Glen Baumgart Today’s Guest blogger is Glen Baumgart, a longtime friend of mine in higher education. Glen has been working with higher education community engagement programs for over 12 years, and  currently serves as the Director of the Volunteer and Service Learning Center at The University of Texas at Austin. If you work in higher education, then you have heard this line before, “I learned more outside the classroom than in the classroom” as students reflect on what they have learned and how they have grown. There is a lot of truth to that statement. In the classroom, students wrap their minds around theories, concepts, lessons, and content. But it is outside the classroom in student organizations, internships, community service activities, leadership programs, and other experiences where students are challenged with putting this new knowledge into action. And its not just putting knowledge to action, but integrating this new knowledge into the fabric of their lives, their morals, values, goals, and social interactions. Universities and colleges seem to be well aware of this. Look at any institution of higher learning, and you will see a number of professional positions aimed at outside the classroom learning and programming. And the learning is very intentional. Ask any leadership, housing, community service, career, or programming staff what students learn through their programs, and they are sure to rattle off a laundry list of learning outcomes. But ask how that learning is measured, and you would likely hear staff mention a lack of assessment, or mention reliance on evaluation surveys or on quick reflection discussions. The assessment or measure of learning seems much less rigorous than that of an academic course with its grades, assignments, measures, and evaluations. But it is possible to beef up the rigor of co-curricular programs in a way that matches the rigor often seen in academic coursework. To do this, we start by looking at the abundant research on college classroom learning. We know what works, and can identify the most important elements in classroom instruction that lead to learning. So, lets apply what works to achieve learning outcomes in the classroom, and apply them to our co-curricular programs. The following components are used most often by teaching effectiveness professionals in higher education and used in research on classroom learning to help faculty improve their course structures. Lets use these elements, but adjust them to fit or co-curricular programs. Think of it as creating a co-curricular syllabus: 1. Identify the learning outcomes Sounds easy, but this is likely the hardest part. Most college courses only have three to five learning outcomes – understand this theory, know this lab skill, etc. Three to five, and that’s when the instructor has three hours of student attention per week. In co-curricular terms, its wise to start with just one specific learning outcome. What is the most important learning outcome your program teaches? 2. Evaluation or measurement system How will the student know they have met the desired outcomes? Try to describe in measurable terms what the learning outcome would look like. Is there a certain behavior? Do students respond to a survey in a certain way? How would they demonstrate the desired outcome? It is important to start with these two components. It is from here that one build the rest of the co-curricular syllabus. 3. Students MUST understand the learning goals This is the most missed component in college courses, but one of the most important. If your goal is for students to learn a specific outcome, then tell them that at the start. Students who understand the goals from the start are more likely to cue into the instructional techniques. A good practice for this is to make sure the outcome is part of the recruitment / application process. 4. Estimate prior knowledge What do the students know in regards to your learning outcome prior to joining the program? A simple survey or questions on an application can help you understand where your students are coming from. In course lingo, we call these “prerequisites”, and most co-curricular programs have them too, but are seldom stated. What experiences or knowledge should the students in the program bring with them? If a certain prior knowledge is important, then that should be part of your recruitment or advertising. 5. Estimate motivation and interest in the learning outcome Any course should be designed to peak the student’s interest by not being too difficult, but not being too easy either. This is why the prior knowledge is so important. Students must have some motivation or interest in the topic, otherwise it unlikely they will learn. This will help in designing the logistics of the program to help determine what might be boring, or what might be overwhelming. How does your program maximize students’ interest? How will it keep them motivated to finish? 6. Now develop the actual instruction logistics Huge mistake by instructors and program coordinators alike, we tend to jump into the program’s logistics before we think about learning outcomes, measures, prior knowledge, or motivation. We tend to start creating a program, then looking back to what is being learned. Try, and its hard to do, but try to answer the first five components first before any thoughts on how you’ll do it. 7. Identify the learning moments Another often missed component in course construction as well as co-curricular. As you plan the instruction, think hard about when instruction is actually taking place. If it’s a course, then you know you have time in a classroom when the instructor teaches, and that assignments must be done for grades. So, it is during these times you know students are interacting with material. In co-curricular it is much harder to identify the time. Some groups meet only once a week. So, during that hour meeting, when is it and under what circumstances do you know students are paying attention to instruction? Is there a time for reflection? What about online chats? Tweets? If you can identify the most likely time the student learns, the more impactful the program will be. 8. Evaluate and adjust Look at your measurement instruments, your surveys, and make adjustments for next time. Try to be creative in your evaluation. Lets say your learning outcome was the understanding of a certain leadership concept. Then send the students an online survey during the following semester. See if they still have that understanding. If so, success! Now you can really say that they learned that concept. These steps are often used to help increase the effectiveness in college courses. Shifting them a little, one can use them to help ensure a rigorous learning experience in the co-curricular program. Also See our interview with Glen when we were on the UT campus this past summer.

