New Student Orientation: Dependence vs Independence
Luggage Porter by ColbyBluth The day before Hurricane Irene made landfall along the Eastern Seaboard, a friend asked my wife and I to help volunteer setting up an evacuation center in NYC. While helping out, I was trying to be as nice as possible to the people coming in seeking shelter. I’d stop my work […]
Starting Alumni Engagement Before Orientation
I created this deck to frame the conversation as to how Red Rover can support alumni departments with their goals. It’s cross posted over at the Swift Kick/Red Rover blog. The slide show can also be viewed and downloaded here.
The First Year Experience Curriculum
Although the vast majority of first-year students are using Facebook and Myspace, and spending a great deal of time on the web, many still aren’t familiar with the web tools that are most conducive to enhancing their education. Helping students develop positive digital identities sets them up for success in an increasingly digital age – after […]
Starting Alumni Engagement Before Orientation
The deck below was created to frame the conversation around how Red Rover can support alumni departments with their goals. The slide show can also be viewed, downloaded, and embedded here.
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. […]
Your New Best Friend, Social Networking in the First Year Experience (Part 4)
Comfort is curing the loneliness that inevitably comes with moving to a new peer network. Some evidence suggests that the brain may even process social exclusion using the same circuitry as physical pain. Loneliness hurts.
Your New Best Friend, Social Networking in the First Year Experience (Part 3)
A values debate that might lead to learning, about what is useful or appropriate, gets confused with simple fight about control of technology. High schools ban cell phones. Higher education fumes about behaviors it sees as unwarranted risk, unjustified by student benefits that are often dismissed as “not real”. Overvaluing control, prevents the institution from recognizing other possible institutional values, like connection and mentoring, in the new technology.
Your New Best Friend, Social Networking in the First Year Experience (Part 2)
The following is the second draft slice (here’s part one) of an upcoming curriculum supplement I am writing for Bedford / St. Martin’s press. Long time readers of this blog will recognize these ideas. Swift Kick, and Red Rover, have been focused on social capital and engagement for some time. As the overall curriculum comes […]
Your New Best Friend, Social Networking in the First Year Experience (Part 1)
All technology must be connected to the goals. We have good theoretical models for the first year experience. Let’s use them to frame and analyze technology initiatives.
At Student Orientation, Don’t Forget About Bridging Social Capital
The Bystander Effect is a well-known psychological study conducted by Bibb Latane and John Darley that grew out of the stabbing death of Kitty Genovese in 1964 while eyewitnesses looked on but did nothing to help. According to Wikipedia: …individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. […]