Learning to Change

I came across this video today. The video focuses on the education industry (specifically K-12, but adaptable for higher ed), and the need to shift the education model to a more advanced, modernized technology curriculum.



The best quote to take away:

So the coin of the realm is not about memorizing the facts they are going to need to know for the rest of their lives. The coin of the realm will be do you know how to find information, do you know how to validate it, do you know how to synthesis it, do you know how to leverage it, do you know how to communicate it, do you know how to collaborate with it, do you know how to problem solve it. That's the new 21st century civil literacies.

CAN-SPAM updates from the FTC

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just updated a few of the CAN-SPAM rule provisions. A few of the rules more likely to impact include:

(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;

In other words, the opt-out has to either be through an email reply or a one-page form (with limited information requested). You can't force a user to login to a site or to provide additional details in order to opt-out.

..and the Commission’s views on how CAN-SPAM applies to forward-to-a-“friend” e-mail marketing campaigns, in which someone either receives a commercial e-mail message and forwards the e-mail to another person, or uses a Web-based mechanism to forward a link to or copy of a Web page to another person. The SBP explains that, as a general matter, if the seller offers something of value in exchange for forwarding a commercial message, the seller must comply with the Act’s requirements, such as honoring opt-out requests.

If using this type of viral communication, it would best to abide by the regulations for these emails as well.

Google Reader Improves Social Aspect Through New Sharing Features

This evening, Google launched a new feature for the Reader users: enhanced sharing. This involves a few more tools that could help make Google Reader your information center:

1. Sharing with Notes. You can now add notes to each item you share. Anyone who subscribes to your shared items will see your notes. However, it is not known yet if these notes are searchable.
2. Sharing any page on the web. This is good stab at del.icio.us. Now you can use a bookmartlet to share any page as you stumble upon it. You can even add notes, just like a del.icio.us post.

I live by my Google Reader. I now have the ability to now track the same tags I use for RSS feeds with the tags I use for bookmarking. If only there was a way to import my del.icio.us links into Google Reader. Unfortunately, not everyone is loving the new updates.

If you are using Google Reader and you share links, add me as a GTalk user so I can see your shared items. For those interested in mine, you can find the feed at: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02512947381665535926?hl=en. You can also add me to your GTalk (seth007).

Higher Ed Crowd Status Update

A few weeks ago, I started the Higher Ed Crowd Status Twitter group at crowdstatus.com. Since then, the crowd has grown to 32 higher ed Twitterers on board. The crowd has been a great way for new Higher Ed Twitter users to find other Higher Ed Twitter users, but it hasn't really gone beyond that.

Based on my uses of the site, I found a few items that would make it more useful and engaging:

1. Auto-refresh. By using AJAX to gather the latest tweets by the group, I could continually monitor and participate in the latest conversations.
2. Trimmed down interface. While the current interface is visually appealing, it would be nice to compact more in an attempt to get more tweets above the fold. In my browser, I see less than a quarter of the tweets for this group.
3. RSS. It would be nice to take the tweets from this group and be able to read and stay updated through my other RSS feeds.

As I added the latest user today (@LisaNAU), I noticed that the site has been updated to accommodate my first request. Near the bottom of the page, is a link to start/stop "Auto refresh." By turning starting this, the site will automatically refresh with the latest tweets on a regular interval (it appears to be every minute).

You can check it out at:
http://crowdstatus.com/HigherEdcrowd.aspx

And if you would like to be part of the group, simply leave me a comment.

Thanks!

Social Networking Usage Increase Amongst Teens

eMarketer.com is reporting on the growth of social networking usage by teens.


Though the data reported is for a slightly younger audience than most of us recruit, it begins to paint the picture of what to expect in a few years. Due to this, and combined with other research, eMarketer.com predicts a trend of increasing usage in social networks (as most of use have come to expect).

Your Users Don't Care About the Status Quo

I was recently discussing a portal implementation with a small college. The portal "solution" was purchased so that current students could conform to institution business functions (pay tuition, graduation check-lists, grade summaries, etc...). The institution was excited about this new tool, however they had one problem: current students weren't using it. When the institution was asked why not, their response was: "The current students don't know that this is where they are supposed to be. We need to spend more time, money and energy on converting the students." (not verbatim, but the gist).

Wrong, they need to return the portal and reinvest time, money and energy into understanding what their students want.

Portals Aren't Solutions
Those of you that know me well, know that I hate portals. Portals are a poor excuse of bolting on a silo of political process to a university's website. Portals are not designed for the correct target audience (students), rather they are designed to enforce out-dated, non-user-centric workflows that appease [non]decision makers. Furthermore, portals fail to aggregate the student life experience. They do not combine all aspects of student interests (academic, residence life, involvement, advising, athletics), instead they primarily focus on only the academic side.

In addition, portals do not provide branding. Slapping your logo on the top and scheming the colors isn't branding. Branding is entrenched into user experience. Branding revolves around your students' experiences and expectations related to your institution. Portals cheapen brands by lowering user experiences and hindering expectations.

Though I am very condescending of portals, I understand how they have become a major part of academia. Institutions have primarily been siloed beasts. Divisions, political turfs, and process-centered areas are the norm. The organizational chart of colleges and universities are long, vertical lines. This has benefits when it comes to student segmenting, decision making, accountability, and development. However, this organizational system will struggle to maintain stability and timeliness as our students become more complex, more entrenched in interactive channels and more demanding of service.

Portals are designed to accommodate processes, but our future interactive communication (primarily the web) needs to be designed to accommodate the user (student) experience. Students do not see our institutions as a collection of silos, rather they see us one brand. User experiences dominate silos. Why? Because a user experience involves many areas that from a user's point of view should be one seamless entity. Students want to be able to join a club, register for classes, buy books, read profiles on professors and sign up for yoga without having to relearn navigation structures, processes, or workflows. Students don't care that the IT department runs the e-commerce section and the registrar handles the schedule of classes. To them, it is all one entity. Our job is not to educate the student on our silos, rather to design based on their expectations.

Experience Architects Needed
We need to start navigating towards a more holistic, user-experience-centric approach. "Experience Architects" need to work with students (current and prospective) to determine online content and design. Student input needs to become the dominating impact on our future realignment strategies. The marketing team is no more in charge than the IT team, nor does registrar's office have more clout than the housing department. The "Experience Architects" will hold the conversations with students, and both will work collaboratively.

In the end, our sites are for the students - they are the user's who have a need to accomplish a task (the degree). By taking their perspective, we can eliminate the friction that so often accompanies academic processes.

Web Design Rap