I am reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by management consultant David Allen. I have only read one-third of the book. I want to finish the book. I want to finish the book because I want to write a review on my blog about it. Applying Allen’s method, here’s how I proceed:

1. Collect things that command my attention. Writing a blog post is one of many things — including getting new glasses, developing a student survey and preparing the 2010-11 budget for my department –commanding my attention right now. I collect them all in a little application called NoteBook. But you could use any “bucket” to collect all your stuff — as long as it’s all in one place.

My NoteBook table of contents

2. Process all that “stuff” in the bucket. This is where I, and I’m sure many of you, get bogged down. So in this case the item is “Write review of David Allen’s book.” I ask myself: “Is this item actionable?” – If the answer is “yes” (which it is), then I determine what the next action item is. The next action might be: Read Chapter 4. If the action takes less than two minutes, I just do it. Right now. But in my case, reading Chapter 4 will take more than two minutes. So I have two choices: 1. Delegate it. Um, not really an option (although admittedly I do occasionally pretend to have read books that really my partner has read and summarized for me. This, by the way, is a totally legitimate form of non-reading according to Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.) But in this case, I really am going to read the book myself. But not in two minutes. So I defer it. I can defer it to my Calendar (to do at a specific time) or make it my Next Action (to do as soon as I can.)

3. Organize all those actions. In this case, my action item – Read Chapter 4 of David Allen’s Book — is not something I can actually schedule. So it goes on my “Next Actions List”. There are other lists — an Incubator (for stuff that’s just not going to get done in the near future, but you don’t want to lose), a “Waiting For” list, etc But in this case, we have a longer-than-two-minute, non-delegatable action that needs to be tracked. So it goes on the Next Action List.

4. Review your list. There’s a lot of stuff on your list. How do you decide what to do right now? (see #5, below) Allen gives us a few models but I like this one: consider your context (what can be done…in the bathtub?), with the time available (…in about half an hour before somebody kicks me out of the bathroom), and energy available (…while I have enough caffeine in my system to focus) and is a high priority (…i.e. will give me the highest payoff?) Answer: Read Chapter 4 of David Allen’s book.

5. Do. So I read Chapter 4. Check.

And then the process starts over again. Next Action: “Write witty review of David Allen’s book, without actually finishing it!”. Done.

So, two questions linger: (1) if I can apply the method after having ready only four chapters, what are the other nine about? and (2) what does this have to do with student affairs?

Answer to the first: I’ve given you an overly simplistic explanation of the method. The rest of the book gives you much more depth on issues like project planning (how to get that idea off the ground), managing e-mail, or how to deal with your “someday/maybe” list. I do intend to read the rest. But my goal was to write a new blog post. That was the source of my stress – and it’s been dealt with (in a pretty ingenious way.)

On the second question: productivity is critical in student affairs. We have to be accountable to both students and the public and we simply cannot afford to operate in a reactive manner, waiting for the next issue, conflict or crisis to come across our desk. Yet, there’s a skill set involved in moving projects forward that is not typically delivered as part of student affairs training and education. We’re just taught to understand student development,  to coach and mentor, to take direction, and to respond to situations. If a book called “Productivity in Student Affairs” existed, I’d have read that instead. But as far as I know, it doesn’t.

Getting Things Done seems to work perfectly well for me. I’ve just knocked off a major stress factor (keeping this blog up-to-date!) using Allen’s method. Now on to that budget.

– Deanne Fisher.

Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration:
A guide for campus leaders
Adrianna L. Kezar & Jaime Lester
Published by Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Imprint. 2009.

If you are interested in improving student learning and engagement on your campus, then you have probably deduced that collaboration is, at least to some degree, the key to success. It inspires innovation, leads to better service, motivates staff, and can even decrease costs. So if collaboration is such a compelling solution to our woes, why, then, is it so difficult to achieve? Adrianna Kezar and Jaime Lester provide some of the answers by studying, in great depth, the organizational culture of institutions that demonstrate a high level of collaboration.

Unlike other sectors, including the corporate world, that have adapted to the collaboration imperative, higher education is uniquely defined by its “siloed, bureaucratic, and hierarchical” organizational structure. Reward structures for faculty recognize individual accomplishments almost exclusively; autonomy is cherished; the culture values specialists and professionals rather than generalists. Working against these long-held traditions, trends and values is not easy but Kezar and Lester provide a very practical guide to establishing a culture of collaboration on campus.

