Refocusing on Outcomes over Metrics

As I continue to work in and get to used to a much different space within higher ed, I've come to realize a professional value I have that I think is a helpful mindset to strive for no matter where you work.

It's the idea that we should focus more on the outcomes of our work versus the metrics. We can often get too caught up in the numbers and analytics of our work as the world becomes more digital. While on one hand, I think higher ed could be more metric driven at times, we need to properly balance this with the actual outcomes we're trying to achieve. The number of likes on a post, for example, won't matter if we aren't improving the student experience or retention through our outreach efforts.

If you're looking for a way to integrate data into your work in a meaningful way (which yes, please do) then you can try to find correlations between data points. A metric in isolation is interesting, but is hard to take any action on. Correlating the data can help try to make sense of these disparate numbers. For example, you can see if there is a positive effect on retention among students who attend events on campus each semester. Folks like Presence have found exactly these sort of insights with their campus partners, which really help shape what outcomes you want to strive for and what will be meaningful action to get there.

This sort of mindset should be construed as trying to get in the way of the very personal and human work we do. It rather is augmenting us to be able to put our focus and effort in the right place at the right time. It's powering our high touch roles with technology.

Data and metrics are important. They can inform our work and direct our efforts. I appreciate the accessibility of current data dashboards in my own work (for some more thoughts on this, check out my book review for Winning with Data).

I hope as you evaluate your work, and the role technology and digital assessments play in it, you make sure to consider both metrics and outcomes as companions helping you towards your goals.

Book Review: Winning With Data

“Without data you’re just another person with an opinion” - W. Edwards Deming

I finished Winning with Data recently but I have to admit; it was hard for me to get through this book. It's difficult enough for me to read in general, but I don't usually seek out books about topics like managing data. I'm also not sure exactly who the audience is for this book. Is it a young person venturing into the workforce? A more senior executive trying to learn more about this evolution? Not sure, and I felt like that was also a problem. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what I read well enough since it confirmed how I feel about data accessibility and transparency. I can also see the influence of the author on my workplace (he works with a major investor in our company). It felt like when I took courses in school that I didn't like but I got a lot out of. If it didn't have to take them, I wouldn't have, but I'm glad I did since it exposed me to some new ideas.

The book outlines why data is important, how to manage it, and how to foster a culture that uses it in the right ways. It encourages readers to collect the right data, in the right amounts, and make timely informed decisions at every level of your organization. I feel like this is something higher ed needs to make better use of for strategic student interventions, but I can get why they'd be hesitant. Student data is sensitive, but we owe it to our students to provide the best service we can. I know some institutions are moving in this direction.

Using data really can transform every decision we make in an organization. It's not just sales or marketing. It can come into recruitment which I think is a huge epiphany for higher ed specifically since in my experience, it is something we struggle with greatly. The book provides a specific example from Google and how they run their processes to help continuously improve it over time:

“Google takes metrics one step further than most companies. It collects data at every step of the interviewing process to provide interviewers feedback on their candidate judgement.

“‘Every interviewer sees a record of the interview scores they gave given i the past and whether those people were hired or not. This lets the interviewer know if they are correctly assessing potential Googlers, nudging them to look back at their prior notes and learn from what they spotted or missed.’"

We could all use this sort of thinking to make sure we're bringing in the right people and helping our recruiters and hiring teams do their best with what we are putting upon them. Overall, it is a way of thinking that we need to implement and move on from making decisions based on anecdotal evidence and gut reactions. This quote is what I'd like to end on that captures this feeling: 

“…data encourages experimentation and surprises. Surprises foster new ways of thinking. They challenge the establishment. When dogged with opinions or knee-jerk answers of ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it,’ we all can feel disenfranchised. Data pushes us to experiment.”

Thanks for stopping by!

Set Your Spidey Sense To Watch Out For These Online Scams

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The Internet is all fun and games, right? Wrong! On the surface, it may appear that way, but there are actually lots of scams and viruses hidden on a wide variety of websites and in email attachments that you need to be careful of. To help you safe next time you’re on the web, set your "Spidey sense" so that it always picks up on the following common online scams.

The Free-Trial Scam

There’s a rule of thumb you should stick to when you are online - if something sounds way too good to be true, then it probably is! And this is the case with the free-trial scam. You will see an offer online for a month’s free trial for a certain service or product. People who play online casino games and shop online a lot are frequently targeted by these scams. All you need to pay is the postage and packaging, if required. However, there will be some sentences in the very small print that detail all the extensive fees you will be made to pay once the trial ends. And it will be very difficult to try and get out of them. So, if you come across a deal that sounds like a dream, it’s best to pass up on it as it is probably too good to be true.

Hotspot Hackers

Over the past few years, hotspots have been popping up all over the place. Thanks to these, you can now use your laptop or tablet device to surf the web in all manner of public places, including cafes and libraries. This sounds fantastic on the surface, but it actually comes with one problem: hotspot hackers. When you are in a cafe and need to use the Internet, make sure that you log into a protected WiFi source with a password. Hackers can easily create hotspots that mimic trusted ones. If you log onto these, you will end up giving your personal data away.

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Fake Antivirus Materials

We all know that it is incredibly important to have the latest antivirus software on our laptops and tablet devices. But have you considered that some of these antivirus softwares and programs aren’t exactly what they seem? In fact, there is now an increasing trend for these kinds of safeguarding methods to actually be a scam themselves. For example, one common occurrence is a pop-up message appearing saying that your laptop is at risk. There will be a button to click to take you to some free software. However, once you click on the link, you will actually download some malware or virus data onto your machine. So, it’s a good idea to only trust the reputable antivirus software that you have to pay for.

It can be difficult trying to keep up with all of the new scams and hacking methods that keep on popping up online. But it is really important that you do so that you don’t lose any personal or banking information while you are online.

