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I recently wrote about DIY U and students creating their own majors.

A great comment on Andrew Careaga’s recent review of DIY U suggests this isn’t as easy as it sounds:

However (there’s always a however), I have a couple of concerns with the premise that students right out of high school can “cobble” together a meaningful education. A very motivated student possibly could, but I have my doubts when it comes to an average college student. We handhold them through orientation and class scheduling, advising, first year experience, etc. Can they really create an education on their own? I think age plays a big role, the average age of a University of Phoenix student is between 33 and 36, not 18. DeWayne Purdy

I’m loving the high-profile attention to the changes we’re experiencing in higher education, and the tremendous shifts coming our way. From DIY U to Frontline’s College Inc. to Seth Godin’s recent post, people are taking note.

But I’m also frustrated by a disconcerting trend: to play it off as a generation gap or “how to get through to kids by using technology.” As if this is all about helping old people get through to young people.

That’s bullshit. This isn’t about using Twitter in the classroom. It’s not about using video games for research. It isn’t about Millennials, Generation Y, Digital Natives, or any of the mildly derogatory terms for “kids these days.”

It’s about change on a massive scale driving all the way down to the micro level.

It’s about broken business models and finding ways to fund ourselves without creating more student debt.

It’s about revisiting all those sacred cows of academics and wondering if there’s a better way.

The higher education revolution is about embracing change, not just surviving it.

I am both excited and terrified for higher education.

For many industries, it’s no longer enough to design your offerings to the customer’s demands. Customers don’t just want input – they want control. This means more customizable products, more responsive services, and more a la carte pricing.

Meanwhile, Universities are built in silos known as colleges and schools. They control their own requirements and curricula. Yet if so many students change majors after arriving at school – as many as 50 to 60 percent – why are college majors so inflexible?

A favorite example of mine is that which is closest to my daily work: the web. Which department should own a major in the web: Design? Computer science? Business? Marketing? Creative writing? Dropping such a major in a design department may leave students strong in design but very weak in all other aspects. A successful web worker should be well-versed, even competent, in all of these areas, and excel in at least one. So how do students get the experience they need to be well-rounded and versatile in an ever-changing industry?

How do students get the experience they need to be well-rounded and versatile in an ever-changing industry?

This is answered in a new book, DIY U by Anya Kamenetz. In an interview with Salon.com, she describes the concept as “the idea is that you as a learner are identifying your own goals and assembling experiences that will be the most valuable for you to achieve those goals.”

An increasingly common idea is the interdisciplinary program. While not necessarily customizable, the University of Notre Dame has a new master’s degree called ESTEEM for entrepreneurs to study Engineering, Science, and Business. Duke’s new master’s degree in global health tackles a necessarily interdisciplinary topic.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t schools with “design your own major” programs. The University of Washington has an individualized studies program that lets students design their own interdisciplinary major. And the inter-college program at the University of Minnesota offers a similar opportunity.

Is this enough? Can we do better? How long before the top students eschew the beaten path and strike their own paths, at the cost of admissions at the highest level schools?

ND is rolling out Blogs at Notre Dame, a blogging platform using WordPress MU. We’re hoping to get some of our brilliant and interesting faculty members blogging. This raises a lot of questions:

There’s been a lot of talk about blogging for admissions and student recruitment, but should faculty members blog? Will that hurt or help their chances of tenure? Can it help a school’s ranking? Is blogging respectable?

After some spirited and lively discussion, debates, and research, I’ve posted an article on our AgencyND blog about faculty blogging.

I don’t mean for these to be the answers, but I am hoping this post will continue the discussion and shift some perceptions.

Read Blogging for Academic Reputation, Rankings, and Scholarship »

Note: I know very well that the word is spelled résumé but for whatever reason my blog won’t display the é character unless I explicitly state it with an HTML entity code . Argh.

I’ve been doing a lot of hiring lately. This time around, I took careful note of the factors I considered as I reviewed resumes, interviewed candidates, and made decisions. If you’ve read the book Blink or had to pore over dozens or hundreds of job applications, you’ll know what I mean when I say that decisions are often made very quickly and sometimes arbitrarily. But it can help to be aware of your process and biases, which is what I’ve documented here.

1. Scan resumes

Look at the overall look and feel of the r̩sum̩. You can often tell where the applicant falls on the designer to programmer spectrum. See what info they put in the headers Рusually name, address, phone, email. If they have a Hotmail email address, go no further. Generally not good: comcast.net, sbcglobal.net. Better: gmail.com, yahoo.com. Best: Your own custom domain name. Why are some email addresses better than others? They tell me whether the candidate fits into the culture. A web candidate with his or her own website and domain name is more credible than one who slapped together a MySpace page and listed a Hotmail address.

