"Fifteen hundred...My God, what a lot of people... How will I do this?"
When I was first invited to write a short course for www.studentaffairs.com, I was overwhelmed by the size of the potential audience. While I had written for and spoken in front of large groups before, this was a group of people I was never to know. The names, occupations, professional skills, and other basic characteristics would remain unknown to me as I composed the lessons based on Giving Voice to Critical Campus Issues.
The book's title was an ironic reflection of the task. How could I use my "voice" in a different way than I ever had - through the medium of the Internet? How could I use my voice in a way that was fair to the six authors who had entrusted me with their words and work?
"I found it on the web..."
The information explosion called the Internet, though predicted by many, is fully comprehended by few of us in student affairs. The burgeoning auction economy, lightning fast communication, service accessibility, and knowledge avalanche are transforming the very nature of people's personal and professional lives. It was only a matter of time before the web was used by professional associations and entrepreneurs to further the professional development of student affairs administrators.
Many of us work on campuses removed from large populations centers and concentrations of higher education institutions. Still others work on campuses with modest resources for professional development. Finally, if we work with personnel who have a limited range of diversity and perspectives, professional stimulation can be limited. The Internet can address the isolation of these circumstances. Listservs, email addresses, and websites provide interaction previously available only to those with the most extensive resource base.
"Would you be interested...?"
My introduction to professional development writing for the web occurred when I was contacted by the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) to write a web-based short course based on a book I had edited, Giving Voice to Critical Campus Issues (Manning, 1999). A previous short course written by Jane Fried was the first in this web-based professional development experiment.
"I only use email...what's this studentaffairs.com?"
I am embarrassed to say that while I attempt to keep abreast of professional development opportunities on the Internet, I had not previously heard of www.studentaffairs.com I used the Internet for research, email, and listservs but, other than that rudimentary exposure, I was not a web aficionado. As such, several questions immediately occurred to me as I prepared to write web-based instruction.
Despite these questions, I was intrigued by the idea of using the web as a professional development opportunity.
"How can I envision what I cannot see..."
Sue and Sue (1990), relying on the work of Edward T. Hall, discussed high and low context communication.
A high (HC) communication or message is one that is anchored in the physical context (situation) or internalized in the person. Less reliance is placed on the explicit code or message content. A HC communication relies heavily on nonverbals and the group identification/understanding shared by those communicating . . . . Low-context (LC) cultures place a greater reliance on the verbal part of the message (Sue & Sue, 1990, p. 58).
When one applies this high/low context configuration to the web, it is clear that communication via that medium is low context. The reader must rely nearly completely on the denotation of the written word. Any connotation could easily be misconstrued. Hence, the introduction of "smilies" and other uniquely Internet forms of communication which add more context.
As a high context person, I prefer a lot of information to synthesize ideas. I need to know the situation and people involved to understand what is occurring. For people with my preference for visual learning and propensity for context, the web is unfamiliar territory.
"Who would sign up for such a course?"
Profoundly different from my experience as a professor, I wondered, how would I convey information without the benefit of immediate and ongoing discussion? Because I was accustomed to teaching in face-to-face settings, I had no way to judge the audience for the short course. Where did they work? How much time did they have to devote to this? What were their titles? How long had they worked in student affairs? Any previous educational experiences and professional interests was information I would never know. In other words, there was very little context with which to build understanding.
"And...who are you?"
While I was unable to read the audience and their needs, they too had no way to judge me. I would face perhaps one of the largest groups of people I had ever addressed and they would have no way, except through the words on the screen, to judge my character.
This experience caused me to realize that I rely heavily on who I am as a person to convey ideas and knowledge. Some of these ideas, particularly as related to race and cultural pluralism, are difficult ones to discuss. In additional to this difficulty, the intersection of my beliefs and identity means that it helps to know me to understand the content I wish to convey.
An additional difficulty in the writing was the fact that the content for the short course was based on an edited book. How could I remain true to the chapter authors? The web and its medium put distance between me and the audience. Through the short course, I was to mediate a situation which further distanced the audience and writers. I struggled with the ethics of that situation and resolved to be as true as possible to the ideas, perspectives, and words of the chapter authors. Any perspective I might offer was subordinate to that of the chapter authors.
"It's an electronic world now..."
When writing these lessons I used the Internet as much as possible to gather research. I searched websites and on-line articles for information to enhance the lessons. I did this despite the fact that it was often difficult to assess the quality and trustworthiness of these resources. The information I found was not contained in refereed journal articles or publications with high standards to be met before publication was granted. Often, the websites found in my searches were papers from college classes, tomes from ideologically motivated organizations (conservative and liberal), and well-composed and formatted opinions from individuals with a point to be made.