Combining High Tech and High Touch

I’ve been reading some excellent articles lately by folks such as Patrick Love and Joe Sabado. They're talking about technology integration into student affairs work. It has me thinking about what the value of incorporating more technology into our high touch work. We’re currently experiencing a time where these new inventions are changing modern campus life. Also, with these tools there is so much potential for augmenting the work we do making sure learning and engagement happens. No longer will it be guesswork or estimations. We can have hard numbers for what our students are doing (or not doing). With more of this data, and better access to it, we can be poised for success in making sure we’re doing all that we can to support all our students, each day.

Big Data to Big Insights

Student affairs professionals are well positioned to gather a lot of information about their students. Whether it is related to events with an ID card-swiping and student engagement technology like Check I’m Here, or online class analytics from platforms like Canvas. We can know a lot about what our students are doing. Also, we can convey this data in a clear way and contour it to our needs. Need to know the split of program attendance between residential and commuter students? Need to know how first-year students are getting involved versus upper-class students? These tools can pull specific information like that for you. This can provide insights that will optimize your efforts by focusing on what’s working well. You can also trim the fat and cut away services that aren't needed to make room for what you need to stat doing. Combine these tools with the robust communication functionality of something like Cranium Café. It allows for professionals to take advantage of face-to-face interactions even if your students are around the world and has its own data and analytics. All these tools together will create an ecosystem that will allow for your team to give the best support to your students each day.

Predictive Analytics

An awesome aspect of software that has strong, positive implications for student support services is predictive analytics. This means that if certain behavior occurs, a trigger kicks into action to alert you that a student needs help. An example of this could be that a student hasn’t gone to the dining hall for a week. Once the alert comes up, professionals can jump into action to support the student. Students can even be provided with personal alarms to increase security. Even if the student doesn’t want or need help, they’ll know that the institution cares about their success. Any good tool for managing student information should have this feature since it takes the guess work out of figuring out who may be at risk. It allows for the high touch, soft skills to be utilized where they’re needed most.

Global Information Access

Just to clarify here, I mean to say “global” as your entire team, not the entire world. I have seen too many times that necessary information is only accessible in limited ways. It could be that an app only works from a wired desktop computer in your office. It is inexcusable to not allow your team, especially on-call administrators, to be able to access information no matter where they are. This allows for seamless support to occur since information is always just a few clicks away. You can go one step further too, and work to create an optimized mobile app for your team. As opposed to having them pull up information through a web browser on their tablet or smartphone, which can be less than ideal. Work with your campus partners to build something that serves everyone's interests.

Life moves pretty fast nowadays, but we now have the tools at our disposal to better keep up with it. With more insights, predictive alerts, and easier access to information, professionals can use high tech tools to augment their high touch efforts. Invest in these tools so that you can invest more of your time on the students who need your support the most. The return of a more engaged, supported, and persistent campus will be well worth the cost.

Now go out there and do good for your students!

Book Review: Think Like a Freak

"The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally; that we think from a different angle, with a different set of muscles, with a different set of expectations; that we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like—ahem—a Freak."

Think Like a Freak is the 2014 book from Freakonomics bloggers and podcasters Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This time around, they focus on capitalizing on their previous works and showing us all how to think a little differently.

I'm a big fan of the Freakonomics podcast, and I wanted to check out some of their writing so this recent work seemed like a great placed to jump in. I appreciated the idea of taking their perspective into action, since a lot of articles and books will simple present a viewpoint and then not give examples of how to put it into action, so I'm glad they took it the next step here.

Topics in the book include incentives, problem solving, metrics, and knowing when to step back when you don't know something. The authors showcase very different perspectives on conventional wisdom, which I think we can all use more of in our lives.

"Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you’ve decided beforehand it can’t be done."

The advice I gleamed after reading the book is be more curious, be less stubborn, and measure success. All of these can be easier said than done but it is crucial to simplifying our complicated world to do our best to do our best to live these values. We can't assume success, assume we know all the answers, and stop asking questions. We'll become stagnant in a world that will quickly leave us behind.

"...the stakes get higher when we routinely pretend to know more than we do."

I encourage you to check out all of the Freakonomics stuff out there. It is great stuff to get outside of the normal framework of how we look at our world. I know you'll get some valuable advice from their work.

Thanks for stopping by!

On Being a History Major in Student Affairs

Reflecting back to my recent interviews, I found myself conceptualizing myself as being someone who, due in large part to my history major at the University of Delaware, needs to have some context to things to be able to fully understand and appreciate them. It could be current events and their historical precedence, or it could be an initiative from a supervisor and wanting some further explanation behind why we are doing something besides "because I said so" or "because that's how we've always done it". I need something more than that. What I need to hear contextually as a proud history major working in student affairs is a logical context preceding our actions. I need to hear that a new effort is backed up by theory, data, or exceptional practices from colleagues and fellow higher education institutions. We should never be making decisions, in student affairs or otherwise, on whims or emotions or simply personal anecdotes. We need to pull from more credible bases.

A history professor I had in college once told me that the study of our past is captured well by the metaphor of "a turtle on a fencepost". This means to say that the turtle could not have possibly gotten up on that fencepost on its own. Someone had to do something to put it there. Pretty much every major thing happening in the world today is like that turtle. It was caused by the actions of someone or something. It is crucial for us to understand these phenomena and causes, as to not repeat the mistakes of the past.

While this contextual philosophy of mine was garnered from a very macro perspective, I see it being highly applicable to the work I do on a micro level every day. We need to learn from the past to improve for the future. We need to build upon the successes we've had, avoid making the mistakes again we've made before, and work to continuously improve to better serve our students.

I don't think I wasted my undergraduate degree coming into student affairs. I think it has made me a better professional.