Talking Stick - May/June 2011 - 59

“I CONSIDER MYSELF A MODERATE PARTICIPANT IN SOCIAL MEDIA, BUT AN ACTIVE CONSUMER.”

user but have found that my interest dies off quickly. I tend to use it at conferences or for specific reasons if an event has a feed, but not on a daily basis. I do really enjoy the use of Twitter at the conference and other ACUHO-I events. I use FourSquare as mostly a personal game of collecting locations and do have a few professional colleagues on my friend list, but I have not seen many professional development opportunities in this program yet. Professional blogs like ACUHO-I have been helpful for alerting me to trends and important articles. In the past few months I have enjoyed writing a few blog entries for the ACUHO-I blog, and that has been a great experience as you hear feedback on your blog post, getting other professional thoughts on the topic. Like Maggie, I still depend quite a bit on the old technology of e-mail listservs, since they still have the largest audience of professionals on them. I always try to reply to questions on “who has done this” or “who is seeing what” on their campus. I am also quick to send out a benchmark question, in particular to other institutions within our system or state via the North Carolina Housing Officers (NCHO) list.

have Facebook and Twitter as default tabs on my browser and check them multiple times a day. I use Facebook both professionally and personally, whereas Twitter is almost exclusively for professional or work-related use. I do friend many of my staff, including student staff and student leaders on campus, but I let our staff know that this is not an expectation for them, instead encouraging them to make their own decisions, as well as to use good judgment (and sharing information on how to adjust privacy settings). Many of our Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) and Thematic Learning Communities use social networking to jump start or supplement other community development and communication efforts. I have used Facebook to network with professional colleagues, including offering advice and suggestions, but haven’t solicited information that much . . . yet. I have used Skype frequently for group communications. My most frequent work-related use of Facebook and Twitter is to provide deeper or faster context on incidents and concerns on our campus, sometimes involving individual students and other times developing situations and rumors. We have department Facebook pages that we use to push information to students (and parents increasingly) and a Twitter account, but we don’t tweet that much (we find most of our students do not tweet much either). A few years ago we had a resident student commit suicide in a residence hall. While we immediately responded with support for the members of

his community, we also searched his Facebook page for his wider network of friends at the institution to reach out to, and once news was out about his passing, we monitored tribute postings on his page to see if there were others we needed to offer support to. During two recent incidents on our campus – a report of a gunman/shooting (eventually shown to be false) and a misunderstanding during an emergency drill – we monitored Facebook and Twitter traffic to keep ourselves and other senior administrators up to date on what students were saying. In a more humorous situation, we also monitored the fast-spreading rumor that Brad Pitt (a Mizzou alum) was sighted on campus in various locations, including taking a tour of our show room. Again, another false situation, but it demonstrated for many the power and speed of social networking when students quickly assembled outside various locations, including walking out of class to do so. I am a member of the ACUHO-I social network but do not use it regularly. Social media/networking augments my professional development, but I don’t foresee it replacing it in any meaningful way, at least in the near future. Much like social networking can supplement and enhance the community development in our residence halls, but not replace the value of face-to-face interaction, I still think physical communication is more meaningful than virtual communication, at least for my learning process. Similar to other responses, I still use listservs and distribution lists extensively to gather and distribute information.
MAY + JUNE 2011

Frankie Minor: I consider myself a
moderate participant in social media, but an active consumer. In other words, I use Facebook and Twitter as active ways to gather information but am not one who updates my Facebook status or tweets regularly. I

Talking Stick - May/June 2011

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