The book is aimed at leaders – and most of the strategies outlined would require the leadership of someone of significant formal authority within the institution. Collaborative campuses have formalized social networks, they capitalize on committee work, open up meetings, build in reward structures and have designed physical spaces to facilitate interaction. But there’s lots of advice in here for informal leaders as well – ways for change agents to promote the collaboration agenda even when it appears to be unsupported at the very top.

Herein lies the paradox. Collaboration is the antithesis of top-down, command and control organizational structure. And yet without the support of the top of the hierarchy, efforts to collaborate are often frustrating and futile. For those of you who have been working diligently and thoughtfully toward a new way of doing things, you will find validation in this book. Here’s an idea: maybe use it as a thank you gift when an influential administrator speaks at your next event?

– Deanne Fisher

The sixth installment of Open Book – a annual panel discussion on recent literature in student affairs – has just come to a close. Thanks to Tim Rahilly, Margot Bell and Bruce Belbin for sharing their thoughts on such a wide range of topics. If you didn’t get a copy of it at the session (or you didn’t attend the session!) you can download our 2009booklist.

For those of you new to the blog, please contribute. Any visitor can comment on one of the reviews. Just hit the “Leave a comment” link at the bottom of any article.

If you’d like to contribute a full review, you have two options: 1. send it to me and I’ll post it for you or 2. send me an email requesting a “contributor” account and I’ll set you up so you can post. (If you are new to WordPress, you will find it quite easy to use – fun really.)

I’ll keep posting reviews throughout the year – and look forward to seeing you all in Edmonton for Open Book VII!

- Deanne.

The annual CACUSS conference is only a week away and my fellow panelists and I are frantically reading away in preparation for sixth annual installment of the Open Book session. Our complete list of recommended (or not!) recent student affairs titles will be available at the session (Wednesday, June 17, 11 am) but in case you need a bit more enticing to come see us — or you want to read ahead and contribute your own thoughts — here are a few of the books we’re reading:

Margot Bell (UBC) is delving into the 2005 NASPA publication The Seventh Learning College Principle: a framework for transformational change, described as a unique resource for institutions wanting to become a more learner-centred organization. Margot will also follow-up on one of the keynote topics this year by reviewing ) Learning Communities and Student Affairs: Partnering for powerful learning published by the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education.

Our newest member of the panel, Bruce Belbin (NAIT), will take us into the field of management in student affairs with a review of Hiring Right: Conducting successful searches in higher education and then opens a discussion on broader issues in higher education with the provocatively titled Faculty Incivility: The Rise of the academic bully culture and what to do about it.

Tim Rahilly (SFU) – undoubtedly the panelist with the most ambitious reading list – is still narrowing his focus. He’ll likely tackle some student affairs practice literature like Student Conduct Practice: The Complete guide for student affairs professionals or the new Amy Reynolds book Helping College Students: Developing essential support skills for student affairs practice. Tim is also considering adding to Bruce’s management discussion with a review of The No Asshole Rule: Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn’t.

In addition to revisiting a few of the titles I’ve discussed here on the CACUSS Reads blog, I’m planning to review a new how-to on assessment by John Schuh called…wait for it… Assessment Methods for Student Affairs. I’m also just finishing up and interesting book on Organizing for Collaboration in Higher Education: a guide for campus leaders.

Our list includes many more titles — but you have to come to the session to get it!

See you there,

– Deanne Fisher.

A few months ago, I posted a short review of Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation, a provocatively titled tirade about his profound disappointment with the so-called digital natives – those born with the advantage of information at their fingertips – and their seemingly narcissistic, celebrity-obsessed, self-indulgent ways.

Now comes the antidote: Grown Up Digital: How the net generation is changing your world by Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, and adjunct professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Where Bauerlein sees unhealthy addiction to gaming, Tapscott sees new forms of global collaboration. While Bauerlein laments the loss of literature as a popular pastime, Tapscott revels in the development of new reading skills – non-linear reading that requires sorting and synthesis. In other words, where one sees the end of civilization as we know it, the other sees salvation.

Chances are, if you work in student affairs, you’re predisposed to liking young people. You probably don’t need Tapscott to tell you that young people hold the potential to rid our planet of many of its most pernicious problems. But you have probably also wondered whether the Internet, and particularly social media, are hindering or helping in realizing the potential of youth.

Blaming the Internet for problems like disengagement in traditional democracy, disaffected learners, overconfident employees or teenage bullying is, according to Tapscott, like blaming the library for ignorance. The Internet is becoming an easy target, a scapegoat when we don’t know what else to do.

