Why an IT Community

I guess that you could call these times a 'phoney war'. Hostitlities have been declared on Higher Education yet we await the first clear signs of any actual damage, we know it is coming,where  it is going to hit and even when, but what will it be like when it actually happens?
Would it be fair to describe Student Services as the 'Home Guard'? Instinctively defensive of what we have, inward looking and when you look at the bigger picture - not very well armed to defend ourselves let alone those that we seek to protect? Unfair?
Well may be, but near enough to some sort of 'truth' for us (Student Services) to look for ways of trying to take our own fate into our hands.
The use of new technologies is not going to be and never will be a cure for all that may befall us, but it is one answer to a new demand that is already being made of us....'do more with less'. Or should that be ' 'doing more effectively with the same'?
The time has come for us to think very hard about the role in our work of 'face to face' interactions with students. This is not a call to abandon this approach but it is a shove in the direction of not automatically hiding behind 'professional practice' when the cost effectiveness of these 'face to face' services is questioned. Cuts are often expressed in crude percentage savings or 'efficiency savings' for the more delicate. The cost of 'face to face' is what has in part over the last decade driven the growth of web based services via a short stop over in call centres.
This is not an 'all or nothing' situation for student services we are unlikely to be faced with wholesale closures of complete services but we are likely to be faced with pressures that will drive us to look to perhaps share services or reduce our 'face to face' delivery by as much as 70%-80%.
We can only cope with this possibility if we have at least thought about how we could deliver more effectively for the same.
By not closing our minds to the use of what are essentially free technologies such as ; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype, texting, mobile learning, by seeing how we can use these systems which are part of our students' lifestyles to deliver what they need, when they need it and in a form that they want. We can begin to imagine a different way of doing things that may, just may be our greatest weapon of defence.

Brian

(these opinions are my own and do not represent those of  AMOSSHE or of any other organisation.)