Before getting into the complexities of a college campus, it is best to step back and look at the big picture. People, in general, need a community to call their own, to live as a healthy individual. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs values this necessity to be in a community as number 3 of the 5 categories.  This proves even further that this necessity is even more crucial during one of the greatest growing phases in a person’s life, their time in college.

Maslow's Hiearchy of Needs

College students grow up with multiple cohesive communities such as their families, close group of friends, church, and other extra-curricular groups. They are nestled in these groups for so long, and most are unprepared for the dramatic shift from high school life to college life where they are forced to go out and find new communities. This is where the institution and the student affairs department come into play. Their role is to provide a gateway to the new opportunities for on campus involvement, so the student can choose from a variety of inviting communities.

The unfortunate part of the college transition is that most students fill their insecurities with even more seclusion. This can affect student academic performance. A study by the American College Health Association revealed several factors that affect performance including: stress, alcohol abuse, and depression/anxiety (American College Health Association, 2002).  Students can battle this by forming bonds and reaching out to other students which can be best developed on a “healthy” campus.

How can institutions make their campus “healthy?”
According to an article by Teanca Shepherd, assistant coordinator of Student Activities at The University of Memphis, four essential components must exist to maintain healthy campuses which are:
1.    Vibrant Student Organizations
2.    Co-Curricular Resources
3.    A Wide Variety of Academics
4.    Surrounding Community Involvement

What are the overall benefits of healthy campuses for both students and the institution?
Teanca Shepherd lists the following benefits:
•    An increase in student enrollment
•    Increases in funding for programs and organizations
•    Better recruitment of faculty
•    Increases in funding for programs and organizations
•    Better recruitment of faculty and staff
•    Students providing innovative ideas for better policy development
•    An increase in diversity
•    An increase in alumni support and involvement
•    Growth of the surrounding community as a whole

When a healthy campus has been achieved, the institution can combat those security walls that students put up and invite them to find the organization to foster development, experiences, and new friendships. In the end, these experiences are what truly set a part a successful college graduate from another graduate who missed out on them.

Ann White

Today’s guest blogger, Ann White, works as the Web Content Coordinator at Oklahoma Christian University. She manages the content, navigation, and editing of the university’s public website, but in the past year her role has expanded to also manage the university’s social media presence.

I have been a follower of Ann and OCU on twitter for awhile, and I think she does a fabulous job of interacting with their community online.

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Institutional tweeting- now there’s a phrase the old school marketers never saw coming.  But now it’s a reality.

The beauty of this moment is that although you may be unsure in how to go about it, the fact is we all are. This is uncharted territory and we are all learning new lessons day by day.

Although there really is no one who can tell you exactly what to do, there are some fundamental guidelines that I believe will give you the framework to make your own way.

Here are my basic principles, a bit more fleshed out below:

• Have fun
• But don’t be annoying
• Interact
• Use it or lose it
• Make it up as you go along
• Be true to your school

Have fun

I work at a university I love, and because I am here 40+ hours a week, I see many of the stories and events that make this place great. Twitter gives me an outlet to share those little tidbits with others, so they can see the school through my eyes.

For example, whether it’s a video from an alumna of adorable Zambian babies wearing university apparel or a bizarre bathroom fixture that won a toilet contest, I can quickly and easily show people the little pictures that shape my point of view.

If you’re enthusiastic and sincere, it will come across and spread quickly.

Don’t be annoying

Ah yes, the annoying tweeters. Don’t be that guy (or gal).

Unless you explicitly state that you are a news source, don’t run an RSS feed through your Twitter account.

Don’t send mass or auto-direct messages.

Don’t spam tweets- multiple tweets in a row.

Don’t belabor calls to action.

Don’t re-tweet yourself word for word, multiple times in a day.

Don’t ignore basic customer service moments including replies and inquiries.

Twitter makes it very easy to dump you, and people can be fickle enough without you giving them a reason to bail.

Interact

I get a lot of great content from following those who follow the school. As a general principle, I re-follow the following categories.

1.      Real people (Sounds silly, but it’s obvious when they’re not)

2.      Other academic institutions (Great for seeing what other schools are doing)

3.      Local businesses (Good to build ties and relationships with them)

It’s always fun to re-tweet those who write about us, because it is a credible testimony to your school’s value and also is flattering to the person you re-tweet. It shows them that their opinion is important to you, and you build a positive bond.

Use it or lose it

I think this is a key difference in institutional tweeting and personal tweeting.