Drawing on a massive (proprietary) research project involving interviews with almost 10,000 people, most of them members of the “net generation” – those born from 1977-1997 – Tapscott finds almost no reason to fear youth or the Internet. Quite the opposite: “Not only are the kids alright, but as a generation they are poised to transform every institution of society – for the better,” he concludes.

He reserves some of his only words of caution for issues of privacy. “Net geners are giving up their privacy,” he writes, “without realizing it.”

But the rest of the book is dedicated to his relentless optimism. Written post-Obama, Grown Up Digital has the advantage of hindsight in its analysis of the campaign’s use of social media to engage young Americans. The book also includes very current and useful chapters on how education, the workplace and civic society are all being transformed by the new norms of the net generation: freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, play, collaboration, speed and innovation.

Grown Up Digital is so unremittingly positive in its outlook, it grows tedious. Whatever the issue at hand, Tapscott has an anecdote – often involving one of his own (now young adult) children – to turn conventional wisdom on its head. Why are kids moving back home with their parents in the mid-20’s? They’re not slackers, they just have better relationships with their folks than we did in our day. Sure, they steal music, but 70 per cent of them also volunteer! And so on.

A balanced view, the book is not. It is a full-on counterattack on naysayers like Bauerlein and others. In the final write-off of anyone over 30 who is still skeptical, Tapscott coins a new term: “NGenophobia: the irrational and morbid fear of youth, especially with regards to their use of the Internet.” Ouch.

– Deanne Fisher.

Admittedly, I’m finding it a bit of a stretch to include The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking (2007, Harvard Business School Press) in a blog dedicated to recent literature in student affairs. But author Roger Martin is one of the keynote speakers at this year’s CACUSS Conference so I thought it fitting that I give his book a read in anticipation of the wisdom he might share with us in Waterloo in June.

The book is about how great leaders think – the ways in which they approach decisions and what sets them apart from the rest of us conventional types. The focus is on business leadership. I know what you’re thinking: the business leadership model (based largely on competition) does not work in higher education (based on warm fuzzies.) But to dismiss what Martin has to share on that basis would be to prove his point. Successful leaders open their minds to opposing views; how we see the world around us – our stance – is a construction of our own experiences. There are other ways of looking at problems, other models, and successful leaders don’t fear them, they leverage them.

The first half of The Opposable Mind is dedicated to case studies of successful leaders – CEOs and business “rock stars” mostly, with a couple of really interesting (from my perspective) figures – Piers Handling of the Toronto International Film Festival, and Victoria Hale, who pioneered not-for-profit drug development to address global health issues. The creativity and innovation of some of these leaders is truly inspiring but that’s not what Martin wants us to leave with. His point – and what he spends the second half of the book explaining – is that this stuff is not necessarily innate. It can be learned. We can train our minds to hold opposing concepts in tandem, to keep our options open, to resist simplification.

For me, the most salient lessons revolve around the tensions between simplicity and complexity. I work in a very complex institutional environment (the same one as Martin) and am constantly challenged by colleagues to find simple solutions to what are really very complicated problems. But Martin confirms for me that simplification, though comforting, impairs integrative thinking and can lead to poor decisions.

By page 91 of this short book, we’re in Martin’s classroom of MBA students at the Rotman School of Management, where he is the Dean, witnessing how he teaches them to think like a Moses Znaimer or Isadore Sharp. The concepts are laid out clearly enough, though without the benefit of the experiences an MBA student participates in, they remain somewhat elusive and abstract.

The Opposable Mind is a gift to those of us who tend to heterodogmatize. Though it has no direct relevance to student affairs or higher education, the book cautions us to be wary of conventionality and cookie-cutter approaches – a healthy reminder in any context.

I eagerly await his address to the CACUSS delegates in June.

– Deanne Fisher

Last March, I was involved in the planning of a musical event on our campus to mark the UN Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We had lined up some students to do the introductions to the day’s performances. A few minutes before showtime, I handed one of the volunteers the text on the background for the day he was to incorporate into his intro. He quickly reviewed it aloud and stopped at the word “apartheid”, stared at it for a moment, and asked, “How do I pronounce this word?” I told him and he dutifully practiced it a couple of times, as if it were his first encounter with the term.

I had a “How can this be?” moment but quickly wrote it off to a range of possible reasonable explanations: a learning disability, nerves, familiarity with the concept but just not the word in written form. He executed his duties smoothly and I applauded his commitment to the issues.