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“[An] effective leadership transition is the process by which past and future student leaders in an organization work together to review and learn from previous events and programs and prepare for the upcoming year.”  -Adrienne M. Craig The transition from old to new leaders is vital to an organization’s success.  Leadership transitions allow members to reflect on the past and plan for the future.   Chloe Chavez, a former Vice President of the Hispanic Business Student Association (HBSA) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) had a very positive experience: Effectively pass your knowledge on to the next leader!

At the end of each school year our current officers hold a transitional meeting to brief incoming officers on the success and debacle of that year’s events, the most attention would center around the largest events that consistently brought in the most revenue and/or provided the most benefit for our members.  Our leadership transitions run especially smooth because our leaders create soft copies of important files such as event planning that future leaders may use as a How To Guide; this gives them a head start for the upcoming year. Efficient transitions enable the professional progression of our organization, officers and members. Chloe’s situation is definitely the exception.  Other organizations lack a systematic way of transitioning new leaders into their organization.  Some new officers are even left with the responsibility of contacting a past officer, sometimes even after they’ve graduated, to gain needed event or contact information.  Some have no luck and have to start their planning from scratch. In this situation, this leader’s valuable experience of what works and what does not work is no longer existent; the organization can no longer benefit from this leaders hard work and will have to, basically, reinvent the wheel over and over again until an effective leader transition system is implemented.  Sadly this is a problem for many organizations. So how can organizations avoid this dilemma? Adrienne M. Craig, director of Student Activities at Johnson & Wales University-Florida, in an issue of Campus Activities Programming by NACA (May ‘09) gives a few tips for effective student leader transitions:

Plan a retreat. Allow leaders to focus on having a successful year for their organization. Create a map of the organization’s journey. Reflect on the past, in order to plan for the future and maintain traditions. Be honest about the past and realistic about the future. Discuss and assess past events that way past mistakes will not be repeated. Take time to learn your available resources. Whether they may me past food deals or other resources from staff.

What tips would you give students who are transitioning into a student leader position?

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Blog by: Angel Quicksey, OrgSync Campus Liaison, Claremont McKenna College Today’s world is smaller, flatter, and more connected than ever before. Places and people that once seemed remote are now only a click away and virtually right next-door.  Neighbors that once chatted through a fence are now chatting online through a social network such as Facebook, Twitter or AIM. Young people – students, especially – use the internet to stay connected, as it’s easier than ever to reach out to the classmate across campus, parents back home, or even the friend made while studying abroad. Yet, students can use such technologies to reach out in a different way. Young people on campuses around the world already promote social justice and create change. Clubs raise money for relief actions in war-torn countries, they prod politicians and their fellows to take action on environmental issues, they support campaigns for AIDS relief, clean water, and health care. But if one club on one campus can raise a few thousand dollars for Darfur or Burma or the environment, imagine what could be accomplished if those students came together to accomplish something even greater. This is where social media comes in. Recall what students can do without our new technology: •    The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s – the group, begun at Shaw University, staged many of the sit-ins and freedom rides of the civil rights movement and had a leading role in the1963 march on Washington. •    The students of the 1970s and ‘80s who protested apartheid in South Africa – beginning with students of Stanford University in 1974, these young people divestment from companies involved in South Africa during apartheid. By 1988, 155 universities had partially or fully divested funds from the country. These students saw a need for change and combined their efforts across the nation to guarantee civil rights in America and abroad. Today, students have even more tools available to them to create social change. Through the internet, particularly social media sites, students can easily spread information by broadcasting videos, photos and headlining news. The power of these sites has become especially apparent in recent weeks as students and opposition leaders in Iran used Facebook and Twitter to spread their message and capture images, like the death of Neda Agha-Soltan. While perhaps not facing the same immediate strife as the people of Iran, many college and university students tackle other important issues at home and abroad. Yet, most campus organizations seem to work independently, though they may be working toward a similar goal.  Why not take advantage of this new age of social networking and connect with others at your college, in your area, or in a similar branch of your club? Then, once these connections are established using social media, you can create larger events, campaigns and movements that will greatly impact your campus, your nation and even the world.

