1. ENHANCING YOUR PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT PLAN: SOCIAL MEDIA &
MOOC’S (MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES)
FOR ACADEMIC ADVISORS
Jillian Reading, Academic Advisor-
SPHHP- University at Buffalo
@JILLIANREADING #UAC13
2. LEARNING OUTCOMES
• Gain knowledge of how to use social media to
connect with advising colleagues around the
world
• Learn basics of MOOC’s & how they can help
you professionally
• Identify resources you can use in your own
professional development plan
@JILLIANREADING #UAC13
25. MOOC’S FOR ADVISORS
• Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations
(Coursera-March 5, 2013)
• Current/Future State of Higher Education
(November 2012)
• Power Searching with Google
• Statistics: Making Sense of Data (Coursera-April
1st, 2013)
@JILLIANREADING #UAC13
26. RESOURCES
• #Acadv Chat Archive
• Ed Cabellon “Teaching Twitter…”
• EDUCAUSE-Creating a Professional
Development Plan
@JILLIANREADING #UAC13
Make sure you walk around & greet the audience First, for any of you who are into social media my twitter tag is up there and a hashtag if you’d like to participate!Point out who Charlie is.Little bit about me. Currently an academic advisor with SPHHP at UB where I advise students interested in pursuing Exercise Science, Physical Therapy, and occupational Therapy. I’m also the chair of the Undergraduate Advisement Council at UB which brings together advisors across our campus to discuss relevant issues in advising. I’ve been advising since 2007. Going to start with a story: 1st NACADA Conference=Chicago 2008- graduate student--$$ to attend- stayed w complete stranger to save money on hotel room; applied for scholarships-Left feeling like Chicago was great. I learned so much by being there that I wanted to extend that learning to when I got back home. I also knew that I most likely wouldn’t be able to attend a conference every year due to budget constraints but I still wanted the knowledge. In 2009, I discovered a way to do just that and increase my professional development on a very tight budget. Those strategies are what I’d like to share with you this morning and hopefully you’ll find them useful enough to implement into your own professional development plan.
Let’s begin with the end in mind… **You will leave today with information you can use!!!** #1 pet peeve at conference sIt’s OK if you don’t know what a MOOC is right now. You will by the end of the session. We will not cover basics of Social Media (e.g., How to create a twitter account or a linkedin profile) but I will provide resources @ the end that wll address the How To questions more specifically. * We also won’t discuss specifics of creating a professional development plan (please see this afternoon’s session)
Let’s briefly talk about some items frequently included in professional development plans and some barriers to actually accomplishing them.
In person conference attendance-great for networking with colleagues face to face; working in professional commissions, gaining leadership roles at a national or regional levelThere is no amount of technology that will ever replace this experience.
Books/articles/web pages to readIf you’re anything like me you print out articles, bookmark things to read later
Classes totakeMaybe you take advantage of a tuition disctount through yoru employer or you are working on another degree to further enhance yourself
Join a committee! **No committee jokes here!***There are more than enough committee to keep anyone interested busy- There is a UAC conference planning committee that anyone can join , maybe it’s a communication committee to help increase communication within your department
BARRIERSWe can have the best intentions of developing ourselves but sometimes things get in the way… Professional development is expensive-expensive for you, your department -Books cost money, classes require materials, travel to conferences, webinars,
Not everyone can participate- difficult to shut down entire offices, costs prohibit everyone taking partMaybe your in a large offiec and funds are only available for 2-3 people to attend a conference. How do you choose? Do you rotate?
Grumpy Cat had to make an apperance… Time Constraints on Professional Development- Conferences can take DAYS away from the office; how do you budget time to read between all of your appointments and administrative tasks?
Does this look familiar to anyone?Personal/Family committments- make impossible for you to travel, limits the time available in the evening to take courses
So now that we’ve identified some basic pieces of professional development plans and the barriers that present themselves, how can we overcome some of these barriers with tech?
