2008 Virtual Case Study (VCS) Scenario
You have recently been hired by McApple College, a medium sized school of 6,000 students an hour west of Boston. McApple, 80% residential, has a reputation for technological innovations, both within and beyond the classroom. This semester you have been assigned to the division-wide student affairs staff development team. The team has representation from all areas within the division-residence life, student activities, counseling, student health, orientation services, disability services, career services, and judicial affairs. Previous programs have centered on professional staff supervision issues, programming on a shoestring budget, and leadership development. The current agenda, coming directly from the Vice President for Student Affairs, is to come up with a program which will identify and describe, in some detail, five issues, programs or services, within the student services realm, where technology has radically changed how the college delivers its programs and services to students.
This exercise is not to simply be a brainstorming session of individual's opinions. The team has been charged to examine their choices and to incorporate information from the current student affairs literature as well as other sources too.
As far as direction, the Vice President has referred the committee to the directive of the institution's President back in August when he declared the current academic year to be "The Year of the Personal Computer." It was just about 25 years ago that the personal computer we know today, was born. The point the Vice President was making, in remarks emailed to all committee members, was the group should think in the longer term in addition to more recent technological advances. The committee, he went on, should also think about how staffing structures, duties and methods of communications have significantly evolved with the adoption of technology.
The presentation should utilize PowerPoint and will be delivered at a division-wide work session after May graduation, but before early June's summer session begins.
Judges will be utilizing the following criteria:
- practicality of approach
- innovation of approach
- use of literature both within and outside student affairs
- organization of presentation
- rationalization for chosen responses
POINTS TO REMEMBER
- Your group should utilize relevant student affairs literature, where appropriate, for their presentation.
- Utilization of outside sources, URLs, articles, etc. are encouraged, but cannot include input from individuals outside the team.
- Submissions should be well-thought out and organized.
- Submissions must be a self-contained PowerPoint file. Please submit only one file per entry. All material to be considered by the judges must be contained in that file.
Max file size is 1.5MB