2. Resume content

Check out their most recent two or three jobs and see what they’ve done. Look for specific URLs to check out. Scan their education, but I don’t really pay much attention to this. The best have a wider array of experiences with different web technologies and kinds of projects. The current job market is tough, so I don’t put a ton of weight on this. Some great people are jobless or have been working outside the industry and I won’t count it against them. Keeping busy and being involved are good signs of a self-motivated candidate.

3. Portfolio or sample links

This is a major part of how I decide. Quick glance at the sites or pages, and the next step is to View Source and check out the code. It takes five to ten seconds to see whether it’s decent code (semantic, web standards, no tables for layout) or not (tables, software-generated, etc). Show me your best work and I will mentally rank you on a scale from 1 to 100. This is important – I’ve already decided where on that scale I need to hire. If I’m looking for someone with relatively little experience (maybe a 30) and your work suggests that you’re a rising 60, my next thought is whether I can afford you. But that’s a good problem to have.

4. Look for a trail on the web

Do they have a website? LinkedIn? Twitter? If they’re out there, they’ve left a trail. This can be tough if it’s a common name, but this industry involves a good deal of self-promotion and if you can’t be found you’re not doing a very good job. Blogging is hard work, and someone who has invested that time in their professional development is bound to continue it after being hired.

5. What have they done?

If I’m hiring a designer, I look for little signs - good padding, decent typography, etc. Not that I’m skilled at these myself, but I do recognize some good design work when I see it.

For developers, I look for contributions to open source projects and the source of any pages they’ve posted. I tend to be pretty lenient on these.

6. Ask loaded questions.

I’m not psychologist, but it’s worth paying attention to how people answer the questions you ask. For instance, I like to ask about how they would solve a problem they didn’t know the solution to. A good response involves knowing how to find the answer. Self-determination is a good thing.

7. My favorite question: Tell me a joke.

I don’t ask this in every interview, but for some jobs and some candidates it can be a very helpful test. I simply ask the candidate to tell me a joke. The response is very informative. How quickly can the candidates think on their feet? Is the joke appropriate? What’s their personality? What’s their delivery style? Do they have a sense of humor? I don’t count this against people usually, but I certainly give major props to those who can handle it. When I’ve asked this and other people are in the room, they are usually horrified that I would do this to a candidate.

Process

Hiring takes a lot of time. Reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, conducting phone and in-person interviews, etc. are all time-consuming. I like to try and make a choice as soon as possible, paring down candidates quickly and decisively. 50 resumes might turn into five phone interviews, and that may lead to 2-3 in-person interviews. Or I may have a clear choice after conducting phone interviews, and may only proceed with one candidate.

So how do you get a job on my team? Let your work speak for itself and make sure your resume isn’t the only way I can evaluate your reputation.

If you haven’t checked out the Horizon Report in the past, it’s an annual publication that highlights key technologies expected to affect higher education in the next five years. This year’s report was published on January 14 and has some real gems, as usual.

What’s On the Horizon

The near-term technologies include mobile computing and open content.

The mid-term technologies (oddly noted as the “second adoption horizon”) are electronic books and simple augmented reality.

The far-term horizon includes gesture-based computing and visual data analysis.

Go get the full report >

Why Should You Care?

From a marketing communications perspective, these technologies will affect the future of our industry in a number of ways:

1. They will open and close avenues of communication.

Both mobile and augmented reality have been hot topics in the marketing world for several years. Mobile is already a big deal for many of us, working to provide mobile-friendly tools. What we haven’t necessarily done is find ways to communicate through mobile devices. We are hesitant (and rightfully so) to abuse SMS for marketing purposes. But there are opt-in SMS channels that higher ed has been slow to adopt except for use in crisis communications and in certain classroom applications.

Augmented Reality (AR) is another opportunity for blending communications messaging with real-world experiences. Like most tools in this Cluetrain world, AR will need to provide value and not just be an advertisement. Already, there are excellent ideas being pursued – including a an augmented reality campus tour application for the iPhone.

2. They will change the way we are perceived by our audiences.

The latest and greatest technology is a differentiator for a relatively short period of time, as early adopters get credit for being on the leading edge. These schools get more press and are often perceived as thought-leaders.

Next, there are the second-adopters who improve and perfect the technology. This is harder to do, but it’s potentially safer than trying to dive into every new thing. The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, and the iPhone wasn’t the first smart phone – but they certainly did them well enough to win some major market share. After all, there’s no medal for being first to market.

Finally, there are those who fail to keep up at all. This is a far more critical differentiator: not staying current. If students start to expect something, it’s folly to ignore those demands and expect to stay competitive. No school wants its students and parents to think it’s behind the times.

3. The model is changing.

As the report notes, “Open content has now come to the point that it is rapidly driving change in both the materials we use and the process of education.” (p. 13) Where students once paid a hefty price for access to information, free, open content is forcing schools to shift their value proposition toward education and experience. The higher ed business model is changing.

Communications will have a tremendous role in keeping schools in business by recruiting top students, faculty, and staff. They will have to take advantage of every tool in the toolbox.

What’s on your horizon?