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Marketing your organization can be tricky if you have no prior training or experience in the marketing industry.  So where do you start you ask? We have three steps to follow while creating your marketing plan. If you would like more information on the topic feel free to leave a comment!

1. CREATE A POSITIONING STATEMENT FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Clearly define your organization by assessing its benefits, target membership and competitors. This information and your promotional materials will go hand in hand and will enable you to have a clear and consistent message.

Positioning Statement – (Fill in the blank with your organization’s info) _______(Your Organization Name)_______ is ______(List 3 of Your Most Unique and Most Important Claims)_____  among all ______(List Your Competitive Frame *example: Student Organizations)______  for ______(Your Target Membership)______   because ______(Include Support for your 3 Unique Claims)_____. •    Define your expectations for organization growth; do you want to expand your organization or merely preserve your current member base? •    Use this information when deciding which channels to use while distributing your message (Channels are stated below) 2. CREATE YOUR PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

•    Create a concise tag line using content from your positioning statement •    Consider Your Audience When Choosing Benefits to Highlight -Social organizations – Promote how your org will meet emotional needs -Professional organizations -Promote facts and encourage “information gathering” Promotional material should always include the following (but is not limited to): •    Organization name •    Message •    Contact information •    Website URL •    Tag-line Possible Communication Channels to Reach Your Qualified Audience: •    Online: Organization website, School Organization directory and social media •    Print: Flyers, Posters, Banners & Kiosks can create a consistent campus presence •    Programs: Information included can educate prospective and current members •    TV: University TV station, School monitor advertisement

1. CREATE A STRONG PRESENCE ON YOUR CAMPUS

•    Sign up to showcase your organization at the freshman orientation student org fair •    Showcase your org along popular areas of your campus for the first few weeks of school •    Create relationships with organizations that relate to your target members interest CHECK OUT MY FUTURE BLOGS!  TOPICS WILL INCLUDE: •    Marketing for Small Organizations – A Focused Approach •    Creating a Marketing Plan for an Expanding Organization •    Large Organizations and How to Keep a Consistent Message Across Campus

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As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I have come to the conclusion – communities matter. Before coming to college, I never realized the importance of having a group of friends.  Not to say, I didn’t have friends before college, but from elementary to high school, I have been with basically the same people.  In high school, my classes were filled with the same 30 students.  Nobody in class was a stranger and we were all basically friends, if not acquaintances.  Everything was familiar and structured; I knew where I belonged and fit in. However, everything changed after graduating high school.  We all went our separate ways - different colleges and different life paths.  From my class, only 3 people went to The University of Texas at Austin, and I was one of the 3.  When arrived at UT, things were certainly different.  I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I definitely was not “in Kansas anymore.”  And like most freshman, I had a difficult time adjusting to college.  Actually, that might be an understatement.  I had a really difficult time adjusting to college. Everything about it – the unfamiliarity, the people, the campus size, all the people in my way, all the idle time I had, and the absolute lack of freedom from not having my car in Austin. As a freshman, I would have never thought I would have stayed long enough at UT to graduate, let alone miss UT. But here I am, about to start my last semester at UT, and sad that my college career is one semester away from being over and already missing it. So, how did I manage to succeed at UT? In hindsight, it was definitely the people I connected myself to through my FIG (not the fruit, it stands for Freshman Interest Group or a small group that meets once a week based on a interest and where we have the 2-3 classes together, so that we have familiar faces in classes that are 300+ students) and an organization I joined on campus – Christians On Campus.  Through these 2 main groups, I was able to meet and befriend people who shared my interests, and have a group of people that helped me succeed at UT. According to a research article by the Office of Institutional Research on student extracurricular activity and academic performance, the graduation rate for students involved in extracurricular activities was almost doubled compared to students who were not involved in extracurricular activities and commuted to school. I can say with absolute certainty that I would NOT have continued at UT if it weren’t for those groups.   With the encouragement from those friends, my sophomore year, I joined a business club, McCombs Diversity Council with a friend from Christians On Campus and was able to expand and become more involved in school.  Otherwise, I would probably be in Dallas right now, attending UTA, living at home, never leaving my comfort zone, and not growing as a person. So, the two student organizations I joined my freshman year, which helped me form a group of friends and be a part of a community, were essential to my development as a student and may have even saved my college career.  I met peers that helped me enjoy my college experience, and who have probably influenced and impacted my life in ways I will never know. Student organizations and communities on campus matter more than most people realize.  Connections keep people growing and developing, and I was certainly no exception.