If you are putting time and energy (university resources) into creating quality tweets, you have to use them somewhere besides Twitter, or they will be by and large lost within an hour because of the volume of tweets.

Thankfully Twitter gives you the RSS feed, so you can run your feed through another website. Whereas a tweet may only last a short while with limited views in a follower’s tweet stream, it could last for days if run through another location.

Make it up as you go along

When I started tweeting for our university, I looked to other schools for ideas. However, there weren’t many doing it in a way that I felt would be authentically transferable to our university, so I had to improvise.

Granted, I started off rocky with infrequent tweets, boring content, little interaction. But once I decided to just dive in and try new things, the response has been great.

One example of this is OC Oldies. I have a lot of great, vintage photos from our university at my disposal, so I have started Twitpic-ing them with the hashtag #OColdies. People seem to get a kick out of it.

Don’t be afraid to try new things! Everything is a new thing right now. Embrace the freedom of it!

Be true to your school

This is the key point where Twitter is not just a hobby but becomes another outlet for your brand’s platform.

Your school has a personality, and Twitter is a place to let it shine.

Are you a large research institution? Then share stories of innovation and accomplishment.

Are you a business school? Then highlight your moguls who are rocking their industries and taking over the world.

Our school is a close knit community equipping people to serve the world in creative and powerful ways, and social media has given me a great platform to breathe live into our mission.

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Hopefully this will inspire you to take some chances and go try something new. Help us all figure out what works and what doesn’t, and share what you learn!

Kate Klingensmith

Today’s guest blogger, Kate Klingensmith, is Director of Research for Inigral, a San Francisco-based education startup company.  With a degree in Cognitive Science and four years experience with teaching high school biology and physics, Kate has a strong interest in college matriculation, technology integration in the classroom, and student engagement.  Her blog, Once a Teacher, is a record of her quest to research and collaborate with others to find ways of incorporating web 2.0 tools into both education and administration.

What is a PLN?

If I had to define what a ‘Personal Learning Network’ is, I would keep it simple and broad:

n. – the entire collection of people with whom you engage and exchange information, usually online.

Personal Learning Networks, or PLNs, have been around forever. Originally, they were your family and friends, maybe people you worked with, but as the internet and web 2.0 tools have become nearly ubiquitous, PLNs can include tons of different communities – social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking tools, LinkedIn, and so many more. Basically, anyone that you interact with is apart of your PLN, whether they are social contacts, professional peers, or experts in their field. Most of the ‘learning’ takes place on-line now, because it is simple to find and connect with others with similar interests from around the world.

PLNs have immense value!

So, why bother thinking about your PLN? Whether you’re a full-time mom, a full-time administrator, or a full-time student, your PLN can be extremely interesting and helpful. The beauty of people communicating online is the ease of finding and sharing information and – if you ask for it – the group feedback that you get on ideas and projects.

Here are some ways that people are using their PLNs:
- Professional development – learn from experts in your field
- Locate free resources, such as websites and software
- Get event and marketing ideas
- Learn about new technology and how to integrate it into your role
- Find collaborative solutions
- Find interesting links to higher ed news

When you have a large group of people combing through vast amounts of information and collectively identifying the most useful, entertaining, or valuable parts, it makes a lot of sense to tap into this collective knowledge!

Build Your Own PLN

If you’re interested in expanding your PLN, here’s a directory of some of the best web 2.0 tools:

What to Expect – Stages of PLN Adoption

There are certain stages that most people seem to go through when building their PLN before settling into a comfortable niche. It may take a little time, but you’ll eventually find that a rich PLN can elevate both your personal and professional life to new heights.

If you’d like to connect with me, click here.

OrgSync would like to announce our Implementation Webinar Series in June. We will focus on two campuses, one large and one small, who have already established the implementation process on their campus. They will share their best practices, successes, challenges, and suggestions for making the transition to OrgSync.

Our large campus implementation model will be on Thursday, June 11 at 1:00 EST and will feature Deborah Felder of the Student Organization Resource Center at North Carolina State University. NCSU began working with OrgSync last summer and developed a marketing plan to increase awareness of OrgSync to their 500+ student organizations and 31,000 students. Deborah has been an instrumental partner in helping define best practices for implementation and providing helpful feedback and suggestions for our new developments. Sign up for the large campus webinar.

We will feature our small campus implementation webinar on Wednesday, June 24 at 1:00 EST. Our feature presenter will be Rebecca Delo, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Life and Leadership Development at Muskingum College. Muskingum also joined the OrgSync family last summer, and Rebecca was very proactive in establishing the student organization registration process through OrgSync, as well as successfully attaining a high level of student adoption on her campus across their 100 organizations and 1500 students. Sign up for the small campus webinar.

