Trending Upward

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

- Niccolo Machiavelli from The Prince, 1532

That quote was the intro paragraph to an interesting article in the September issue of Campus Technology called Change Management Meets Web 2.0. Wow. Isn’t it amazing that a quote from 1532 could hold as true today as it did then? What’s more interesting is the next line of that original quote:

Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

How true. How true. Of course now we’re talking about Web 2.0 (new technologies, new attitudes toward web content) instead of acquiring principalities. But what do we fear? Why is there still some apprehension about Web 2.0 in higher education? I think it can all boil down to losing control (and something else I’ll get into later). As instructors, we lose control to our students. As marketers, we lose control to our advisers, admissions staff, and students. I think we need to come to grips with the fact that losing control in this scenario is ok. In fact, I think it’s essential.

Most of the Web 2.0 crowd, almost by definition, rejects anything canned, pushed, promoted, advertising-ish, or marketing-ish. Why? Because that is exactly the opposite of the user-generated experience. It’s about the conversation – conversation being two-sided.

Those traditionally in control of web content (any college/unit/department within the university), must give up that control in a Web 2.0 world. That isn’t to say it should be a free-for-all. Not at all. The trick, however, is to moderate the conversations without anybody thinking that you’re moderating the conversations.

Gerry at Giraffe Forum put it nicely in a recent post when he said,”To manage in the Web 2.0 world is to converse, to listen, to be honest and upfront, to collaborate, to moderate, and constantly watch out for the trends and patterns that always emerge when many minds mingle and mix in the network.”

That brings up another good point. A lot of apprehension about using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (anything user-generated) is that users/applicants/students might actually say something negative. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “but what if they say something bad about us?” Well, unless it’s offensive, leave it up! Why? Because keeping the positive *and* the negative adds credibility.

I think it goes even further than this, though. If we open ourselves up to using these tools, it also means we will have to take responsibility for the issues that may lead to negative comments, posts, tweets, etc. If your course registration process is horrid and someone replies negatively to a blog post about class registration deadlines, then you have to take responsibility for that horrid process. This scares *a lot* of people.

This actually brings me to another issue within higher education. Silos. The silos are killing us. I know what you’re saying, “but what do silos have to do with Web 2.0?” Let me explain.

If one part of your university owns a blog and part of their registration/admissions/search/account process (it can be *any* process) lives within another *silo* what happens when they receive a negative comment or post about that process that they don’t own? Should they post a comment in reply that says, “well, that process isn’t our fault, it’s [enter college or unit here]’s fault. We have no control over that.” Obviously not. This is a real issue, though, especially for larger institutions.

So maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe I’m blowing this way out of proportion. Is this worth discussing, though? Will the increasing use of user-generated content on our university sites expose our silos even more? Will the silos even care?

Hopefully.

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