Swift Kick Central

Increased Engagement Through Bizarre College Clubs

Yesterday, USA Today reported on how student participation in co-curricular (outside the classroom) activities leads to higher GPAs and a more satisfied social life. 

"College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom."

The article's focus wasn't about participation in standard clubs such as German and Chess, but rather in more obscure clubs such as Michigan's Squirrel Club or Harvard's College Cube Club. In other words, the long tail of student interests.

But ask any student activities department how they would feel about a 50% increase in registered campus clubs and you'd experience a face of joyous panic.

Supporting the long tail means the position of student activities also has to shift from gate keeper to facilitator. Instead of registering, formalizing, and monitoring every organization, support a platform that allows students to self-organize around an infinite number of interests and act as the facilitator to introduce like minded students together. 

"Seth have you met Randy, you both like White Water Canoeing" 

Allowing bizarre peer-to-peer learning communities to form through the long tail will not only increase engagement, but also will lead to longer lasting friendships because the commonality of "we're the only ones who love XYZ" is already established. As John Gardner, president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education said in the USA Today article:

"Friendship formation is task No. 1 for most students. If you don't make friends, you're lonely, you're anxious, you feel sort of adrift."

New tools are supporting schools as they shift towards a more decentralized peer-to-peer engagement model.

Through the schools using our Red Rover campus directory tool, we can actually visualize, and for the first time quantify, what the long tail of engagement looks like. 

Affinity Housing: The Importance of Roommate Matching

College of Coastal Georgia recently transitioned to a four-year residential institution. Among the many changes, the campus will soon include residence halls and a director of residence life. Dave Leenhouts, director of CCGA's student life, heads the committee to hire their director of residence life.

In a conversation with Dave over the weekend, he talked about how the big buzz word on the committee is affinity housing. In other words, pre-matching roommates ahead of time based on similar traits to ensure higher retention rates.

The impact of first year roommates on an individual is huge and can have lasting life time effects from grades, to weight, to drinking habits. The NY Times recently posted an article on the science of roommates.

First-year roommates matter. Though they may go their separate ways sophomore year, their reach can ripple throughout the college years and after.

The researchers aren't entirely clear on why one student has such an impact over another in their first year, but it sounds like a hybrid of the proximity effect of the Framingham Heart Study and the emotional gap felt by first year students.

CCGA is currently using Red Rover as their campus directory to socially connect first year students to similar students and campus clubs. Dave wants to go further and use the directory to roommate students based on similar interests, activities, and background.

An affinity housing dashboard is already within the scope of Red Rover. And because so much of Red Rover is data driven it will be interesting to study the results of matching roommates who are 100% identical verses those who are intellectually, socially, spiritually, etc opposites as a way to promote diversity.

Guiding Principles - Part 2

The following is the second part of our assumptions pulled from our "Guiding Principles" Wikipage.

Here is Part 1

---

Assumptions Part 2:

These are broad based and not as set as principles. It's useful to list assumptions, just to be clear on the thought behind the system. Some of these are more controversial than others. Some were controversial when we started and are not anymore. Some we believe whole heartedly. With others we just needed to pick a side.

On Interface / Web 2.0

1. Tags are the way to organize things when the things change all the time. (They are flexible, adaptable, surprising, and folksonomy is fun to say.)
2. "Works well" is pretty.
3. "Good design is clear thinking made visible." -Tufte
4. Bottom -> up organization releases some of the incredible power stored at the edges. This is great for students. It's also good for shrinking school budgets.
5. Top-> down organization is old school. Loosen up. If your school is erring on the "we tried it" side, that's a good sign. Buy insurance and leash your lawyers.

On Education

1. Digital portfolios will become the new grades. Short hand points systems will develop (probably relying on a fair amount of peer feedback, see above, think eBay) where the professor is just one of many inputs.
2. These systems will be transparent and real time, giving learning a video game interface. (Think character development in a role playing game.)
3. Aggregated digital portfolios with tags on time lines will result in automated, personalized recommendations. Sophomores like you liked these classes. Click here to sign up. Click here to see the collaborative notes from years past. Click here to see a list of available mentors who match your life vector.
4. Aggregated digital portfolios will exist outside of the control of the school systems.
5. Students will use free software to see what school is currently the best match for their interests. (Think shopping for books on Amazon.) The enrollment process will dramatically change because of this automated matching.
6. Every student is at a different place. Each +1 has a different x starting place, different maturity, and different vector of relevance. Personalized customization will be the norm and expectation all the time.
7. Engagement is paramount. Relevancy (when defined by right info, right schema, right time, right packaging/ delivery) is 40% of engagement. The other 60% is emotional attachment to community.