We hope that our new clients and anyone who could benefit from these free webinars will attend! Please contact us with any questions.

During the month of February, OrgSync started working with many new campuses from coast to coast.  We are extremely excited to welcome the University of Alabama – Birmingham, Arizona State University, Florida International University, Pace University @ Pleasantville-Briarcliff, University of the Incarnate Word, Adelphi University, Denison University, California State University @ Dominguez Hills, The City College of New York, Saint John’s University, and the University of Colorado @ Denver.  Together these schools account for approximately 150,000 students in over 1,900 organizations.

At Arizona State University, OrgSync will become the primary management tool for over 700 student organizations. “As one of the largest universities in the country, we have an extensive network of clubs and organizations that will benefit greatly from the organizational tools OrgSync offers” states ASU Assistant Director for Student Development, Jennifer Stultz; “OrgSync will not only help our individual clubs and organizations grow, but will also help them better integrate with one another and into the larger ASU community.”

To emphasize the importance of getting members involved on campus, OrgSync offers an unlimited number of online training webinars to students and faculty members.  OrgSync also includes an onsite training session with every initial purchase of the OrgSync platform.  The onsite trainings are very effective at helping organizations transition to a newer, more efficient method of communication. So far this spring, we’ve conducted onsite trainings with hundreds of leaders from The University of Alabama, St. John’s University, Bowling Green University, and Sacramento State University in conjunction with their respective spring leadership conferences.

As members of the OrgSync community, users from these schools will have the opportunity to provide feedback about the platform and drive future developments.  We look forward to working closely with each of these schools to provide them with a cost-saving, state-of-the-art management platform they can be proud of.

As an educator, the following video clip really resonated with me. Technology has advanced greatly since I was in school, but uses of technology in the classroom have not advanced that quickly. We may have transitioned from overheads to PowerPoints and from VHS to DVD, but the essence of the classroom is still the same; rows of students listening to an expert lecture creating isolation between student and teacher and student to student. Not a conducive learning environment for collaboration!

Kaplan University has run a series of commercials, and is basing their teaching model on the principal of “attend our online classes anytime, anywhere, 24/7.” Take a class at home, on your lunch break, or on the train during your morning commute. Thinking about what all my iPhone can do, it’s not a huge leap to image Kaplan creating an online class application.

Don’t get me wrong I do not want to do away with the “traditional” university model, but where is the classroom innovation? If we truly want students to learn, then why do we not teach them in a manner or style that is conducive to learning? Well I think Uncle Phil says it best in the new Kaplan commercial. “I think it is time for the University to start adapting to you rather than you adapting to it” and my favorite line “[It is time] To learn how you learn so we can teach you better.”

What are your thoughts? How could your University adapt better? What would an ideal learning classroom look like for your campus?

We are excited to welcome the University of Alabama, the University of North Texas and the University of Nevada at Reno to the OrgSync community. Jointly, these three universities will bring over 850 student organizations onto the OrgSync platform. We look forward to building great relationships on each one of these campuses and improving communications campus-wide!

“We are excited about providing all of our students a one-stop-shop for student organization management and a centralized place for students to get involved,” says Stacy Jones, Director of Student Leadership at the University of Alabama. Alabama plans to start the training process ASAP, followed by a full campus roll-out for all 250 student organizations. Stacy Jones has been working rigorously to bring the OrgSync platform to Alabama and is excited to start training and implementation.

The University of North Texas in Denton, TX has over 400 student organizations that will be using OrgSync to improve communication and organization management. “I am excited about everything that OrgSync will offer to our students. The entire program is going to help all aspects of campus, and the student body is ready for this move up in technology,” says Brooke Carter, Student Activities Coordinator at UNT.

Jason Entsming, Director of Organizations for the Student Government at Nevada, is especially excited to bring OrgSync to Nevada’s 200 student organizations. Having been mesmerized by OrgSync’s capabilities since Fall 2008, Jason is looking forward to implementing OrgSync for the Student Government to better communicate with and manage student organization needs. “Our students want and expect to be able to communicate online. OrgSync will allow us to setup an online community for our students and enhance their out of the classroom experience,” says Amy Koeckes, Coordinator of Clubs and Orgs at University of Nevada at Reno.

On behalf of the OrgSync team, I would like to wish all three of these schools a warm welcome to the OrgSync family!

