AACC Preconvention Workshop on Social Media

Happy to report that the workshop went fantastically well! We had a great range of attendees, from all around the U.S. and even Denmark and Canada. Also a great range of professional backgrounds; doctoral students, Deans, faculty, district administrative staff - it made for some really interesting discussions and everyone came away knowing more about using social media at their college.

Into the Cloud

Like it or not, most of our server-based systems will soon be moving to cloud-hosted systems. This means software enabled database systems such as SARS and even newer student tracking systems like Tutor Trac - programs that are used to schedule student visits to counselors and track student contact hours with tutors and academic support - will all be completely operated away from the campus. No more expensive, complicated server systems to maintain, no more IT staff who's main job is restoring physical connections to lab computers - it will all be gone.

The Student Success Network is Born!

After a few webinars and attending trainings at the GoingOn offices I was ready to begin the build-out phase. I chose to concentrate on the areas that would provide the most direct benefit to students while also engaging them in a meaningful way. A few key needs were

• Getting information about student services such as financial aid to more students in a timely way.
• Creating a platform for crowdsourcing, i.e students can help each other and answer their peers commonly asked but important questions without the need to visit an office or wait in a line
• Provide a resource for students to develop critical 21st century skills such as systems thinking, information technology proficiency, and even web site and blog design concepts 

Social Media Tools at Laney College

In recent posts I've mentioned the upcoming launch of the Laney College Student Success Network which is a powerful set of online tools that link together to allow students to engage with the college, each other, and instructors, programs and offices.

Dealing With Difficult Students Online

If you've worked in education long enough you've probably run across a student who for one reason or another decides they don't like you, or something you've done, and they want to let you and maybe lots of other people know about it.

The Pilot Program Begins!

After several months of researching the dizzying array of applications and products that fit somewhere in the spectrum of online student engagement tools, I am happy to announce that I'll be starting a pilot program using the GoingOn platform. We've already started building out the network and we will gradually add groups of students as we get things up and running. Its very exciting to see the vision taking shape, so stay tuned as the Laney College Student Success Portal develops.

Social Networking Platforms: Concepts and video demo's

goingon.com refers to their set of applications as an academic engagement network, as we talked about in the last post, this consists of linked applications such as the virtual commons and student engagement tools. This video demonstrates the concept and how all the pieces fit together.



In the video below, students talk about the Schools App by Inigral. The focus in this video is on the social connections that students can build with other students who have similar interests.