On Orientation

1. Everyone wants an introduction. Preferably to people who are like them. Especially when entering anything new where we don't know anyone yet.
2. Common interests are a great place to start relationships. Embracing diversity comes later. It is bad to force too much diversity too fast or let people stay in their comfort zone. This balance will be different for each student.
3. The process outlined above will be visualized with the social graph. It too, will look like a video game.
4. Relationships get better in the real world. Online is a good place to introduce and warm things up.
5. Orientations should not be only online.
6. Orientation should use online components to make the real world aspect better.

Stay tuned for Part 3.

Students Helping Students

Kansas State University's "Students Helping Students" campaign has the potential to be a national theme for peer-to-peer learning. For those who've had us on campus working with your student leaders, you should recognize the Blender Events and Flash Mobs throughout the video. Enjoy!

What If We DO Succeed in Increasing Student Engagement?

Over the weekend, I was talking with a group of students and advisors from Kutztown University about student engagement. In Swift Kick, we use dance floors to describe how student leaders are the ones in the center of the dance (fully engaged), and the rest of the student body (60-84% according to NSSE) are against the wall, not participating. It looks like this:

  

If the above image represents an oil reserve, the outside area represents the largest pool of potential energy at an institution.

Lots of tools are great at helping student affairs departments better extract 2% more energy from the, already involved, student leaders by automating paperwork etc, but what about the rest of the oil reserve?

The goal should be to unleash more of the potential energy, or in other words, get more students engaged, but what happens if we actually DO succeed? Image tomorrow, 20% more of your campus shows up at your office and wants to get involved...

When I told this to the Kutztown people, there was a look of joyous panic on their faces. Joyous because they succeeded at solving student apathy, panic because they knew they couldn't support a 20% increase in engagement with their current resources. Think about it....

• 20% more office space requests for their group
• 20% more room reservations for events 
• 20% more marketing material needing approved
• 20% more paperwork to fill out
• 20% more groups to monitor
• 20% more people needing an advisor to listen to their love spats
  

With school budgets already hurting, and student affairs budgets pulled as far as they can go, it's NOT possible to support much more engagement on campus with our current model.

If the vision is to see 90%,70% or even 50% of an institution engaged, the ONLY way to do this is to decentralize engagement by building systems that automatically facilitate peer-to-peer connections. It's about rethinking the role of student affairs from the gate keepers of engagement to the facilitators of peer-to-peer introductions.

7 Steps to Awesome: The Tech of a Leadership Conference

I promised the good student affairs folk of the Penn State system that I would write up a draft outline of a tech plan for a state wide student leadership event. I delayed a bit, so that we could finish up this new sachat platform - I think it's an important example of the goal.

This will be a picture of what is possible, and the benefits, complete with notes. While I will aim at "reasonable and doable," the degree of difficulty will vary by campus. This certainly isn't THE way to do this, it is a draft plan to pick apart and play with.

This plan isn't about just getting something up or what can be done in an hour, this plan is about creating a cost effective community that will help your leaders be successful.

Goals:

1) Build a statewide community of student leaders. Use the in person experience as a catalyst for building an always-available community online.

Notes: Many leadership conferences focus on skills. "Sit in a Educational Session and learn what you need to know, then go do it." While skills matter, engagement is more important. Community leads to engagement, conversation, and retention.

Student leaders often face frustration on their own campus. Most of their peer students just don't care as much. Giving them easy access to peer student leaders, who do care as much, will help them maintain their own motivation while building their skills.

2) Teach and encourage student leaders to share their model of high education involvement and education via social media and the internet.

Notes: Sharing models of engagement is good for the school (great content for the web, first year experience, etc.) and for the student - they have a positive digital identity that will help them find a job.

The Plan and Steps:

1) Use a public collaboration space to plan the events of the conference. I recommend wikispaces.com Start with the free version.

Here's a great template from an education technology conference happening next weekend.

Notes:

- The point of using a wiki without a password vs. google docs is that you are modeling for the students how to plan in the open. If they begin to plan their events on campus in the open, they will, in turn, be modeling the various stages of involvement for other students around campus. This is a very good thing.

- Wikis are not magic work solvers. While they do open up the possibility of community members contributing some effort, don't count on it. It will likely be the same 3 people that always to 90% of the work, plus one surprise over achiever that will come out of no where and be very helpful.

- Wikis will make it easier for the planning group, and early interested students, to get on the same page. Compare it to sending lots of emails, where the information is in small pieces spread everywhere. Wikis bring it together.

