Follow Up to the Unlikely Mash-Up of HTML5 and Student Affairs

The ideas of HTML5 and student affairs take time to make the connections in my brain, and I found myself thinking of my post from yesterday about how these two topics, HTML5 and student affairs work, continue to connect:

Tech comm and student affairs professionals value accessibility, diversity, and inclusion

Another place where I was able to make connections between HTML5 and the field of student affairs is in the way that the ideals of accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are promoted. In his book about HTML5, Keith advocates the use of graceful degradation in design where needed, but calls for the use of assistive technology wherever possible; to use these techniques as standard pieces of design. At colleges and universities, there are offices and services dedicated to those who require assistive technologies for learning. In the physical and technological classrooms, this is a natural place where the two fields meet.

This idea of access is wider than the use of assistive technologies and writing good code so that users with disabilities can view or hear web pages. Both fields struggle to provide the kind of access that all people need when it comes to diversity and technology, though both value inclusion. In universities, graduation rates are still lower for people of color than for white students, as reported in the Texas Tribune and reprinted in the January 1, 2011 New York Times article, Universities Are Challenged as Demographics Shift. "Nationally, 52 percent of Hispanic students and 58 percent of black students are unable to earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, compared with 40 percent of white students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics." For student affairs professionals, the need to provide services to students is great and offices of diversity and inclusion can include services that are technological in nature. Similarly, the professionals in our university offices that serve our students of color, and beyond just the offices dedicated to the delivery of services, should understand that today's students communicate and learn differently. As my Illinois Institute of Technology college Chris de Kok said today, "Gone are the days of the laptop on the desk from the nineties. People are using mobile devices all over campus to tap into our services. We need to be ready for that level of access."

HTML5 and Student Affairs: An Unlikely Mash-up That Just Might Work

I am reading HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith and I feared that I was at opposite ends of my dissertation mash-up topics of technical communication and student affairs. While I am certain that, in general, technical communication principles and practices can improve performance of student affairs professionals, I struggle with how writing and designing web pages improves service to students as a student affairs professional. Maybe this is one place where my mash-up does not work. On the other hand, here are some thoughts as to why it might:

Both fields value openness and freedom and I can express my leadership style through these principles

Using digital communication tools is imperative for me in my position, and by learning to communicate digitally I can round up, organize, and deliver information in ways that are open and helpful to my staff. The information available to my staff needs to be be malleable, and this is where my professional values as a student affairs professional mesh with values in the open source and technical communication communities. Open source software is a philosophy that frees software documentation and makes it available for users to use, change, and redistribute. The GNU Project defines this freedom: "'Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'” Finding the commonality if the professional values helps me share information with my staff and encourage them to use the information, change the information and redistribute the information. One practical application of this is creating a wiki for training for the student employees. While there will be a page or two without writing permissions, emergency procedures for example, the wiki will be open for students and staff to use, create, edit, and change content. It allows us to push information in a more real-time fashion, something that students value.

Taking classes in technical communication has helped me to treat information differently. Information is a resource that is essential for the success of my organization in the McCormick Tribune Campus Center. With over 10,000 events and six-times as many "touches" to events in any part of the event-cycle, I need people and systems that can communicate what they know at critical moments for information delivery in ways that are easily understandable.

Working at a tech school, this knowledge helps me find common ground with students

In my role as a director of a campus center at a a technical institution, my students talk in code all of the time. And it is not just HTML code in which they speak. At a tech school, there are conversations about science-fiction, fantasy, video-gaming, mathematics, music, and many other intellectual pursuits that I am less familiar with, having come from a liberal education background.

By taking classes in writing and designing for the web, I have something in common with my students. This is no small thing in common, either. By taking classes, not only do we have an intellectual platform that we share, but as an administrator, I find that I am in tune with students' schedules even more. Sure my life has always revolved around the academic calendar, but when I am in classes, it does so even more. I am well aware of the stressful times of the semester and can balance that with expectations for staff while still challenging them to balance all that they have committed to.

In general, digital literacy improves my ability to communicate and helps me to do my job

My education in the area of technical communication, it opens new theoretical doors and I am able to view my student affairs position differently. We write considerable amounts in our positions in student affairs. In addition to the many e-mails we write on a daily basis, we write training documents, position descriptions, monthly reports, justification documents, and much more. By investigating theories of design, audience, knowledge management, and usability, I can apply this to what I do in my job. I can be more persuasive and advocate for my area. I can be clearer in my communication. I can relate concepts to my staff in ways that are understandable.

This semester, I will take a class that will help me create web applications. As I read the HTML5 book, I am taking notes about what apps I could create that may help the employees or the users of the student center. Writing digitally can help me improve my services for the students, faculty/staff, and community users of the campus and conference services.