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OrgSync would like to announce our Implementation Webinar Series in June. We will focus on two campuses, one large and one small, who have already established the implementation process on their campus. They will share their best practices, successes, challenges, and suggestions for making the transition to OrgSync.

Our large campus implementation model will be on Thursday, June 11 at 1:00 EST and will feature Deborah Felder of the Student Organization Resource Center at North Carolina State University. NCSU began working with OrgSync last summer and developed a marketing plan to increase awareness of OrgSync to their 500+ student organizations and 31,000 students. Deborah has been an instrumental partner in helping define best practices for implementation and providing helpful feedback and suggestions for our new developments. Sign up for the small campus webinar.

We will feature our small campus implementation webinar on Wednesday, June 24 at 1:00 EST. Our feature presenter will be Rebecca Delo, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Life and Leadership Development at Muskingum College. Muskingum also joined the OrgSync family last summer, and Rebecca was very proactive in establishing the student organization registration process through OrgSync, as well as successfully attaining a high level of student adoption on her campus across their 100 organizations and 1500 students. Sign up for the large campus webinar.

We hope that our new clients and anyone who could benefit from these free webinars will attend! Please contact us with any questions.

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During the month of February OrgSync started working with many new campuses from coast to coast.  We are extremely excited to welcome the University of Alabama – Birmingham, Arizona State University, Florida International University, Pace University @ Pleasantville-Briarcliff, University of the Incarnate Word, Adelphi University, Denison University, California State University @ Dominguez Hills, The City College of New York, Saint John’s University, and the University of Colorado @ Denver.  Together these schools account for just under 150,000 students in over 1,900 different organizations. At Arizona State University, OrgSync will become the primary management tool for over 700 student organizations. “As one of the largest universities in the country, we have an extensive network of clubs and organizations that will benefit greatly from the organizational tools OrgSync offers” states ASU Assistant Director for Student Development, Jennifer Stultz; “OrgSync will not only help our individual clubs and organizations grow, but will also help them better integrate with one another and into the larger ASU community.” To emphasize the importance of getting members involved on campus, OrgSync offers an unlimited number of online training webinars to students and faculty members.  OrgSync also includes an onsite training session with every initial purchase of the OrgSync platform.  The onsite trainings are very effective at helping organizations transition to a newer, more efficient method of communication. So far this spring, we’ve conducted onsite trainings with hundreds of leaders from The University of Alabama, St. John’s University, Bowling Green University, and Sacramento State University in conjunction with their respective spring leadership conferences. As members of the OrgSync community, users from these schools will have the opportunity to provide feedback about the platform and drive future developments.  We look forward to working closely with each of these schools to provide them with a cost-saving, state-of-the-art management platform they can be proud of.