As the semester winds down and the holidays are upon us, I’m sure you are taking some time to reflect on the past semester and plan for the next one. We at OrgSync are doing the same. The fall 2008 semester was a very exciting one for OrgSync.

We attended eight conferences: ASGA National in Washington, D.C., TCCIL in Austin, NACA Mid-Atlantic in Lancaster, PA, NASPA Western Regional in Long Beach, CA, ASGA Southwest in Dallas, NASPA Region 1 in Cape Cod, MA, ILA National in Los Angeles, and AFA Annual Meeting in Denver. We have enjoyed attending these conferences and sharing in the professional development and networking with various associations. It’s always a great feeling when folks approach our booth because they have heard so many wonderful things about OrgSync. We genuinely appreciate the associations’ willingness to let us participate and we love working with and building strong relationships with all of the folks on the conference committees.

We have also developed new relationships with 11 campuses: Bowling Green State University (OH), California State University- Bakersfield, Fort Valley State University (GA), Glenville State College (WV), Northeastern Illinois University, Ohio Wesleyan University, University of Texas at Austin- College of Natural Sciences, University of Texas at Austin- McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, and Victor Valley College (CA). We are so excited to have the opportunity to work with amazing professionals from so many different campuses.

It is our goal to build and maintain very strong relationships with all of our clients across the country. In an effort to achieve this, we have developed a Client Services team, being led by a higher education veteran, who speaks the student affairs language and works with our campuses to achieve effective implementation and adoption of OrgSync. One of our main initiatives continuing into 2009 is to help campuses with implementation by offering on-site training. We visited five different campuses for on-site training this semester: Dixie State College, North Carolina State University, Owens Community College, Sacramento State University, and University of San Francisco. The on-site training has been extremely successful and has helped the OrgSync adoption rate by getting more students and departments across campus using OrgSync to meet their specific needs.

We also began hosting regular webinars this semester and will continue this in the months to come. We hold these webinars to stay connected with our schools and present relevant OrgSync updates, to educate our clients with important changes and news in the higher education community, and to listen to questions and feedback from our users. This also provides administrators a chance to network with each other and also to have an opportunity for sharing best practices for OrgSync. Corey Seemiller, from the University of Arizona, presented a webinar on the LINX leadership program, which is hosted on the OrgSync platform, while Frank Lojko, from Dixie State College, presented about how to use OrgSync for assessment. We will continue the professional webinar series in the spring, and also start a webinar series for student leaders. We are interesting in your ideas for interesting topics and presenters, so please contact us with comments, ideas and suggestions.

In addition to these exciting events, we have added several new members to our growing team. These team members all possess various talents and interests that add a whole new dimension to our organization. We are very proud of our many accomplishments over the fall semester and are looking forward to continuing to grow and expand over the spring semester and for many semesters to come. Look for many new exciting updates this spring from your friends here at OrgSync.

Happy New Year!

The past few years we have seen the price of everything go up across the campus.  Higher priced parking, tuition, and even purchasing a soda requires a small loan.  And then there is the standard overpriced necessity…the textbook.  Flat World Knowledge is hoping to change that.

Our books are open for instructors to mix, mash, and make their own. Our books are the hub of a social learning network where students learn from the book and each other.

What are other ways we can use technology on campus to save money, while enhancing the college experience, and foster an environment for learning?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81zVcWcfAcU&hl=en&fs=1]

OrgSync recently started working with the Student Activities office at California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB). This is the fourth CSU campus to take advantage of OrgSync’s tools and services. San Bernardino, San Marcos, and Sacramento have also provided their student organizations access to OrgSync’s portal system. From the CSU system, 61,000 students and over 530 student organizations are now going to improve communication for their members and administration.

“They have created an online community that is user-friendly for students, cost effective for campuses, and provides a structure by which busy Student Affairs administrators can leverage their time…”

Mark Hartley

Director, Student Leadership & Development

California State University, San Bernardino

The California State System has made a commitment to helping the environment by reducing paper usage on its campuses. OrgSync will support sustainability efforts by providing online promotion of student organization and club activities.  OrgSync will also replace paper forms with an online forms module.

Bakersfield has started implementation and training, taking advantage of OrgSync’s unlimited training by conducting separate training sessions for student officers and university administrators. They are holding multiple training opportunities for all of their student organization leaders. It is with great excitement that we welcome Bakersfield into the OrgSync family as we look forward to building a strong lasting relationship with them and all of our clients.

You can read the CSU Bakersfield press release here