- Click on the "Notify Me" tab on the top of the page to get change notices to your email. This makes it easy to stay up on things.

2) Set up a Facebook Group (not a fan page), put a link to it on the wiki.

Notes:

- I feel conflicted about this step. Facebook Groups don't last, as a general rule. Even with student groups, most get set up and forgotten. The goal here is to establish a longer term platform. If Facebook groups typically die, does that mean any lines of connection or artifacts (pictures) burried within the Facebook groups are taking away from energy that could have gone into something else? I'm not sure. It's close, but I think not. I think it's worth trying both and seeing where the energy goes. It might just be both. Facebook has changed the design now, to be more stream oriented, and the message boards now allow threaded messages and replies in emails. All of this adds up to: maybe Facebook groups are worth another shot.

- At the very least, it's worth including in the organization process to give students a place to post their pictures. Pictures are one of the most important artifacts of community. Profile pictures, pictures of fun, pictures of people - it's one of the best online reinforcement of feelings that we have.

3) Set up a twitter account specifically for penn state leaders. Something like twitter.com/pennslead

4) Spend 30 minutes learning Mailchimp by watching their howto videos.

Notes:

- Reach out to the attendees as soon as you have a list. Make it a goal of having a preliminary list as quickly as possible. The first email should be very short "We're excited for the conference! Sign up for the facebook group here or follow us on twitter."

- If you just want to use Mailchimp for the run up to the conference, it will be free. If you fall in love and want to use all the features over a longer period (to send lots of emails), it's $30 a month. The tracking alone is worth it.

- Mailchimp will allow you to see who opens the email, and who clicks on the email. Send a follow up email with a different subject line within two days to everyone that didn't open the first email (Mailchimp makes this easy.)

- Mailchimp will be one of three communication methods you will use. You will also use Facebook and Twitter (depending on how many students follow- I would expect 10% or so.) Twitter will get you to the cellphones if the student wants it, now you have Email, Facebook, and Text Messaging covered. This makes you awesome.

5) Now look at the students that have joined the Facebook group and how many have followed on twitter. These are your leaders among leaders. They are your biggest enthusiasts. Send them a personal email asking them to get involved in planning the conference. Send them to the wiki with a specific task and see who follows through.

Notes:

- Again, two things are happening here simultaneously - you are getting the work done, but you are also teaching. Think of this process as an ed session in and of itself. If this sounds like a lot of time - and it's a couple of hours - ask yourself how much time you would spend prepping and delivering an ed session for the purposes of educating the students. Why not teach them online? And doing the work with be teaching yourself as well.

6) With the help of the students, fingers crossed you'll find some techies, build a collaborative place online to put content up from the conference when it is happening. The goal is to generate a lot of content at the conference and then keep it going afterwards. Whatever method you decide on below, you will use the mailchimp interface to notify students about it before the conference and after the conference.

There are two main options for pulling on the content together in one public place:

A) A posterous blog, where lots of people can email pictures and words. This creates one central public blog. Students with smart phones can email pictures directly from their seats to this blog.

Notes:

- This is the easiest and fastest platform to set up. It has it's own comment system which works well.

- Every student that emails in content will get posted on the common group blog as well as creating their own personal blog. Apologies if this makes your head hurt, it's an important point.

- Everything the student emails to

B) An aggregated Wordpress blog like the new student affairs collaborative platform.

Notes:

- This requires the selection of a common word that students would attach to their blogs, pictures, or tweets. Use something short and easy to remember. Best if it is the same as the twitter account. Like #pennslead

- We went to this system because we wanted to aggregate twitter and blogs in the same place using one common tag. We wanted student affairs professionals to have their own blogs where they wrote about what ever they wanted. When they wanted to add their content to the collaborative space, they simply add "#sachat" to the blog or tweet and it shows up on the central blog.

- This system is more flexible and allows participants to use whatever they are already using (instead of asking everyone to use posterous.) More flexibility for users requires a little more investment in the platform. You would hire someone to build this using Word Press. It's not a huge expense, but expect about $1000 up front and $200 a year to keep it going.

- This system would work with whatever blogs your students were using. So you could encourage them to set up their own blog on penn state's system, and then pull together only the content with the tag #pennslead.

- Notice that this system works. We'll be posting more on this in the future, but the student affairs blog is a great and growing community. It's a perfect example of exactly what we would want to see for the student leaders of any state.

7) If you use Wordpress, take the RSS feed and add put it into mail chimp as a RSS -> Email Campaign. You can set this to go out every Wednesday morning if their is new content on the central blog. (posterous has it's own email notification settings that students will control on their own.)