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Integration Enables OrgSync to Release a Premier Treasury Solution for Higher Education OrgSync is excited to announce that it has integrated PayPal into its co-curricular management platform.  With PayPal, student leaders and campus administrators can electronically issue invoices and collect payments online.  The integration brings convenience and security to collegiate treasury management while decreasing administrative burdens and saving campuses time and money! “We are pleased that OrgSync has chosen PayPal to provide student organizations and campus administrations with a safer and more convenient way to send and receive money online,“ said Glenn P. Lim, General Manager of Alliances and Vertical Markets at PayPal.  “We look forward to working with OrgSync to make the security and convenience of PayPal available to college campuses everywhere.” OrgSync continues to evolve, offering campuses a partnership to build the ultimate campus management solution together!  “PayPal’s payment service is a great match for the needs of OrgSync’s technology platform,” said Eric Fortenberry, CEO of OrgSync.  “OrgSync has developed an unparalleled company culture, forming unique relationships with each one of our campuses.  We share a vision with our clients to build a solution that will benefit the Higher Education community as a whole and accelerate student involvement and success.  OrgSync has found the same zeal and values in PayPal and is excited to provide additional treasury benefits to its clients.” You can view the press release here.

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Last week, Eric and I (Jami Darden) traveled to the great state of New York to visit one of our newest clients, St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens. St. John’s boasts an undergraduate population of nearly 15,000 students from 42 states, Puerto Rico, District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and 91 foreign countries. Among its notable alumni are leaders in virtually every industry, including business, medicine, politics, education, professional athletics, journalism, and entertainment. Needless to say, we are delighted to welcome this distinguished institution to the OrgSync family! Jami training student leadersMany thanks go out to everyone on campus who not only worked tirelessly over the last several months to make OrgSync a reality for St. John’s student organizations, but also for their efforts arranging the on-site training sessions. We want to especially thank Dana Lezama, president of Student Government, Inc., who spear-headed this effort and was an exceptional host! Also, Frank Jerome, Business Analyst for the Office of Student Affairs, who is working with OrgSync support to create a single sign on solution which will make it convenient for St. John’s students to access OrgSync and their student organizations via “St. John’s Central”.
During our two-day visit, Eric and I conducted 12, 90 minute training sessions where we were able to meet with approximately 140 student leaders. We were also thrilled to share the news of our new strategic partnership with PayPal and are looking forward to providing a comprehensive budgeting and e-commerce solution to all of our clients. Eric was even able to meet with Barbara Duffy who manages all of the budget requests and fund allocations for student organizations at St. John’s, and she has provided us with lots of insight that will help guide the development of our new, more robust treasury module.
We were also very pleased to learn that all student organizations at St. John’s are required to complete a certain number of community service hours in order to be recognized on campus and receive funding from the university. It was quite rewarding to see students’ reactions as we showed them how OrgSync can be used to track their involvement in service events and programs. Their reporting process will now be streamlined and simplified! I definitely saw a sparkle in their eye as they realized that they finally have a way to quantify how their organizations are contributing to the culture of their campus and the surrounding community. We at OrgSync, of course, share their commitment to community service and service learning and will continue to work with our clients to showcase these types of efforts. Stay tuned to future blog posts and check back on our website to learn more about the “GIVE Act” recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Coming from a higher education background, I truly enjoyed interacting with all of the students and staff members at St. John’s. Their energy and commitment to a vibrant campus life is very refreshing and has reminded me of why I got into the business of working with student leaders. I can’t wait for our next on-site training. After a snowy Friday morning in New York, however, I was pleased to return to sunny skies and mid-eighty temperatures in Texas!

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OrgSync has just launched its very own Facebook Connect application. OrgSync hopes by offering this application to their user that their services will be more accessible and further integrated into student’s lives. The OrgSync Facebook Connect feature allows users to log into OrgSync using their Facebook username and password.

What are the benefits of this you may ask? Well for starters, with the dozens of online community memberships you have, using this Facebook Connect application to log in to OrgSync means students have one less username and password to remember. More importantly, this application will help students increase awareness for their organization, assist in the marketing of events and increase member participation, thus adding value to the overall initiative of increasing student involvement on campus. With the OrgSync Facebook Connect application students who are part of an organization will have the option of publishing desired information about their organization’s activity into their Facebook news feed. This is just one way OrgSync hopes to assist student leaders with their communication efforts among their members and prospective members. For example, when a member Joins (”RSVP”) an event on OrgSync they will have the option to also publish it into their Facebook news feed, maximizing the organization’s efforts in promoting their event. There will be many new Facebook Connect features implemented over the next several months. To find more information about the OrgSync Facebook Connect go here and look for updates within your OrgSync user portal. If you have any suggestions or questions about our Facebook Connect feature feel free to contact us at Facebook@OrgSync.com. The Creator of OrgSync’s Facebook Connect: Clifton King, a software developer for OrgSync and a Computer Science student at the University of Texas at Austin, implemented Facebook Connect into OrgSync, through a Facebook API that he created in Ruby. This is the first large scale integration on a Rails platform with Facebook Connect and we are very excited to provide the additional benefits to our users!

