UAOA Advising Conference

I was unable to attend class on Wednesday due to the fact that I was participating in a regional advising conference. On Wednesday night I moderated a dinner group on the topic of "MySpace, Facebook, email...How do you connect/communicate with your students?" It was very informative. I have changed some of my views based on the discussions we had that night. The "Hot Topic" of the night seemed to stem from the very basic definition and initial intent of many social networking sites. Over dessert we seemed to come to the consensus that social networking sites should be used for just that! They should not become the main source of university information sharing, although they are beneficial in finding the "lost" students.

We also discussed the issue of a professional on-line presence verses the real you presense (in some cases these are two very different profiles). It appears that my colleagues use these sites to fileter out potential employees. I have heard of this practice when hiring new college graduates but it is also being used to hire for upper level support staff and administration.

~S.