But perhaps I was witnessing part of what author Mark Bauerlein describes as a generational cocoon. “The insulated mindset of individuals who know precious little history and civics and never read a book or visit a museum is fast-becoming a common, shame-free condition,” writes the Emory University English professor in his provocatively titled “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.” Considering South African apartheid ended when this was student was a toddler, is it possible he had never exposed himself to that piece world history?

Quite possible, according to Bauerlein, whose central claim is that the promise of the information age has failed us. The “peurile banter” of the digital natives — those born and raised with technology at their disposal — has given us an intellectually-stunted generation that eschews books, has a limited vocabulary, and an even more limited attention span.

All well-intentioned student affairs professionals have learned to treat generational literature with caution for three reasons: (1) It is almost always American, (2) it rarely takes into account any racial or cultural diversity or the effects of migration and (3) it doesn’t really help us do our jobs any better. In a profession that tries to value every student for who they are and where they’re at, generalizations too often lead to assumptions.

That said, we also tend to seek out explanations for our daily experiences. And if you’ve ever met a student who doesn’t read books, doesn’t vote, or can’t engage in a conversation with you about anything other than pop culture, you might find your explanation in Bauerlein’s thesis. He digs up scores and scores of studies and evidence to back up his claim that today’s youth, despite more wealth, education and access to information than any generation before, are also the most self-absorbed and disengaged.

As I closed the cover on the last pages of The Dumbest Generation, I thought I’d get a second opinion. I entered the room where my 16-year-old son sat parked, as he is most often, in front of the computer. “Is the internet making you dumber or smarter?” I asked. He stared at me, slack-jawed. “I dunno,” he said. I think I got my answer.

Next up on my reading list, in stark contrast to Bauerlein, Don Tapscott’s brand new book Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, which I suspect will offer a much more positive outlook on the promise of the next generation.

– Deanne Fisher

Perhaps I have succumbed to the dark side. At a recent trip to the local bookstore, I found myself lured toward the business section, that mysterious zone beyond the computer manuals. I ventured there thinking I might find something practical about using new media – aka Web 2.0, aka Social Media, aka the LiveWeb – to engage students in the life of the University. (Yes, I am aware of the irony of going to a bookstore to learn about the internet.) What I found was Denise Shiffman’s The Age of Engage: Reinventing Marketing for Today’s Connected, Collaborative, and Hyperinteractive Culture, a book that I have found immensely useful in rethinking how we communicate with students.

For most of my career, I have shunned the M-word. I don’t do marketing. I do communications. I considered marketing the domain of the pushy and crass. I am not “selling” anything. But in the face of widespread disengagement in co-curricular activity among students, I turned in desperation to the world of business to find out how to “sell” the kinds of experiences we know provide meaningful learning opportunities and build lifelong civic participation skills.
What I discovered is that the dark side isn’t so dark at all. The Age of Engage chronicles the transformation of marketing from the “static, flat, corporate-created web” to the “interactive, social and user-created web” and explains why marketing’s new value set includes concepts of transparency, authenticity and voice. Gone are the days when the successful marketer simply pushed a message out, hid the truth and “listened” to customers through surveys and focus groups. Today, successful marketers engage in conversations with customers, involve them in product development, invite and publish feedback – even negative feedback. Sound familiar?

Replace the word “customer” with “student”, the word“company” with “university” and the word “product” with “learning” and The Age of Engage becomes highly transferable. Shiffman gives us a quick overview of all the Live Web tools – web logs, wikis, podcasts, tagging, social networks, etc — and then uses the remainder of the book to talk strategy — from how to rethink your value, to how to create a voice for your organization through vision and story. Lots of examples – from Apple to Wal-Mart – of both successes and failures help give this book credibility.

Since picking up The Age of Engage, I have learned, through a colleague, of another book on this topic: Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I probably won’t get to that one for a while so if anyone else out there has read it, please comment.

– Deanne Fisher

Assessment Reconsidered: Institutional Effectiveness for Student Success
By Richard P. Keeling, Andrew F. wall, Ric Underhile, Gwendolyn J. Dungy
Published by the International Center for Student Success and Institutional Accountability

Reviewed by Deanne Fisher, University of Toronto

This pithy little publication follows up where the influential Learning Reconsidered and Learning Reconsidered II left off — that is, now that we understand learning, how do we assess how and where it happens? The authors are careful to establish that Assessment Reconsidered is not a how-to manual. So, for those of you who are sold on the importance of assessment and looking for the step-by-step guide to implementing your plan, this book will not meet your needs. However, if you are looking for a thorough, yet succinct, explanation of the fundamentals of assessment in higher education that you can share with colleagues, faculty, and upper levels of your administration, Assessment Reconsidered is ideal.

