Why we lag behind
Is it hubris or are we just asking the wrong questions still?
I’ve been thinking alot about the push pull at universities. Students now, they tell me, refuse to use email. Actually i know that for sure – the easiest way to be ignored is to email them. Lots of us fight this and say too bad - this is the only AUTHORIZED method of comms. Then the students think we are old and call us boomers and we call them millennials and then nothing changes.
For a long time I thought this was our higher ed hubris. (and yes, I include myself because I love a rule and this was a rule!) We are older, we are wiser, the kids should sit down and learn from us. Though this still exists, i think it’s more than that. With great joy, I will refer to The Power of Moments by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. [ Someday you can buy me an iced tea and I’ll tell you my “only in NYC” Dan Heath story that involves Japanese shaved ice, Greenwich Village, a lot of tears and great outreach.
As you may recall from How Not to Epic, science shows we remember the high point and the end point of events. Is it possible that we just don’t remember the hard irritating parts of college from when we went? I’m going to give us all grace and say that’s what it is. Well, it’s also possible we went so long ago that the problems are new. I didn’t have email issues in undergrad - there was no email. When I registered at Smith, I got a yellow card I filled out with pen and walked over to my advisor and he signed it, then I walked it over to the registrar’s office, via the Japanese tea house at Paradise Pond. Yes, it was at bucolic as it sounds.
I had an interesting conversation recently - she said something i’ve been saying for a long time, just differently. She thinks we are selling college wrong - i think we just don’t understand what people value. It’s the same thing either way.
At the end of the day, what do people want out of college? You could ask why people go, and many people have asked that. I’d rather ask why do they stay? For those who went to college, are they happy they did and why? I maintain that the answer is the same for everyone, and it boils down to two sections of a venn diagram. The happiest folks are in the intersection, you’re at least somewhat happy if you got one, and if neither, that’s the worst.
What we want, clearly, is career and community, personally defined. Maybe it’s a first job, a new career, a new company, a country, but whatever it is you want career-wise, if your school helps get you there, you’re happy. Community is, again, in the eye of the beholder. Some people come out with a million friends, some with 3, some want a mentor for life or active alumni across the globe. My first foray at grad school was the Univeristy of Texas at Austin [more on that in a future lesson called “don’t ask the Dean questions”] and if anyone knows how to have a community, it’s the Longhorns. I worked at Washington State University, and there is an entire lifestyle built around being a Coug, especially on Game Day. I, in fact, lived on Main Street the year that Game Day finally broadcast there. The town shut down so we could all go watch. I seem to recall the President of WSU banning purple for a week. They really commit to Coug life.
So, if we accept the theory that people want career and community, what next? What about academics? Academics matter, and we all want to learn, for sure. [let’s stipulate that’s true] But if accounting is the same subject wherever you go, how do you find the right place, and what does that mean? Prospective students, look at what you want, and then let’s look at how to get you there!
How on earth does this get back to email and hubris? Building community for a school is very intentional - the online MBA@UNC had one of the strongest communities I’ve ever seen. People like to give all the credit to the Immersions, which I actually think is wrong. These 3 day in person adventures were great, for sure, but they were great because the community started online from day 1, so when you went to an immersion, you were going to see friends you made in class, and make new friends to boot. At that time, we had required synchronous classes of no more than 15 people, so you “had” to know your classmates. What if you are asynch? One of my fears is that async programs might just “give up” on building a strong community. [I have no evidence of this so feel free to chime in. Come to think of it, I very strongly identified with the Mazda Miata community when I got my first one in 1993 and we didn’t even have websites.].
Completely unnecessary shot of my third and current Miata at the beach in Chicago. Ask me my car’s name - there is always a story.
Community requires communication - and now we see the link. What if, instead of forcing students into email, we looked for communication methods that would help build community? What if the question was - where are people and how can we meet them there? What if we actually did a needs analysis and found technology that worked, rather than technology that we had? [Having been central IT, I am in NO WAY suggesting every college or department does this - that would be foolish. Has to be at the enterprise level.] 2020 was a time of great experimentation for a lot of us in higher ed - we had to find new ways to make things work. In some ways, it was a great time to be in academic technology.
We couldn’t do most things we used to do, so we did things we could do. I ran academic technology at a university in NYC at that time - we pivoted quickly to Zoom, and as time went on looked for upgraded AV solutions. Some rooms got a Meeting Owl. One thing we learned was that academic advising at our school was far more successful on Zoom - fewer skipped meetings, better questions, more efficient use of time. Students and advisors alike were happier. I suggested that we make that change permanent - put an Owl in a small room and keep appointments virtual - students could Zoom from anywhere, including the option of the Owl room if they wanted to be on campus. The answer to suggestion was a resounding no. - that’s not how we do things. In the face of direct data of a more successful way to interact with students, the hubris was real. Will that make a student drop out? No, not that one thing. But why not make every aspect a little better when we can?
In 2020 Owl Labs was very fun - they encouraged naming your Owls with Owl puns. Now they seem much more buttoned up - which is a massive fail IMO. Also, I wanted them to sell adorable carrying bags, ones that looked like trees with a mesh panel for the Owl face - they have bags, they just aren’t adorable.
Most things at a school live in the LMS, which makes sense. However, the LMS is not where i want to interact with classmates and build any community. I have no intention of logging in to say hi - and there really isn’t a way to facilitate that anyway. Here comes Nectir. Founded by students at UC Santa Barbara who thought there must be a better way, Nectir shows that there is. The first product was a chat tool - a Slack for schools, if you will, that can live within each class in the LMS and also outside of that. If you haven’t used Slack, it’s pretty great. If you’ve ever been required to use Teams chat instead of Slack, I feel your pain. Not everyone wants immediate communication, which I suspect keeps a lot of us in email too, but there is nothing like the possibility of immediate for community building. It just has to be in a place I am willing to go.
I’m a member of a Chicago fine dining group that spun off of the r/Chicagofood subreddit. [I am embarrassed even saying that sentence.] They’re nice people - I’ve had meals with a bunch of them. However, I never feel like part of the group. Why? We’re housed on Discord, and I just don’t keep it open enough. By the time I open that app, I’ve missed it all. It’s not my job, or my school, so it falls by the wayside for me. I belong to a professional group that has a Slack channel - I never miss anything there.
Maybe you’re saying it’s too hard to change. I’ve reviewed lots of software with General Counsel. Yes, there are always security and privacy questions - guess what, those have usually been resolved. It’s a pain in the neck to implement anything new - totally agree. But what if meeting people where they were worked? What if you could build an amazing community, not just for your students but for your staff and faculty? [Knowing people outside your silo is better than not knowing people.] You could be known as the program/university/workplace of choice - what would happen if people felt like a part of the culture, and found their place? Who knows where we could end up next?