The following is a transcript of the speech I gave as the 2017 commencement speaker at Western Nebraska Community College. It was an honor to be asked to speak with these graduates and their friends and family and a memory I won't soon forget. Many thanks to President Holcomb for inviting me and to Nina Grant... Continue Reading →
I'm pleased to share that the new volume of New Directions for Student Services that I've been collaborating on for the past year is finally available online! Engaging the Digital Generation, edited by Josie Ahlquist and Ed Cabellon, focuses on issues confronting college students and higher education professionals related to technology. The chapters in this volume... Continue Reading →
I am happy to finally make my entire final dissertation available for all to download and read. This document represents some of the first qualitative research into how traditionally aged college students use social media and its impact on their development and how they construct identities online. If you want a more detailed description, I've included the... Continue Reading →
I'm pleased to be presenting the results of my dissertation research at ACPA this year. This presentation provides a broad overview of my study, its findings, and implications. This is one of the first times I am presenting this material in public and I am super excited about it. If you want to learn more,... Continue Reading →
It's over! It's hard to believe the one of the final steps on my journey is complete. I want to thank everyone for all of their support throughout this process. There are far too many of you to mention individually, but I trust you know who you are and how much I appreciate you. If you'd... Continue Reading →
We all have one whether we want to or not. One's digital stamp, a term coined by Erik Qualman, is the sum total of everything about you in the digital domain. One's digital stamp, sometimes referred to as one's digital identity, is a key concept that we all must be aware of when we interact online.... Continue Reading →
LinkedIn is increasingly becoming an essential tool for maintaining professional relationships and networking. When I taught a course on the higher education job search, I tried to find a simple, comprehensive guide to creating a successful LinkedIn profile. There are a lot of them out there, but many are lacking in one area or another.... Continue Reading →
Don't want to spend the time reading through 300 pages of my dissertation work on college students, social media, identity, and selfhood? No problem. I pulled out 96 "quotable quotes" from the text. Consider it the "Reader's Digest of Dissertations." Wondering why 96 and not... 100...? I just went through the whole thing until I... Continue Reading →
Qualitative research requires that one code text (or images, or video, etc.) for themes. Coding is a process whereby you find snippets of text, highlight and/or excerpt it, and tag it with a word or phrase. There are a number of different code types, such as close-text, in vivo, etc. Some can be categories and... Continue Reading →
A good friend and colleague, David Kasch, presented a paper at the ASHE conference back in 2011 where he attempted to analyze/categorize developmental theories by their narrative patterns. Some theories represent linear patterns, whereas others are continua, and still others follow intersectional or vector patterns. The above graphic is a modification of David's original concept, but should... Continue Reading →
I have the privilege of sharing my time and space today with the staff and students at the University of Delaware. There are two workshops I'll be giving which are both revamped presentations with a lot of new content arising out of my research. Hopefully you will find the information helpful as well. In particular, one... Continue Reading →
I'm excited to be presenting at Boston Latin School today for a number of reasons... One. Boston Latin is the first and oldest public school in the United States. As an exam/application-based school, it recruits some of the best and brightest in the Boston area and boasts a number of notable alumni (Samuel Adams, Leonard... Continue Reading →
It's time for a yearly update! My advice for the digital #SAgrad of 2015... So you've recently started your journey towards a Master's degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. CONGRATULATIONS! As a former instructor in a number of these programs, one of the topics I like to review with my students is how they can... Continue Reading →
Today is the day! The "What Happens On Campus Stays on YouTube," the book to which I am a contributing author, is available for shipping! A great work geared towards college students that helps them understand their digital identity and the potentials and pitfalls of interacting online. You can order yours on Amazon now! Want a peek inside... Continue Reading →
Once a month I reblog a post from a colleague that I think deserves to be shared more widely. This month’s comes from Dr. Paul Eaton, who is researching similar topics as myself: the impact of social media and digital technology on the college student developmental process (or as Paul would describe it, “becoming”). Take a look at this great post from Paul on how one may integrate concepts of “digital identity” into traditional college student development courses. Some great resources here.
It is the start of spring semester here at Louisiana State University. I am fortunate, blessed, and honored to once again be co-teaching our Master’s Level Student Development Theory course, alongside Dr. Danielle Alsandor and Kristin Satterlee (pedagogically, team-teaching is an incredible opportunity to add diverse perspectives to a classroom).
We have decided to add discussions of ‘digital identity’ to our syllabus. This is an ethical responsibility, necessary and important for future leaders in our profession. If you are teaching student development theory this spring, or in the near future, consider adding this important new component to your syllabus.
Many synoptic texts do not currently have chapters dedicated to this topic, so here is a list and brief overview of some readings we are including this spring.
Becoming and Belonging
This chapter, by Rob Cover (2014), is part of an excellent edited text from the University of Wisconsin Press entitled
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I am proud to be selected as one of this year's SAspeaks presenters. SAspeaks talks are similar in style to TEDtalks. They are meant to be short (no more than 15 minutes) and focus on one main idea. This year I am doing an SAspeaks based off of my continuing research on the impact of... Continue Reading →
Josie Ahlquist and I are proud to be collaborating on an exciting session for the upcoming 2015 International Convention of ACPA-College Student Educators International. This session is intended for all levels of professionals who want to learn about how to develop a positive digital presence online and leverage digital and social tools for professional development. This practical session... Continue Reading →
You interact online and through social and digital media, but do you reflect about how, why and in what way you choose to use these tools? The following is from a new presentation I've developed that challenges college students to reflect on three questions: Who do you want to BE? How do you want to ACT?... Continue Reading →
I have the pleasure of presenting at the NASPA Region I Annual conference today. The topic? How might we re-envision Student Development theory for the digital age. Below you will find an abbreviated version of my presentation. Some additional resources that might be of interest include: My past posts related to digital identity and identity... Continue Reading →
So you've recently started your journey towards a Master's degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. CONGRATULATIONS! As an instructor in one of these programs, one of the topics I like to review with my students is how they can begin to network and gain valuable professional development... digitally... and often for free. Going digital... Continue Reading →
As you probably know at this point, my research involves college students and how they construct a sense of self in digital and social media spaces. In conducting this research, I've encountered the term "digital identity" frequently. I've used it, and some of my doctoral student colleague friends have written about it (including Paul Eaton, Josie Ahlquist, and Ed... Continue Reading →
Tweet http://youtu.be/fBLuzUk5NII (One of my colleagues and friends, Paul Eaton, wrote a great blog post about Bronfenbrenner's applicability to online/social media spaces. I also wanted to have a go at the topic, so I purposely didn't re-read his post until after publishing this one... and there's agreement... but with a twist... read on...) Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of... Continue Reading →
"Digital Identity Isn't About (A Separate) Identity At All" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEaPb2NQqbE The video of my PechaKucha presentation on the big stage at the 2014 ACPA-College Student Educators-International Convention, is posted on YouTube! Woot! Check out the annotated slide version here. View it below. And see more from other presenters here.
Last week, StudentAffairs.com published a piece I wrote entitled, An Experiment Using Twitter in Teaching a Student Affairs Practicum Course, in their Journal of Technology in Student Affairs. (Please check it out and let me know what you think!) In one of the later paragraphs of the piece, I wrote about my plans for teaching... Continue Reading →
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