2 Primary Ways you can enhance your professional development plan is with Twitter and Linked In My focus for the session will mostly be on Twitter. Twitter: Most powerful professional development tool there is & it’s free. Not so much a social network, but rather an information network that CAN be social. LinkedIn: Attend Ed Broka’s session later this afternoon
Raise Hands-How many people are currently on twitter ( just have a login)? How many people are active on twitter? How many people think Twitter is pointless? -Copies of the Teaching Twitter to Higher Education ColleaguesAnatomy of a TweetThis is a tweet! Came from me. Has a few Hashtags (#acadv, #eli2013– this help categorize the conversation to make things easier to folow); It was a RT meaning I thought the information was important enough that I wanted to share it with my followers, but its not original content. The original user is credited here.Now that you know what a tweet is… How does this relate to advising and professional development?
I give you #acadv chat Goal: To provide Academic Advisors (and other colleagues) a place to talk about all things advising. We have a group of advisors from around the country all chiming in with the experiences and expertise. Additionally we frequently have colleagues from other student services areas jump into the chat to offer a wider variety of input. We may be in different parts of the country but we come together weekly to discuss issues related to our profession. No need to attend round table at a conference… the same diagloue happens right here. Previous Topics: Developing conference proposals, Office Structure & Process, Advising Mid-Year transfer students, Quick, Cheap & Easy morale boosters for advisors, Orientation survival tips & tricks, Training new advising professionalsChat held every Tuesday from 1-2 PM (scheduled convientnly for lunch time--- professional development while you eat~)
So how can I make it easier to follow the chat, especially if I’m not entirely comfortable with Twitter. My suggestion is to use the tweetchat.com service. It will allow you to input the #acadv tag at the top and organize all the tweets received with that tag into a chat like format. The MOD (moderator) @AcAdvChat will ask 4-5 questions during 60 min chat; please respond with the Q# in your update, e.g. "Q1: Your Answer“ This will make things easier to create the chat transcript afterwards. Did you miss an #AcAdv Chat? No need to fear as we post each week's discussion on the #AcAdv Chat Archive
A satisfied academic advisor!
Most important- networking face to face
Great notes! That you didn’t even have to manualy write
Catch sessions you wanted to see but missed because you attended another session Conferences often require that you choose which session you want to attend and thus might miss out on something you would have really liked to have sat in on. Twitter makes it possible for you to catch up on in
Conversation & Resources
ACPA- American College Personnel Association NASPA – National Association of Student Personnel AdministratorsNACADA-National Academic Advising Association
Via Wikipedia A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aiming at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in distance education using open educational resourcesBenefits:You can organize a MOOC in any setting that has connectivity (which can include the Web, but also local connections via Wi-Fi e.g.)You can organize it in any language you like (taking into account the main language of your target audience)You can use any online tools that are relevant to your target region or that are already being used by the participantsYou can move beyond time zones and physical boundariesIt can be organized as quickly as you can inform the participants (which makes it a powerful format for priority learning in e.g. aid relief)Contextualized content can be shared by allLearning happens in a more informal settingLearning can also happen incidentally thanks to the unknown knowledge that pops up as the course participants start to exchange notes on the course’s studyYou can connect across disciplines and corporate/institutional wallsYou don’t need a degree to follow the course, only the willingness to learn (at high speed)You add to your own personal learning environment and/or network by participating in a MOOCYou will improve your lifelong learning skills, for participating in a MOOC forces you to think about your own learning and knowledge absorptionChallenges & CriticismsIt feels chaotic as participants create their own contentIt demands digital literacyIt demands time and effort from the participantsIt is organic, which means the course will take on its own trajectory (you have got to let go).As a participant you need to be able to self-regulate your learning and possibly give yourself a learning goal to achieve.**Briefly scroll through the various offerings from the different providers**
Some upcoming (or recently finished) MOOC’s that might pertain to our work in HED
Presentation will be available on the UAC website. Please feel free to grab a card; connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter… I’d love to continuethe conversation.
