Last month, I attended the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) Fall Focus Session titled Being Net Savvy: Developing Skills for a Rapidly Changing World. (Educause is “a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.” Educause is also the sole registrar for .edu domains.)

The focus session included videos, statistics, theatre, and group reflection.

Videos

Creative Student Perspectives Videos were interspersed throughout the focus session. Although much of the information was not new to me, it was useful to hear from the students themselves.

One video focused on the Net Gen as creators of content (from the University of Central Florida).

Another covered social networking usage at the University of Dayton Ohio.

Statistics

According to one of the videos from the University of Dayton:

94% of University of Dayton students use Facebook (November 2006).

From a survey of University of Dayton students’ profiles:

• 8% posted sexually explicit comments
• 26% posted information about drug and alcohol abuse
• 45% posted pictures of friends without their consent
• 46% asked to remove or “un-tag” a picture

Also shared were statistics on texting:

• 52% of ~226 mil US cell phone users sent txt msg in 2006 (Jupiter Research, NYC)
• 73% of teens who use cell phones are txting (Jupiter Research, NYC)
• Cell phone users sent 158 billion messages in 2005 (CTIA-The Wireless Association)
• Globally, the average young person connected to digital technology has 94 phone numbers in his or her mobile, 78 ppl IM list , 86 social net

Theatre

The University of Colorado at Boulder’s Interactive Theatre Project was also invited to perform for the focus session. The Interactive Theatre Project consists of paid student actors who perform and engage the audience as “spect-actors” about community issues (e.g. body image, homophobia, racism, sexism, socio-economic status/classism, sexual assault). During their regular performances, the audience is invited to participate by taking over for a particular actor experiencing these issues. In our version, the theme was “I just want to feel connected” and highlighted Facebook issues through the experiences of creating a Facebook profile:

1. Personality: judging a person’s personality based on the number of friends she has on Facebook
2. Jealousy: an upperclassman questioning the relationship of his ex girlfriend and another guy who appear in a photo together posted in Facebook
3. Sexual Identity: a soon to be freshman coming out on her facebook profile, but too afraid, selects bisexual instead of self-identifying as a lesbian
4. Homophobia: a soon to be freshman requesting a housing change because she finds out that her roommate is bisexual

After each short skit, the audience was given the opportunity to ask the actors questions and the actors replied in character so that the audience could understand the actor’s actions, feelings, and motivations. I thought this was an excellent, creative, and unique way to orient people about social tools like Facebook and the concerns surrounding it.

Group Reflections

We were also encouraged to use a social tool for reflections throughout the focus session — Twitter. I thought it was strange to use Twitter — intended to broadcast your own life — as a forum with a social networking element. Since it wasn’t created for that purpose, the person who controlled the Twitter account for the focus session had to add us as friends in order for our reflections to aggregate in the “With Others” section (also not intuitive).

By associating my already existing Twitter account to the focus session account, it also meant that if I twit any personal updates like the fact that I was walking down the street and got a whiff of pot, it will show up… I’m not sure I would want to broadcast that life detail in that context. In retrospect, I think a Facebook group would have been more appropriate with reflections posted on the Wall for the group especially since a few sessions covered Facebook. However, judging from the ResNet Symposium I attended this past June, there are still many university administrators who seem to be averse to using Facebook.

Our final reflections concluded with a carousel of discussion where groups rotated tables and answered one of three questions, like speed dating as one attendee commented:

1. How does net savviness support faculty scholarship?
2. What concrete actions can promote a net savvy campus culture?
3. What does it mean for students to be net savvy?

It will be interesting to see the results of #2 as time progresses. Coming up… thoughts on #2.