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As a past officer of a UT business student organization, I know the challenges of communicating with 120+ members on a moments notice. Any student organization officer can tell you, it takes time, effort and skill to know each member, obtain member preference information, and inform them of last minute event details and changes. What is the solution to these timeless organizational communication challenges? Simply put, OrgSync. On one hand, this Austin based company, OrgSync, Inc., hosts a platform to equip universities with the tools to oversee and manage their students and student organizations. On the other hand, OrgSync’s platform can also be used by student leaders, like me, to manage our organizations, committees, members and events. My executive council initially wanted to use our website and our forum to inform and interact with our members. One entire year was devoted to creating a new “user friendly” website, and in the end that idea was scrapped because of time consuming inefficiencies with updating web content on a continual basis. After all, we were not a computer science organization teaching our members how to write code to build and manage a website. Our main purpose is to mold our members into young professionals with leadership experience. After realizing that our website would not be an efficient method of communicating with our members, we focused on communicating through email and sending our entire member list serve [very lengthy] weekly emails, which listed out all events’ detailed information. Needless to say weekly e-mails were very tedious and time consuming and were merely a band-aid to our communication problem. As a student and an officer, I know the importance of being time efficient and cutting out unnecessary tasks. Our time consuming communication efforts could have been cut in half simply by using OrgSync’s platform. OrgSync’s SMS/Texting tool could have been the quick and simple solution to informing our members of event updates and details. We would have never needed to dabble in finding, creating, and managing a forum that never held up to our standards. Instead, we could have used OrgSync’s poll feature to interact with our members and to obtain unbiased and anonymous opinions and feedback on events. We would have even had an alternative to the pesky weekly emails. With OrgSync’s event and meeting tools, any officer could have uploaded event information and segment event invitations by specifying which committees and members to invite to specific events and meetings. Kennie Blanco a graduate from the McCombs School of Business and a past President of a student organization said, “Finding a centralized and user friendly medium of communication was difficult. Our website was never advanced enough to facilitate communication effectively… it was not very easy for a member to go online to find information or to even ask questions about an upcoming event.” In fact, OrgSync offers everything suggested by this experienced officer. With the tools that its platform provides OrgSync efficiently facilitates communication within organizations. I would recommend it to any school and organization looking to have a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness when communicating and interacting with their constituency online.

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We are excited to welcome the University of Alabama, the University of North Texas and the University of Nevada at Reno to the OrgSync community. Jointly, these three universities will bring over 850 student organizations onto the OrgSync platform. We look forward to building great relationships on each one of these campuses and improving communications campus-wide!

“We are excited about providing all of our students a one-stop-shop for student organization management and a centralized place for students to get involved,” says Stacy Jones, Director of Student Leadership at the University of Alabama. Alabama plans to start the training process ASAP, followed by a full campus roll-out for all 250 student organizations. Stacy Jones has been working rigorously to bring the OrgSync platform to Alabama and is excited to start training and implementation.

The University of North Texas in Denton, TX has over 400 student organizations that will be using OrgSync to improve communication and organization management. “I am excited about everything that OrgSync will offer to our students. The entire program is going to help all aspects of campus, and the student body is ready for this move up in technology,” says Brooke Carter, Student Activities Coordinator at UNT.

Jason Entsming, Director of Organizations for the Student Government at Nevada, is especially excited to bring OrgSync to Nevada’s 200 student organizations. Having been mesmerized by OrgSync’s capabilities since Fall 2008, Jason is looking forward to implementing OrgSync for the Student Government to better communicate with and manage student organization needs. “Our students want and expect to be able to communicate online. OrgSync will allow us to setup an online community for our students and enhance their out of the classroom experience,” says Amy Koeckes, Coordinator of Clubs and Orgs at University of Nevada at Reno. On behalf of the OrgSync team, I would like to wish all three of these schools a warm welcome to the OrgSync family!

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