Notes:

- To build the community, you'll need both content and notification of the content, until it is a habit. This will take a while.

- Follow up with those students you found in step 5. Ask them to create content. Tell them they are special (because they are) and you need their help in creating this place for them to connect and learn online.

- As staff members, you can keep putting content into the blog and sending it out. The goal of course, is to transition from staff to students over time. Keep pushing them, it will happen.

- You will have lots of assessment to show anyone. Mailchimp will give you open rates and click through. You'll know traffic to the blog, new content, and comments. Share these stats with the group to keep them motivated.

Fire away with comments and questions.

Private Communities and Engagement - The 90-9-1 Rule

Online community ninja, Jakob Nielsen, is one of the original brains behind the 90-9-1 rule. Stated simply, the rule goes...

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Wikipedia is a classic example. 99% of Wikipedia users never contribute to the site. Of the 32 million Wikipedia unique visitors in the US, 68,000 are active contributors. In other words, only .02% of US Wikipedia users actually contribute to the site. Wikipedia isn't alone in experiencing such inequality. The rule applies to almost any online community.

Engagement matters, and almost every online community would give a few fingers for more user participation. Lurkers make up a site's largest set of eyeballs. Without lurkers, 90% of the possibility of new engagement is eliminated. Private platforms are often used in higher ed as a way to maintain control (both legally and mentally). By hiding content and contribution behind password protected areas, a community is eliminating 90% of it's possibility of new engagement.

The Student Affairs Collaborative has been our experiment in an open, peer-to-peer, learning community. The SA Blog, The SA Forum, and The #SACHAT are all open systems that allow, and welcome with open arms, lurkers. Lurkers are learning, and often times come back to contribute.

Nelsen says that we can't overcome participate inequality, we can only move the shape of the curve.

We're experimenting with even more ways to create open communities in higher ed, because we believe open communities lead to increased engagement. Not to mention they are cheaper to build and maintain and are great for SEO.

Allow more lurkers in. Make participation easier for lurkers. Reward contributions. Publicly promote your 1%.

Webinar - Leveraging Social Media for Student Engagement

This Wednesday, Dec 16th, from 3:00-4:15pm EST, we're partnering with The Student Affairs Blog to host our third webinar in an ongoing effort to provide value to the community on relevant topics.

WEBINAR OVERVIEW

Title: Leveraging Social Media for Student Engagement

Date: Wednesday, Dec 16th 2009

Time: 3-4:15pm EST

Abstract: Most research concludes that at least 90% of college students have an active online social networking account. That means, to fully engage this generation, Student Affairs needs to understand and utilize the new world of MyTwubeBook. This webinar will cover the most popular online tools and provide you with enough knowledge to effectively implement a strategy to increase student engagement at your institution.

For more information, or to sign up, visit > http://sa-webinar.eventbrite.com

As a reader of the Swift Kick blog, sign up by tomorrow (Dec 15th) at 2pm EST and receive a 25% discount off the price with code "Early-25"

Making Them WANT To Do It (Apathy vs Engagement)

If you have ever attended a conference with us, you know we enjoy mixing stuff up through the use of Flashmobs and Blender Events, both of which stem from our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training. The goals are to:

1. Have Fun
2. Increase Engagement
3. Build Relationships
4. Create Pattern Interrupts
5. Induce Positive Confusion (one reason why)
   

While some activities are repeated from conference to conference, others come from brainstorming sessions with the participants.

At a recent conference in New York, the associates (a.k.a. people/companies who pay money to attend with the intent of selling their product) were complaining to the conference organizer about the lack of conference attendees participating in the exhibit halls and showcases. As the grumbles of agreement erupted from the crowd, the conference organizer turned towards us and asked if we could send out a Flashmob txt about exhibit hall times and showcase times. Our reply? "No, that's not how it works."

It's not about making them HAVE to do it, it's about making them WANT to do it.

If we were to do what the conference organizer suggested, the Flashmob txt would have been something like this:

TXT A: @ 2:30pm the exhibit hall opens up, make sure you're there!

Instead our txt message was this:

TXT B: In the exhibit hall @ exactly 2:35pm howl to the moon for 10 secs like a pack of wolves. Then stop and walk on like nothing happened.

In TXT B we're making them WANT to do it, like they are missing out if they don't attend. TXT B achieves all five goals from above and, for the purposes of the conference, it also gets more attendees to participate in the exhibit hall.

TXT B also removes the marketing from the activity, which is a common mistake when attempting community engagement. If you're marketing, you're marketing, not relationship building.

