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The Chronicle Technology Forum concluded today with a half-day session. The first session was about distance education so it wasn’t that relevant to Wake Forest, which is grounded in personal face-to-face relationships between student and faculty. I know that Lauren P. has found value in working with distance librarians because they tend to use technology in creative ways that can be relevant in a blended environment, but I didn’t find that value in this particular discussion. Still, it is good to remember that there is more than one way to deliver higher education and we at Wake Forest would do well to respect that.

I was looking forward to a session on enrollment management, as I am curiously interested in the topic. It was a rather shallow treatment, however, with a consultant hashing over past accomplishments and then a sales presentation on Blackboard Connect Ed. There were a couple of nuggets: recruiting costs $600 per freshman in a public environment and $2000 per freshman for privates. The Admissions arms race continues now in the social networking sphere. Schools are texting, twittering, and friending students as young as 8th grade!

The final session was a total loss on me as it was on “The Enemy Within: How to Predict and Prevent Computer Attacks from People Inside Your Institution.” Scary! I let Rick Matthews worry about that and instead used my time to construct an internal “hierarchy of thought” as I try to figure out the twitter/blogging art forms from private to public willingness:

• thought stays in my head
• thought is recorded in private notes
• thought is put on Twitter/Facebook (but not on public group hashtag)
• thought is put on Twitter/Facebook (and public group hashtag)
• thought is put on Twitter/Facebook and hashtag with live projection during session
• thought is put in blog (like this one) after daily reflection

I’m a Myers-Briggs INTJ, what can I say?

Lynn