Never Knowingly Undershared

There has been much talk of doing things the 'John Lewis' way now that times are hard and we have to all join in the 'big society'. Being both a life long devotee of JL and someone who is looking for  new models of delivering Student Services in our post Browne world I have been thinking of just how a John Lewis model of Student Services would look and how technology would fit in. John Lewis is not a simple co-operative but rather a complex profit sharing organisation that was founded not on any socialist principles but rather as a defence against events that we happening in Europe in the early part of the last century. Nevertheless doing things the 'John Lewis' way has become a sort of shorthand for a form of sharing and co-operation even if its exact details are both hazy and probably not suitable for wholesale transfer into the HE sector let along Student Sevices.
Having said that HE is by its nature a very co-operative beast even if it times it doesn't feel like it. Student services are by and large very open one with another and always willing to share ideas and best practice, we are not fundamentally in competition with each other. If co-operation is in our DNA then finding a way to work together and even share services with each other should not be too much of a leap of faith for us all.
However there will come a brief window of competition if and when elements of private provision of student support come over the horizon. Perhaps the only window of opportunity we will be given to 'see off' the privatisation of our services will come during the required tendering process. If we are to stand a chance against companies who live or die by tendering is if we have ready to hand a business model that will allow us to deliver our services at a cost that makes sense and with a quality that protects the student experience. It will be the former rather than the later that will be our biggest challenge. This could be where John Lewis comes in. Selecting a business model that is as close as is possible to our instinctive ways of working is a key to success, the John Lewis model works because quite simply it works in practice, profit sharing amongst the 'partners' goes down as well as up, it is at heart a commercial model for a commercial world.
If co-operation and profit sharing on the JL model is the way forward where does technology fit in?
It is not just a case of one piece of kit or software being better than another but rather we need technologies that go with the cooperative flow that support shared services by allowing us to share.  This is where we could not at a better place in a better time.
The phenomenal growth of web2.0 technologies and social media has been because of one single thing - it is built for sharing, it only grows through co-operation and community mindedness. It may be a type of community that many middle aged sociologists would fail to recognise but the ability to create, speak to and interconnect communities gives us in Student Services a set of tools that are constantly being refined for exactly the purpose we require of them, communication, information, community creation, support and development.
Our task now is to develop our own John Lewis business model woven around web2.0 and social media and never forgetting the reality of face to face.
However we have to do this ourselves before it is too late .

This article represents my personal views and not those of AMOSSHE or any other organisation.

That made you think?

  

There is an awful lot of rubbish on YouTube in there somewhere are some gems that make you look at what you are doing through different eyes .  Some you may have heard of and other you may not. They would make great starters or even finishers to staff awayday, they are very powerful and simple but the message is very clear as is the medium that they are in. Some of these videos have been seen by over 10 million people which would make them a very successful film on general release in the UK.
I will add more into future blogs as I find them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=channel

 

(These are my own opinions not those of AMOSSHE or any other organisation)

Thank you X Factor

I never thought that I would ever have any reason to be grateful to X Factor and will openly admit that I cannot watch it but it has had in my opinion, one positive impact on the  ways we use texting and mobile technologies - the 'short code'.
I have long been an advocate of the role of the text in improving the student experience and over the last few years have worked a lot on using 'short codes' and 'key' words as ways of adding value to a simple 160 character text.
A student can send a key word such as 'late' or 'debt' to a short code only 5 numbers long and get an instant response. Some institutions are sending these messages directly through to the PC of an advisor or administrator who will then contact that student to give them the information that they want or to change an appointment that they may have missed or be running late for.
I have used it to send out an automated reply which has within it a shorted URL to an mobile friendly web page that has all the key information that a student who is in 'debt' or have arrived at University 'late' would need.
Have a go yourself. 
Send a text saying 'late' to 88020.
Let me know how you get on.
The system is as flexible as you want it to be. Just think of a key word that makes sense to students and sums up the issue(s) that they feel they have, then create a web page or Facebook page and load it with all the information that you know that students with these types of issues have.  It can be as simple as straight text or as information rich with videos, photos, text and links as you want it to be.  Don't forget though to make sure that the web page is mobile friendly and to test out any links you put in to see if they work on a 'standard' mobile phone as well as a smartphone.

