My Higher Ed Tech Road Journal

Over the past few months, I’ve worked with, spoke with, and visited with several different higher ed tech companies. Obviously I’ve worked in this space myself for the past nearly three years, but through this experience, I’ve garnered a unique perspective on our greater ecosystem in higher ed.

Coming up through traditional campus based student affairs, I had no idea what was out there. Learning more about all the different organizations that help support the mission of institutions was helpful to appreciate how important these partnerships are. Done right, they augment our work with students. They don’t replace it.

With that being said, there are other valuable lessons I took to heart as I met with various folks in higher ed tech that I hope can resonate with other campus based professionals.

Equipped with the Best Tools

I’ve found it to be far more ubiquitous in the ed tech world to have the best tools to support our work. It helps with everything from collaboration, communication, expenses, HR, analytics, and student support. It seems like it is just a different mindset for the most part. Nothing is preventing campuses from using most of these tools (I know privacy can be a big concern). A lot of them have catered to colleges, there just needs to be the willingness to invest the time and energy in implementing it. We can often experience a lot of inertia with our processes, especially in higher ed. Now more than ever with the disruptive demographic challenges and competitive marketplace for students, we need to make sure we’re doing the best work we can to recruit and retain students. We also need to be doing this in the most efficient way possible with modern tools on our side. Take a look at tools like Workday, Slack, Salesforce, Presence, Roompact, Zoom, and AdmitHub.

Remote, Flexible Work

Something else that is fairly fundamental to ed tech teams is a remote first policy. I currently work fully remote for a company that is mostly remote. It’s been a great perk to have this flexibility to work wherever and however will allow me to be the most productive. This is a topic I’ve written about before and it is even getting notice from places like Inside Higher Ed. I won’t belabor the point again here, but we really need to consider this more so that we can attract and keep high quality talent.

Job Landscape is Wide Open

The last point I’d like the emphasize is that for anyone looking to work in higher ed but having trouble finding a good fit, there is a wide array of different jobs out there now. So many organizations want people with formal campus based experience to bring that perspective to their team. Whether it is working directly with campuses for support, doing trainings, marketing, or back end admin support, there is a place for everyone in higher ed tech. I’ve greatly appreciated still being able to support student success while being able to work in a far more healthy environment for me.

I think about this topic a lot and have for a while. I wrote as a contributor to the Defectors series a few years ago which has been a great insight into the experiences of other folks in this space. Something else to note here is that just because you leave a campus based role doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t ever go back. I know of some people who have gone back and forth. You can certainly contribute valuable knowledge coming back that you perhaps may never been able to garner otherwise.

I hope that we can get to a place where the ed tech space is discussed in graduate programs. I hope we get rid of “vendor” as a dirty word at conferences. I hope we can aspire to be a more adaptable field that can measure up to the expectations our students have of us to be digital, nimble, accessible, and responsive. I hope everyone who wants to stay and work in higher ed can find environments that appreciate them and jobs that fulfill them.

I’m always happy to discuss this further with anyone interested. Please connect with me if you have questions!

Thanks for stopping by!

Thoughts on Time & Space

As I come back to the world after winter break and a bit of hiatus with the podcast and the blog, I was reflecting on the clarity I feel like I had during this time. I didn’t have to do anything other than work and take care of the apartment, spend time with my wife and our friends, and hang out with our dog. It was great.

This down time was precipitated by my new job I got in August. It is a remote job and encourages working flexibly. We have team members and constituents all over the country, so it makes sense to sometimes plug in a little later if you’re on the East Coast to collaborate with West Coast folks. Also, we have to travel a bit for different things, so if you need to catch up on work at odd hours, it’s totally okay. There is also a unlimited PTO policy so as long as you’re not leaving everyone in the dark to cover for you, you can take any needed time for special occasions or just to unplug during the holidays for example. Lastly, I don’t have to commute any more, which is awesome just for the time saved but also the stress. Since the new job has a lot of moving pieces to learn and the flexibility I was looking for, I winded down some side projects so I could take a bit of a breather.

This is the context for the past few months for me. I feel ready to ease back in to some of these side projects I have now. It was funny that since I had more room in my life for other things, I was more thoughtful about what I filled it with. I had a lot of momentum filling my limited precious time with podcasting, writing, editing other people’s shows, etc. before I got this new job. But now that I was going to be able to be making more money and have more time on my hands, I figured I should step back to rethink my priorities.

There have been a lot of recent articles this past year examining burnout and self-care. They’ve made me think a lot about the things I should be focusing on and how I nurture my own energy. Something I say a lot is that you make time for what you want to make time for. This is how we subconsciously reflect our priorities in the choices we make and the actions we take. This can also be retooled as an intentional way of being. We must make time for the things that are important to us. Otherwise, we’re going to build up internal stress and pressure, and not be our best selves. This manifested for me when it came to playing games. I didn’t make it a priority and I was far more stressed most of time because of it. Now that my life has settled down and I have more space, I’m playing a little bit almost every day.