The book is full of really powerful concepts that sound deceptively simple but, in practice, are really difficult to implement. First and foremost: institutional assessment is about evaluating our effectiveness as educators, rather than the effectiveness of our students in demonstrating what they’ve learned. In other words, it’s about giving us a letter grade, rather than assigning one to the student. For many faculty members, this is a new and different concept. Assessment Reconsidered does a reasonably good job of explaining this and getting us to speak the same language.

The chapter on Rigor in Assessment is particularly helpful. The authors provide a useful and reasonable explanation of how to ensure results are credible and informative and avoid falling into methodology paralysis that can result when we confuse our work with research.

At only 100+ pages, and a cost of $24.95 US ($19.95 for NASPA members), Assessment Reconsidered is probably worth having a few copies around in the office to share with project assessment teams, senior administrators, and as a useful reminder of principles and fundamentals when assessment plans run amok.

Promoting Reasonable Expectations

Aligning Student and Institutional Views of the College Experience

By Miller, T., Bender, B., Schuh, J., et al.

Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA 2005

– reviewed by David Newman, University of Alberta

In higher education, a growing focus on the quality of the student experience is clearly evident in our institutions. It has been built more strongly into our institutional vision statements in recent years and is often used for purposes of recruitment, alumni support, and community support. However, what happens when the promises contained in such vision statements cannot be realized? How can we determine what types of promises are meaningful to our students? How do institutions balance the potentially contradictory needs that exist between students, external communities, and the institutions themselves?

The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) commissioned the development of Promoting Reasonable Expectations in response to these questions. The book is authored by several contributors, each coming with different institutional perspectives and varied research interests. Although its contents are completely based on research and experiences from the United States, certainly the messages are transferable to a Canadian context. A common thread woven throughout the chapters relates to the empirical data collected through the College Student Expectations Questionnaire (CSXQ) and the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ), which were jointly administered to 43 institutions in the United States. These data were then used to compare student expectations with their experiences. Resulting from the data and other research, discussion topics include, why we should care about expectations, the impact when student experiences vary from expectations, various type of expectations students have (e.g., campus services, cost of higher education, degree attainment, and life after college), how these expectations influence their experiences, the expectations of various stakeholders in the institutions, and the varied expectations depending on institution type.

Promoting Reasonable Expectations will be of particular interest to senior administrators, recruiters, student affairs/services professionals, and any others responsible for attracting, retaining, and investing in the future of our students. One section of the book addresses the need for institutions to be honest about what they promise to students during the recruitment phase to minimize the disconnect between student expectations and experiences. The message in this section, among others, outlines the need for institutions to collaborate to ensure that their vision statements, communication strategies, and capabilities align with each other.

My Freshman Year

What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student

By Nathan, R.

Cornell University Press, Ithica, NY 2005

My Freshman Year summarizes the ethnographic study findings of the freshman student experience at one institution. The author, also the investigator, is a professor of anthropology and elected to engage in covert research to gain a better understanding of the experiences of the students she teaches. Pseudonyms for the author, subjects, and the institution are used; however, since publication, the identities of the author and institution have been revealed. Although Nathan engaged in covert research and her identity was hidden, her findings support many experiences that student affairs/services professionals know to be true.

While this book may or may not reveal anything ground breaking in its content to those who work with students regularly, it is a worthwhile resource. The language is very accessible and is written in a narrative format, which also clearly outlines the types of issues that first-year students face. As a result, it provides empirical evidence that support the need for potential programming development in our institutions. Such outcomes, however, may become better supported through advocating that senior administrators understand and potentially read this book. Several topics are outlined, including living in residences, orientation programming, admission processes, classroom experiences, professor expectations, and communication issues. Nathan provides both her experiences as a student and thoughtful reflections or analyses of these experiences.

Nathan also makes a very strong effort to outline the limitations of her study, including the ethical questions related to covert research and the use of pseudonym. Of course, since publication, her anonymity has been revealed, raising these issues provides some credibility to her research as thought was given to these issues. Although there are many worthwhile findings in My Freshman Year, questions about the plausibility of Nathan’s experiences being that of a “typical” freshman student may arise. Did her subjects (peer students) view her as a peer, given their age differences? Was she able to participate in “typical” freshman activities? Was she aware of them? What was her role in student life? Aside from these questions, My Freshman Year should appeal to the same audience as recommended in Promoting Reasonable Expectations above.

– reviews by David Newman, University of Alberta