It gets even better, the system will automatically capture the number of the mobile texting in and remember these are students who are self declaring that they have a particular issue, so if you know that these students will tend to have other associated issues; eg late arrivals and lack of funding, then you can pro actively contact them at an appropriate time and offer them additional help or advice.

Simples

Oh, yes back to X Factor. It taught a whole generation to use their mobiles to text into short codes and to use a mobile device as an expression of opinion and as participating in a wider community. We dismiss all these new forms of behaviour at our peril. Rather learn from X Factor, go with the flow and improve the Student Experience at the same time.

(These views are my own and don't represent those of AMOSSHE or any other organisation)

Why it is ok to love Facebook

If there is one piece of web2.0 that we use in both our personal and Student Services professional lives it is Facebook. Although as I found out at a conference recently there are still some institutions that don't permit the use of Facebook. It cannot be a bandwidth thing as it sometimes is with Skype and Second Life, perhaps its still the fear that Students will say rude things about their University. Well just google your institution or search for it on YouTube and you will discover that it not something that we are likely to stop.
If you want to see the benefits of Facebook and to gain an insight into how our students use it then try setting up a Facebook group for students planning to come to you this coming February or September. What you will see is that students may be time poor but they are network rich.  They will look out for others studying the same subject or housed in the same Hall. They will share common moans about lack of information but also share things that work. But don't expect this group to last too long. Facebook groups tend to die once the intial common reason for joining them has gone.
A few tips. Don't just create the page and hope. You have to send your future students the link to the page. However don't just put it into print. Send it as a clickable link either from your website ( but not buried too deep) or in any email sent to confirm a place or even an open day invitation or all of them. Monitor what is being said, less from fear of abuse but rather to spot things that are working or not. Don't get too depressed if it is the later - remember go to Uni is something the vast majority of these students have never done before and it is easier to blame ' the university' than it is to admit that they don't know what to do. Please avoid the grave danger of 'IT Dad dancing' and pretent that you are a student to try to correct something they have said. If you are going onto the Facebook group then do so as the Institution.

What the film 'Social Network' does not show is how Facebook has grown in just a few short years to having over 500 million users.One major factor has been its openess to links with other web 2.0 social networks. This has now developed to such a state that a Facebook 'page' where you don't have to join Facebook to access, is now effectively your own free website.

You can upload via text and email as well as online; video, photos, links to other sites . It links with Twitter and can be used as a chat room and a blog...what more could you want for free and it is not a pressure on your institutions IT servers!

Here is presentation I gave on texting and Facebook and how a Facebook page is the new website.

http://www.slideshare.net/Hipkin21/talking-txt-2010


(These views are my own and don't represent those of AMOSSHE or any other organisation)

All of a Twitter

I am not sure about Twitter. I was an 'early adopter' many years ago but an 'early adopter' in the same way as you join a Gym just after Christmas - it seemed like a good idea at the time and like that standing order for the gym membership my twitter account just sat there, completely forgotten until just recently.
Twitter was very much under the radar until it was taken up by the media who found it useful as a reporting tool and live news feed into 24 hour rolling news programmes and websites. Today such is its presence that it has become a news form all by itself.
It is undoubtedly an increasingly powerful tool now that it has features such as automatic shortening of urls and speedy ways of retweeting. It sits alongside Facebook and YouTube on nearly all smartphones and will form part of Facebook's new message system together on the same feed as email and text. Yet its place in HE in general and Student Services in particular is illusive. That is until now.
Out of curiosity I started following the twitter feed for the national student protests of Wednesday 24 th November 2010. The volume of tweets was staggering even if some were retweets and if that was not revealing enough it was the use that people we making of the tweets that so impressed. There were links to google maps to show where student occupations where taking place, tweets from students 'kettled' by the police, tweets from the parents of students 'kettled' by the police. People exchanging stories real, imagined or just wished for, about police actions, legal advice on your rights together with phone numbers, the latest news from occupations. Those from Russell Group were in upper and lower case, perfect spelling and even ironic.
And finally with new tweets reaching over 100 in 3 mins and to show that Twitter was here to stay- a tweet from the Met Police in London saying that they were slowly releasing students - but was it really them?

(These are my own views and don't represent AMOSSHE or any other organisation)

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.)