It’s all about values and how we value our own time. We can work all day and every weekend, but what do we have to show for it? Certainly not much in the short term. Often we’re salaried and not getting overtime. We’re setting unhealthy expectations about our availability that we have to work to undo. We also always have the opportunity cost of not being able to do anything else we could be doing with that time. The relationships with the people around us and our other obligations will suffer. And yes, this includes making time for the gym, going to the doctor, and getting other errands done.

I hope these thoughts on time and space are helpful to you. I wanted to write again and this felt the most salient as both a general update on what I’ve been up to and also what I’ve been thinking a lot about.

Earning Extra Income Online - Ideas To Try

Credit

If you’re looking for ways in which you could earn some extra cash or even launch a small business on the internet this year; you’ve come to the right place. While there are hundreds of different options on the table, the ideas on this page should help to point you in the right direction and give you some much-needed inspiration. Best of all? You don’t need previous experience to get started with any of these concepts. You just need a willingness to learn and the confidence to make yourself appear like you know what you’re doing during the early stages. Of course, you could end up becoming an expert in the industry in a few years.

Writing or Graphic Design

There are lots of opportunities for anyone with skills in writing or graphic design to make money online today according to experts like Anna Johansson. In most instances, you just have to register an account on some of the most popular freelancing websites. You can then begin to bid for jobs and make lots of useful contacts. As you become successful; it’s possible that some of your new clients will attempt to employ your services outside of those freelancing websites. When that happens, you are in the perfect position to launch a small business or something similar. You will earn extra income at the very least.

SEO or Marketing

If you want to follow in the footsteps of such industry celebrities like Danny DeMichele and other entrepreneurs of that caliber; you might consider launching a new SEO or online marketing firm. Again, you can do that from the comfort of your laptop during the early stages, and it’s possible to find clients using those same freelance websites. However, you will need to launch a dedicated domain for your brand as soon as possible. You can then use Google Adwords and other tools to drive traffic to your website. Offer services like SEO and social media management for the best results.

Affiliates or Drop-shipping

People with skills in web design who need extra income to pay their way through college or something similar can make a small fortune every year if they launch affiliate sites that promote products the general public wants to buy. There is also a lot of potential in the concept of drop-shipping, and so you might like to research some of the manufacturers and suppliers that provide that service. The idea is that you will advertise the products on your website, and then the manufacturer or another firm will handle all aspects of delivery while you make a small commission on each sale.

Now you know about some straightforward ideas for making extra income and perhaps even starting a small business online this year; nothing should stand in the way of your success. As with anything else in this world; you have the find the right levels of creativity and motivation to make a killing in any of those marketplaces. Still, compared to the effort you’d have to exert to start most other types of new business, the ideas mentioned here today are pretty easy. So, what’s holding you back?

What Higher Ed Can Learn From Remote Work

Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is the concept of remote work (also referred to as working from home, telecommuting, etc.). It can be something someone does full-time or part-time for their job, and is becoming increasingly common (with the exception of some recent high profile retractions from companies like IBM and Yahoo in the past few years). When remote work policies are done right, you're maximizing the potential of your team who have the flexibility to work in whatever way is best for them. I read a great book recently on this topic about Wordpress and their entirely remote global team. That book really set me off on this path of being an avid supporter of these sorts of policies.

My theory is that if higher ed supported more flexible work structures, we could move towards better student support and access as well as improved employee wellbeing.

Here are the main lessons I'd advise higher ed professionals takeaway from remote work best practices:

Presence Doesn't Equal Productivity

So the first and biggest barrier to remote work is typically the perception that it will reduce productivity. This is not the case, and there is pretty definitive studies to support that stance, this being one of them. It definitely requires supervision and support, but so does in person work. As long as you're providing the right tools (like using Slack, Google Hangouts, and the like to keep everyone connected) and guidance, as well as consequences if someone isn't meeting expectations, then remote work can be successful.

The fallacy people keep falling back to is the belief that being in an office with other people automatically makes us more productive, or that we will miss out on things if we aren't physically present.  Someone can be just as productive (if not more so) working remotely. I know for me personally, I need to move around to different locations to keep being continuously productive throughout the day. So if I'm working on personal projects, I'll sometimes start at home, then go to a coffee shop, then at times I've gone to co-working spaces. All we need to do to address the other concerns is make sure we work deliberately to help everyone feel included and involved no matter where they're working from. We can't treat remote workers as if they're working onsite. Similar advice can be helpful, but it is a different setting, so it needs to be treated as such. 

