publicity surrounding a poster session presented at AERA that found a correlation between Facebook usage and lower grades. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that the research and related discussions have shed more light on this topic.  But it sure has been exciting to watch how quickly it’s all happened!

The discussions have followed two general threads: (a) the AERA research was poorly done and (b) the media got the story wrong. I’ll address the first thread in detail below.  The second thread has been relatively short-lived as there isn’t any real disagreement that many reporters and editors leaped (without looking, thinking, or corroberating) from “there appears to be a link between Facebook usage and low grades in this small sample of this very limited study” to “Facebook causes bad grades!!!”  That’s irresponsible and everyone agrees on that point.  There is also a third thread that focuses on “I can’t believe this is true but I don’t have any evidence!” but it’s not worth wasting any time on those ill-informed opinions.

In general, most of the current research into Facebook usage seems to lack sophistication (and much lacks rigor; how many of the articles based on surveys discuss or even hint at validity or reliability?). The researchers behind the poster session and this First Monday article both rightly acknowledge that they are discussing correlation but there is a whole lot going on that they don’t acknowledge or can’t account for with their selected (or mandated) methodologies and data.  In trying to understand college students, we go to great lengths at the shop where I work to isolate and separate the influence of different variables and we struggle with this mightily.  In many instances, we have to employ relatively-sophisticated analyses such as multilevel modeling to adequately control for different variables, particularly the institution-level and student-level variables.  In fact, I don’t recall seeing any mention of institution-level influences in any of the currently-available research even beyond this poster session and article (of course, one can’t do anything about this if one’s sample is only drawn from a handful of institutions, another significant limitation of nearly all Facebook research). I acknowledge that institution-level influences only account for a small proportion of the variance among most of the things we measure but omitting measurement and discussion of institutional characteristiscs altogether seems to indicate a lack of theoretical and methodological sophistication. To put it bluntly, this is the kind of thing that many non-higher education researchers often miss as it simply isn’t their area of expertise and why higher ed scholars desparately need to be actively contributing to this conversation.

What most people want to see is not correlation but causation.  In other words, we want to be able to say that (the use of ) Facebook causes lower grades.  That’s a damn hard claim to make.  Even under the best circumstances, establishing causation is fiendishly difficult.  It would require sophisticated measures and analyses. Given the previously-mentioned lack of sophistication in most of these studies I don’t know that these researchers collected the right kinds of data to even begin to do the work necessary to establish causation.  Frankly, I think it’s so complicated and the analysis would be so fragile and fraught with assumptions and caveats that it’s a fool’s errand.

Let me illustrate this with an example drawn from the work done by folks with whom I work.  We know, from several years of repeated data collection and analysis by different researchers, that more frequent use of technology is strongly associated with higher levels of student engagement.* But even with all of the data we have collected, the rigor of our data collection methods, and the sophistication of our analyses, we haven’t yet figured out what exactly causes these measures to be correlated.  In other words, although we know that students who frequently use technology do better in many different ways we don’t know why that happens.  There are many different possibilities but even after 10 years of poking at this we don’t have any explanations upon which we can hang our hat and say, “That’s it – that’s why!”

It’s interesting and instructive to read not only the First Monday article, the response from the AERA poster session author, and the response from the FM authors.  I am hopeful that we will see more sophisticated and better planned research and I am more hopeful that this will occur if those who are most knowledgeable of college students and American higher education continue working and contributing to this discussion.

* In the context of this discussion I must emphasize that although we do ask students about their grades our focus is almost always much wider than just that one measure; in fact, we see broadening discussions of educational quality beyond simple measures such as grades or rankings as one of our primary missions.  I also add that we typically don’t specifically ask in any of our surveys about SNS use.  We do have a set of experimental questions out right now that asks about this but if I recall correctly the question is limited to communication about academic issues as we’re exploring how students and faculty communicate and collaborate.  Our colleagues at UCLA have explored this general issue, however, and it’s worth looking at their work if you haven’t already done so.

Note: As part of a College Teaching and Learning class in which I am enrolled, I will be reflecting weekly on the course I am teaching. I will likely withhold some details and information from these public blog posts to respect the confidentiality and sanctity of my classroom but I hope to be frank about my own actions and emotions as I teach this course for the second time

Last week was the final week for this class. We spent the week ramping up for the final paper that is due on Wednesday during Finals Week. That paper, as described in the syllabus, is a brief policy proposal outlining the use of SNSes in evaluating applicants for undergraduate admission.

We spent Monday in small groups creating brief policy proposals for the use of SNSes in evaluating entry-level job applicants.  This is, of course, very similar to the final project.  The different groups came up with very different answers but they had pretty good reasons for their answers and we had a good discussion afterward about some of the contextual issues (historical, legal, etc.) that could come into play in a real policy proposal.  Of course, I also explicitly told them that they were not expected to account for those contextual issues in their final paper as we didn’t have time to discuss those issues in this half-semester course.  Overall, it was good practice for their final paper and I think that it got them thinking about the issues and the different angles one could take.

Wednesday was our last day of class and it was even more relaxed than normal as I brought in cookies and milk (I feel a little bit emasculated saying that but damnit I like to bake and I’m good at it).  One of my students also brought in some food he made which was very nice of him and very welcome.  We began the class by quickly reviewing the breaking news about NACAC’s just-released report “Reaching the Wired Generation: How Social Media Is Changing College Admission” (400k pdf).  This was an incredibly timely report as it discusses exactly what we were discussing and writing about in the final paper!

We spent the rest of our time in Wednesday making concept maps recalling and linking together the main ideas of the entire class. At the suggestion of one my colleagues, we began by making a list on the board of the main concepts we had discussed throughout the class.  As my students called the ideas out, I wrote them down.  I often asked for clarification or explanation to help jog everyone’s memory about the ideas.  I also prodded for a few specific ideas but overall I was very pleased with the level of recall exhibited by my students. After we had a good list, we then broke into small groups and created concept maps and then shared them with the rest of the class.  The maps themselves were not terribly good but they were (a) created quickly and (b) the first exposure many students had to the idea of concept maps.  Although the maps themselves weren’t very good the conversations before and during their creation were fantastic.  And that – recalling the ideas, grappling with them, and trying to see how they relate – was the point of the exercise.  The maps are just a side effect and an artifact of those conversations.

This week, I also had to deal directly with those students who had slipped behind in the class or simply never showed up.  I obviously can’t go into any detail about this but I am sure that every teacher shares my frustration in knowing that there are some students who you can not seem to help.  I know these students are adults and they need to learn to deal with the consequences of their actions (they’re all young, traditional students, by the way).  But having been there myself – young, naive, and listless – I am sympathetic and there is still some small heartache when I give them the poor grades they have earned.

I will write closing reflections later this week after I have received and graded the final assignments.  In the meantime, those who are interested in some of my personal reflections about this class are welcome to read the brief “Learning Essay” (13k pdf) I wrote for my College Teaching and Learning class.