In doing my research I often come across great tutorials on social and digital technology as well as excellent examples of their use in higher education. Rather than keep them to myself, I decided to post them publicly to help others "get up to speed" on these tools and their uses. I've been doing this for... 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 →
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 →
The Conversation Prism is a beautifully designed infographic, now in its fourth iteration, that provides an overview of social media sites and presents them as a taxonomy. Different sites are categorized according to their main purpose and/or use. Not only is the prism beautifully designed, but it also offers a great resource for individuals hoping... Continue Reading →
This series delves deeper into the new Technology competency recently added to the ACPA/NASPA Professional Competency Areas for Student Affairs Educators. Intended to serve as a resource for faculty and professionals to guide professional development and teaching, it provides a deeper understanding of the topics covered in the competency and provides resources for further education. Part 1: Overview Part... Continue Reading →
Nuzzel is an amazing little app/web service that helps surface the news your friends and others in your network care about. Log into Nuzzel and connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Then, daily, or at an interval of your choice, you will receive an email containing the most shared links of the day from those in... Continue Reading →
You might think of LinkedIn as just a tool that you use to create a profile, network, and search for jobs. LinkedIn, however, is making a big push into higher education using its treasure trove of data to help institutions engage with prospective students and alumni. Want to know how many people working for Google... Continue Reading →
Semi-weekly, I try to highlight innovative and interesting uses of social media in the higher education and student affairs space. The following is a review of all those highlighted in 2014. Follow along in the new year with new spotlights.
This week's tool is simple, but it does one thing very well. ClickToTweet is a website that allows you to generate links that, when clicked on by a user, present a pre-written tweet. In other words, if you want to promote something, and want the people tweeting your stuff to include a specific sample message or set... Continue Reading →
TED-Ed comes from the creators of TED Talks as a means of turning any YouTube video into an interactive lesson. Choose a video and build discussion boards, multiple choice and open-ended quizzes, and links to additional resources. TED-Ed is a simple platform with few but straightforward features. Because TED-Ed lessons are bite-size pieces of content, they are... Continue Reading →
If you establish a hashtag for a campaign or program at your university, you'll want to know how it's used and what people say, right? Enter "Hachtracking." This web tool does exactly what its name suggests, track the analytics of a hashtag. This can be tremendously useful for assessment efforts and to gauge the success... Continue Reading →
This Thursday, I will (finally) have my dissertation proposal hearing. This means I will present my proposed dissertation research to my committee and seek approval to move forward into the data collection and analysis phases. Proposals generally include the "first three chapters" of a dissertation. These chapters are typically an introduction, a review of literature, and a research... Continue Reading →
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