The difference between them HAVING to do it and them WANTING to do it is the difference between apathy and engagement.

'Fun' can be the change behavior. If you're still not convinced, check out these ideas from The Fun Theory:

To implement change on your campus, start by creating an "I Wish List..."

• I wish more students would recycle
• I wish more students would walk to campus vs drive
• I wish more students would attend events
• I wish more students would smile
• I wish more students would wash their hands
• I wish more students would...

Next create a list of current solutions for each item:

• Post signs above recycle bins
• Don't do anything
• Flyers, posters, emails
• Don't do anything
• Post signs in every bathroom

Lastly, circle up with 2-4 other people and generate a brainstorming list of creative engaging ways to solve each problem that they will WANT to do. Then try it out and if you really want, you can collect quantitative data to determine effectiveness (e.g. Did more people wash their hands?).

It will take more time to implement some of these ideas, but, to repeat from above, it's the difference between apathy and engagement.

p.s. If your idea is really good, try submitting it to the Fun Theory Award for a chance to win $3,600.

The Value of Leveraging Network Nodes In The College Community

Last spring, I was traveling on a public bus from Laguardia Airport in New York to my hotel on the north side of Manhattan. When I got on the bus at the airport, the bus driver was in a heated argument with someone complaining about being charged twice for the ride. The bus driver was clearly not amused and went from zero to outrage in ten seconds. Trying not to be his next target, I smiled, paid and sat down in the first open seat.

For the next 30 minutes, I watched the driver mumble under his breath and shake his head in a perpetual state of anger. Each new passenger who entered the bus needed to only glaze quickly into the driver's eyes to see he was not happy.

The bus made its way into Harlam at about the same time the local high schools were getting out. I was worried about mixing an angry driver with agitating teens. At the first stop in Harlam, two teens jumped on the bus with big smiles and extended a ribbon-tied rolled-up piece of paper toward the driver.

Congratulations! For all the hard work you do on Bus Route M60, you've been awarded the Platinum Honorary Certificate of Greatness!

The driver didn't grab the paper, so the teens placed it on the dashboard and then jumped back to the sidewalk and darted down the street. Visibly annoyed, the driver closed the door and drove on.

A few streets later, we stopped at a red light. The driver used the pause as an opportunity to reach, untie and open the rolled certificate. Impressively, the certificate used fancy Letterpress printing, color images and even had a foil circle stamp at the bottom. I couldn't make out all the text, but at the top it read,

The Platinum Certificate of Greatness is Awarded to Members of Society Who Demonstrate a Commitment to Making Our Lives Better.

I watched as the driver laughed under his breath and then cracked a smile. It was like a magic spell was released when he opened the certificate because, from that moment forward, his attitude totally changed.

A taxi behind us laid on his horn because the light had switched to green several seconds prior. The bus driver calmly said, "ok, ok. I'm moving."

Amazing! Ten minutes ago he probably would have gotten off the bus to physically engage the taxi driver. When new people entered the bus, he welcomed them with a smile, which inspired the new bus riders to grin back.

I sat there in awe as the entire culture of the bus changed. People started smiling,laughing, and talking.

It's amazing how such a simple act targeted at exactly the right person can have such a large impact on the entire community.

The bus driver was a network node for the community. A node in that he connected with hundreds of people on his route throughout the day. His positive or negative attitude was contagious to the people he came in contact with and it set the tone for the culture of the bus.

Teachers and staff members are network nodes for college campus communities. They come in contact with hundreds of students throughout the day. If the teacher or staff member is in a bad mood, that feeling can be contagious to the students he/she comes in contact with.

As we talk about engaging and growing the college community, let's not forget about the teachers and staff members as the network nodes. What can we do to engage them more? Very few student activities' departments we work with have a formal plan on how to engage teachers and staff members. Teachers and staff members are very much a part of the campus culture and shouldn't be ignored.

The other interesting idea that stemmed from this situation is why would the teens bother to take the time to create such a fancy certificate, wait for the bus to arrive, present it to the bus driver and then run away and not see the end result of their effort? Some might answer that they did it for laughs or for fun or as a dare or class project. All of which might be true, but there is something bigger at play here; the teenagers' tiny action had a huge impact on the community's reciprocal social capital.

As author Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone defines it:

I'll do this for you now, without expecting anything immediately in return, and perhaps without even knowing you, confident that down the road you or someone else will return the favor to either me or someone else in the community. A well connected person in a poorly connected society isn't as productive as a well connected person in a well connected society.

More on the concept of reciprocal social capital and why and how you can create it in your community in my next post. Now get back to work!