As a further emulation of the electronic nature of this experience, I wrote and edited the lessons on a computer, emailed attachments to the website staff, and used electronic mail for communication. I worked with two people I never met, sent emails to a place I never saw. The only piece of paper I received was my honorarium check. For those of us accustomed to face-to-face communication, conducting this business completely via the Internet was a new experience.
Giving Voice tells the stories of people who experienced tragedies and triumphs in their lives. These topics are difficult ones: student suicide, alcohol related death of a resident, triracial identity, adult child of an alcoholic, and classism. While I knew that short course participants would have high expectations about the professional development to be received, I also recognized that they would probably not have the opportunity to read the book. They would depend solely on the short course lessons to convey the information they hoped to achieve. The lessons would be written as stand alone pieces, growing out of a text but needing to be understood in isolation from that text.
Writing about extremely sensitive issues for an unknown audience causes several ethical dilemmas. The Giving Voice issues were ones with the potential to cause considerable pain for participants with personal or professional experience in these matters. Despite the intimacy of the topics, I would have no way to gauge the look in people's eyes to know whether or not I should tread more softly, offer a comforting word, or challenge a hurtful perspective. Once I wrote the words, there would be no way to modulate the effect.
In conversation, even discourse in relatively large classes, students and professors can tentatively approach their subject. If well-received, you can go deeper. If blank looks or, even worse, opposition is felt, you can retreat to a safer position. Challenge or controversy might still be offered but through a kinder, gentler, and, often for the speaker, safer tone.
"Be concise...I don't have time."
Writing on the web entails using a limited amount of space without the luxury of extended explanation. Because the sensitive topics from Giving Voice are prone to misunderstanding, utmost care had to be exercised. The words I chose to convey these sensitive topics assumed tremendous weight. When writing, I tried to imagine all the ways the lesson could be misconstrued or misinterpreted in unintended ways. I weighed and reweighed each sentence and word for how it might be interpreted by people who would never meet me, never see me, and, perhaps, never read anything written by me again. This was the most careful writing I had ever attempted in my professional career.
An additional source of concern about the care was the realization that these lessons would be posted on the web for an extended people of time. While articles in journals have a wide circulation, the chances of all members of ACPA reading a piece in the Journal of College Student Development are slim. In this case, lessons were being delivered to participant's email box. While I, like many people, often put messages in a "to be read later" folder, the range of potential distribution was daunting.
Hypertext and the advanced capabilities of computers to read graphics opens endless format possibilities on the Internet. I am constantly amazed at the design of information delivered to my relatively low-technology computer. Despite these possibilities, the www.studentaffairs.com staff made the commendable decision to expand access by using basic text in the lessons. Student affairs staff with the most rudimentary computers (e.g., no graphics capability) were to receive the same lessons as staff with the most technologically-advanced machines. As such, only limited formatting could be employed.
All documents were translated to ASCII text. In this age of Power Point presentations, Java script, and media sophistication, I was limited to extremely basic formatting tools. In other words, the quality of the lessons would not be in the presentation but in the content of the words themselves. While one would always hope to have words carry the meaning, it is a reality of modern life that "the medium is the message."
A hot topic among faculty regarding web-based instruction, posting information on the web, and web-based publishing is intellectual property considerations. In regard to the short courses jointly sponsored by www.studentaffairs.com and ACPA, the following questions were raised:
While I probably should have considered the intellectual property issues, I was more concerned with the longevity and range afforded by the website. The accessibility, flexibility, and permanency afforded by the web's powerful search engines placed this web-based instruction in a different realm than conventional writing. The scope of writing posted on the web was profoundly different from writing accessed through professional development membership and libraries. The flexibility of the web and ease with which your words can be directly delivered to people heightened the permanency and consequence of the writing.
The potential for student affairs professional development on the web is tremendous. The range of people in higher education who have access to the Internet means that listservs, bulletin boards, and other means of communication can serious influence professional development. But, there is a danger.
Perhaps some learning and business should never be conducted in this medium. Perhaps some topics (e.g., the sensitive ones discussed in Giving Voice) are better addressed in more intimate settings than the web affords. Perhaps people deserve to have some discussions conducted in close community and fellowship.
If student affairs professionals are to use the Internet for web-based instruction, professional development, and services to students, we need to be very careful about the context in which the information is presented. Only by making the context (e.g., political perspectives, personal points of view, attributes, educational background) transparent can students and staff members judge the value of what is being presented.
In the past, editorial boards of journal articles monitored the quality of information being presented. Much of the information on the web, including the lessons I wrote and posted, have no such standard of quality.
Manning, K. (Ed.). (1999). Giving Voice to Critical Campus Issues: Qualitative research in student affairs. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (1990). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.