The Technology portion of the NASPA/ACPA Core Competencies involves using digital tools to advance student learning. The overall goal is to help bridge the digital literacy gap and assist students in becoming more global citizens. The items listed below show how I have gained sufficient knowledge in this area to use in the future.
Internship: University of Texas at Austin Website & Marketing
At my summer 2015 internship with the Longhorn Center for Community Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin, I was tasked with updating the main website for the department, as well as creating a new website for the Alternative Breaks program for the office. This task meant learning how to use technology as a tool for students to easily learn about the program and how to get involved. Additionally, I helped to create a marketing strategy for the university that involved a campaign for the campus to do a large number of community service hours in the 2015-2016 school year, as well as upload those hours onto the GivePulse platform, a technological tool for tracking students engagement in service. To complete this secondary task, I had to familiarize myself with the GivePulse platform and meet with constituents on campus that could help with launching the marketing campaign, including major colleges such as Liberal Arts. Additionally, I learned about the department’s iniatives to work with Google to host a Google Community Leaders Program, which aims to mobilize college students in bridging the digital literacy divide that exists across the world. Working so closely with technology during my summer with the University of Texas at Austin taught me how powerful of a tool technology can be in transferring information and communicating with different parties. I believe that technology will continue to grow and shape the field of higher education in the future. Please see the following items below as evidence of this competency: the Longhorn Center for Community Engagement Alternative Breaks website that I created, a link to the Google Community Leaders Program, and a link to the GivePulse website for UT Austin that I helped to organize and maintain.
Alternative Breaks Website (created summer 2015)
Google Community Leaders Program
GivePulse Program for McCombs School of Business (site that I created and maintained)
Course: EDH 5624, American College Student
For the American College Student course in fall 2014, we delved into the idea of the millennial college student and what made them differ from college students in other time periods. Part of our class assignments were to create and maintain a blog about the American College Student to help share our knowledge to other constituency groups at peer institutions across the nation. Sharing our thoughts as a class in a joint online blog was daunting, but showed the ability to create and share information and how that could add value to our classroom dialogue space. I think that blogs and online educational tools can be really useful in engaging students in conversation about what they are learning. Please see the link to an entry I made (mlm14m) on the FSU #AmColStu (American College Student) blog.
Assistantship: Qualtrics Assessment
Through my assistantship, I have utilized technology to capture assessment data in many instances. Most notably, I created a Qualtrics assessment in fall 2015 to send to students and nonprofit agencies to see how their experience that semester went and what each party learned through the process. Since many of the students were involved in several programs and in the interest of not over-surveying any students, I created one Qualtrics survey with skip logic to help students only take one survey but indicate through it which programs they were involved with. This information was helpful in making changes to the program in the spring of 2016 by noting student feedback. I think that technology can help students easily give feedback and normalize the process of giving and getting feedback. In order for students to be global leaders in their community, I think they must understand the importance of reflecting on an experience and communicating what they learned from an experience. Please see the Qualtrics link below of a survey that was used on students during the fall 2015 semester to assess the Community Outreach and Community Ambassador programs.
Qualtrics Link for Community Ambassadors & Community Outreach
Future Goals
- Utilize social media as a marketing and dialogue tool for programs in my future role(s)
- Develop and utilize online technology tools, such as GivePulse, to help engage students and community partners in community development
- Assist in bridging the digital literacy divide by providing access and knowledge about technology to both students and community partners
MORGAN MATCHETT 