Your own school and situation will be unique. Your size, budget, and priorities may direct you in one direction or another. That’s ok. But you should also be drawing up your own horizon report, asking yourself what you’ll be working on in one, three, or five years. Are you prepared?

In software, an API is a way to get data into or out of a system. It stands for “Applicant Programming Interface” and basically allows outsiders to access or manipulate the information in the software.

The Twitter API lets you access tweets, search users, post tweets, and so on. The API enables apps like TweetDeck, Twitterrific, and all those Twitter-related web apps to exist. The Google Maps API is the engine behind thousands of maps mashups.

APIs Everywhere

One of the most frustrating things to a software developer is reinventing the wheel. They even have an acronym – DRY: don’t repeat yourself. So when you’re building software that needs to pull in campus events, you should hit the API for the campus calendar and grab what you need. Want to show YouTube videos in the search results? Use the API.

Just as frustrating is finding the substandard add-ons that often come with large software packages. Just because a web content management system has a CRM (constituent relationship management) doesn’t mean it’s a good CRM. So it sends HTML emails? Is it as good as the standalone systems? You pour all of your wisdom into selecting a great software package and you often end up with poor add-ons that don’t meet your needs.

This is where APIs can come in handy. If you can get the systems to integrate via their respective APIs, you can get the best of both worlds. And if they’re popular systems, they may even build such integrations right in (like LinkedIn showing your latest Slideshare presentations).

Human APIs

Higher education institutions are notorious for being collections of silos. But some brilliant folks recognize the value in networking across their institutions, serving as connectors, and sharing information. These are Human APIs. Sometimes they’re called Connectors or Trust Agents Zero. They build make themselves available, build relationships, and share information freely. In exchange, they are able to create more value through collaborations.

Meetups and User Groups

One way to start is to form a user group of professionals around a particular topic. Our team has spawned several groups, including the South Bend Ruby Group. This group led to new relationships and I eventually hired one of the members to our team.

We’ve also formed a number of internal groups on LinkedIn around various industries and topics. The outreach doesn’t take much, but it’s absolutely worth it for the chance to interface with other teams and departments, share knowledge, and build on each others’ efforts.

Higher ed loves conferences (as do I). My boss has been live-tweeting the AMA Higher Ed Marketing conference for the last day or two. We’ve sent people to eduWEB Conference, South by Southwest Interactive, CASE, EDUCAUSE, RubyConf, RailsConf, and plenty of others.

But these things cost money – travel, registration, food, per diem, etc. And they take time – sometimes you can’t afford a few days away from the office. For that matter, conferences aren’t the only way to learn and develop your skills.

Create a Plan

Seems obvious, but it’s not clear what a professional development plan includes. Doing a search brings up some great resources, including this guide to professional development from EDUCAUSE.

But I’m looking for something simple – something concrete. And I should be able to do this every year. So I’ve worked up a rubric that follows a basic process. I’d love your feedback, as I’m hoping to put this into practice right away.

1. List the skills needed to do the job.

I think these fall into three categories: core requirements, secondary requirements, and professional skills. Core and secondary requirements make up your job description. Professional skills are those abilities that aren’t necessarily part of the tasks you do, but are crucial to your success. They might include public speaking, project management, written communication skills, etc.

2. The employee rates himself/herself.

Next, the employee has a sense of what his/her strengths and weaknesses are. These may only be perceptions – but perceptions have a strong influence over how the work is done. Lack of confidence or over-confidence can lead to poor decisions.

3. The supervisor rates the employee.

The manager must also rate the employee’s skill levels. Sometimes employees do not see opportunities the way the manager does, or are not fully aware of their strengths. Ultimately, the manager is responsible for directing staff to develop in ways that improve performance and serve the department.

4. Prioritize the skills based on the ratings.

If you’re an 8 out of 10 for a core skill, but a 3 out of 10 for a secondary skill, the priority may be to improve the secondary skill because the benefits will be more noticeable. This is subjective, but it is the step that provides focus for where to invest professional development time and money.

5. List specific steps to improve.

Of course there are plenty of conferences, but you should also look to other ways to develop your skills. Depending on how you learn best, you might consider taking classes, reading books/blogs (self-teacher), finding a mentor (a la apprenticing), doing pro bono or test projects (practical application), presenting to someone (learning through teaching), etc. A combination of these is probably best, but it will depend on the skill, the employee, and unfortunately, the budget available.

Collaboration is Key

This isn’t a top-down, manager-drive process to change employees. This is a collaboration between the employee and the supervisor. It should serve the needs of both. By providing professional development, the manager has a more effective, efficient, and generally valuable employee. For the employee it creates new professional opportunities and should translate to merit-based pay increases, promotions, etc. It should be a win-win.

Sample Professional Development Plan

Professional Development Plan Rubric (Excel) or as a Blank (PDF)

So how do you manage your professional development? Any tweaks to this process? Please share in the comments.