Whether you're implementing policies like this or not, your takeaway should be the same; employees need proper guidance, consistent communication, adequate resources, and fair consequences to be best positioned for success. 

Make Sure Your Whole Team Feels Included

Great remote teams really necessitate that the manager make everyone socially involved and feel comfortable contributing to the team dynamic. In-person teams obviously benefit from this as well but managers tend to let it happen naturally (which can be hit or miss). Intentionally fostering positive team interactions can be simple and quick, but have a big impact over time.

Generally, you need to abide by some ground rules to set the stage for everyone to feel included if you have people working in the office and remotely. The big thing here is making sure everyone is on equal footing versus some people in a conference room together and others calling in. This never works well with someone always getting lost in the conversation. Also, make sure you're emailing/chatting out important info, versus just popping in to let people know. Lastly, invite everyone to gatherings, whether they're in the office or not. They'll appreciate the thought even if they can't make it.

Also, team building activities are important since especially with remote teams, it can be hard for the small talk and bonding to happen that might be easier in person. There are some you can do with any team, whether they're together or not. This will help greatly with everyone feeling comfortable communicating and collaborating.

The lesson here for higher ed folks, is that people need different things to feel included and to let their voice be heard. Make sure you're creating space, respect, and camaraderie to allow for your team's dynamic to flourish. 

We Need to Support Employees' Whole Life

This is really the emotional core of this idea. We all lead complex, busy lives. We need to be able to take care of things during the day during the week. This can help tremendously with letting some of the pressure and stress off ourselves since it can be hard to find the time otherwise. Being flexible with working hours and location can be a huge load off of your employees shoulders. They can be home for repairs or deliveries, to look after a sick family member, or to have an important appointment. This way, they are feeling better, don't have to deal with a commute, and are able to focus and be more productive.

In education, our work can be physically and emotionally tiring. Allowing for some flexibility, especially after a tough time, can be highly beneficial. You can make sure someone is physically present in the office if you expect walk-ins, but otherwise, you can still get most of our administrative work done virtually nowadays. Plus, you could make digital platforms available to connect with students on if you really wanted it, which could be helpful for people to be remote more often and maybe work varied hours.

Modern work life has evolved greatly to allow for more possibilities in how we each are able to contribute to our teams. You'll miss out on great talent if you limit how people can work. If you open your mind to new ideas and ways to get work done, you can take your efforts to new heights and maximize each of your employees' potential. Which in the end, is going to help your students too.

Want even more advice on remote work? Check out this great guide from Trello!

Book Review: The Year Without Pants - Wordpress and the Future of Work

This 2013 book by Scott Berkun explores his journey into the unique workplace culture behind WordPress, which powers a huge amount of the blogs and sites on the internet. Coming from his previous experience at Microsoft, Berkun comes in with an outsider's perspective on how a bunch of people all over the world can work together remotely to help power twenty percent of the web (comes out to be millions of websites).

To put it simply, I really enjoyed this book. It has some great insights into what makes teams and companies work. Everything from workflow, culture, to relationships is covered here through stories and a sort of journal of Berkun's year at WordPress. I highlighted so many things from this book. While Berkun is certainly relative about why the workplace culture behind Wordpress works and its limitations, he has a lot of great general thoughts about management, teamwork, and getting things done. These can be taken by anyone to help them do better with whatever they do. Not every company can have everyone work remotely, not every company can simply mash together their business with how WordPress works, but there are plenty of solid insights here.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Trust is expensive to build and easy to destroy, which is why it's rare."

"The fundamental mistake companies that talk about innovation make is keeping barriers to entry high. They make it hard to even try out ideas, blind to how much experimentation you need to sort the good ideas from the bad."

"This is the advice paradox: no matter how much advice you have, you must still decide intuitively what to use and what to avoid. Just as there is an advice paradox, there is a data paradox: no matter how much data you have, you still depend on your intuition for deciding how to interpret and then apply the data."

"Your model of the universe can be a perfect model of the past, but the past is not a reliable predictor of the future because there is no such thing."

"The culture in any organization is shaped every day by the behavior of the most powerful person in the room."

"It's a great bullshit test of any boss who says, 'X is important.' If she doesn't match that statement with resources, she's incompetent, insincere, or both. If it's important, prove it."

Also, I will accept the irony that I writing this review about a guy working at WordPress on my SquareSpace blog (I used to use WordPress). I really enjoyed the platform and still use it on other sites I write for. I would use it again since the blogging part of it was great, but I wanted some more functionality out of the rest of my site, so I left. Nevertheless, Berkun's experience working at WordPress really captured some of my frustrations that I've had working as a full-time professional and some of the aspirations I'd have for organizations I'd be a part of.

I highly recommend you check out this book! You can find it at any of your favorite book retailers.

Thanks for stopping by!