NACADA National Conference Presentation: ACCEPTED!

Just wanted to update readers and let them know that I will be presenting my Social Bookmarking Presentation against at the NACADA 2009 National Conference in San Antonio, TX. If your professional development budget allows, make sure that you try to attend.

Feedback from the proposal evaluators was positive. Read on:

• I can imagine that this concept will get used by many advisors, once they figure out how it works.

• I liked the idea of presenting the idea and how to implement the idea. I liked that the presenter will talk about the positives and negatives and time requirements of implementing the social bookmarking account

• Social bookmarking is an interesting twist on serving all advisees, particularly undecided students. I would imagine this presentation would focus mostly on "how to," but the literature introduction will also be helpful. The proposal was very thorough.

• Interesting topic! Hopefully the information would be relevant and pertain to the available majors or graduate programs available at the institution.

• I think that this is an excellent topic to introduce to the advising profession. Many other educators utilize social bookmarking, etc for their professions, and it would be a great learning tool for students & advisors to use to support developmental advising.

• Creative concept and would help those advisors who are wanting to use and/or learn to communicate with today's students. Hands-on info.

I will be tweaking the presentation a bit to reflect the comments from those in Saratoga Springs, NY. Thanks again to all who provided feedback! It is so awesome to see advisors embracing technology!

Do you have room for some delicious feedback?

Before I start reflecting on my presentation I wanted to post the general feedback...meditate on it and then comment. I think that the general sense is that more people want to get involved with technology and just need a forum to get more information. Stay tuned for more ruminations to come.

Comments on my presentation:

Enthusiastic...very informative
Keep going and present more sessions at future conferences
Facebook, website, wiki presentations...showing how you link delicious to other sites lost me a little because i am not internet savvy in that sense. Great job!
A publication would be easier to understand
Very lively!
Very engaging and informative. I plan to go back and set up an account.
Present at an indepth seminar, regional or national conference
Copy of presentation (@ least an outline) would have been helpful in order to follow along and see what's coming next
Spontaniety and freedom from powerpoint. Jillian was motivational.
Work on voice; deeper for increased maturity and credibility
Real time demo of how to set up and use these sites was helpful.
Don't jump around so much-topic to topic-Hard to follow, especially when terms are unfamiliar
Thank you very interesting.
Please present at another regional conference.
Pertinent technical information-Great to learn from; present at NACADA National Conference
Good information, tools...More presentations!
In-depth institute or seminar
Jillian is a star. She will go far in whatever she does.
Present at NACADA National Conference
Energetic. Good presentation. Relevant.
Interesting and lively.
Keep having fun with this.
New technology was presented. Yah!
Good enthusiasm, but lower your voice and slow down a bit. Great job!
Great job. I clearly need to learn much more about this!
I now realize that there is a lot of technology to be used.
Slow down, talk more slowly.
Try to limit mention of all the technology. Bring handout with definitions of language; technology.
Introduction of resources to play with later.
New tool, great enthusiasm.
Take questions when asked, rather than saying you'll go over later because listeners don't know when/if you finally answered the question.
She did a very good job, high energy and communicated effectively.

Updates on DELICIOUS

** Please note: Post was impromptu and has not yet been edited for content or grammar**

Since I received a great comment today on a recent (ok... not so recent) post regarding READY and Delicious I thought it would be good to update the blog as well as answer some questions. I have been away in Florida for the last few weeks meeting my boyfriends new twin nieces and also touring the University of Florida. I will do a separate post discussing my trip there and my opinions/thoughts but first... to the business at hand.

Delicious...

As most of my readers know DELICIOUS is a social bookmarking application where users can tag links that are relevant to them and share them with the entire world or just a select few people if they so desire. The implications for academic advising are significant when you consider how many times we are asking students to take a broad look at their career interests, do research on them, etc. Delicious allows students of many different discplines to do this (as well as advisors and professors) and compile them in the aggregate for future students (and themselves) to utilize when considering majors and careers. This is particularly important because academic advisors can't possibly be competent and well versed in every area of study. Instead we are expected to be jack of all trades when it comes to knowing what types of careers students can get with a particular major, how much the projected salary is etc.

With DELICIOUS, students can compile all of their research into one area and use it for their personal reference as well as others. For an example of how we at the University at Buffalo are being to utilize the service, please visit
my delicious account.

You will see over to the right side a bunch of tag "bundles" entitled things like career exploration, career fields, General Advisement, Prehealth, Pre law, UB Courses etc. Each bundle gathers all the tags together on a particular theme and makes them easy to navigate. In particular, I would like to attract your attention to the career fields bundle. Underneath that bundle you will find tags which reference some of the most common careers or majors that we offer at UB (some that we don't are also included for reference purposes). If you were a student who was interested in learning more about the field of nutrition, you could go ahead and click on the "nutrition" tag. Once you have done this, you will be taken to a few links which highlight the latest news in nutrition, links to possible career fields within this field of study, salary information or whatever else we may have aggregated based on students we've previously worked with who have has an interest in nutrition.

This is helpful for undecided (or decided) students because they can easily integrate their research into our main database by becoming part of the academicadvisor's network or, if they choose not to create a delicious account, can access our resources without signing up or logging in. Students frequently come into my office with preconceived notions about what a particular career entails or how a major is chosen. With these links students can sift through information at a rapid pace while also learning more about all of the career options available to them.

The social networking aspect of delicious is also important to note. You can utilize the facebook integration function to post your booksmarks on your profile as well as share your links and exploration with others. My University experience class this semester has an assignment where they will need to post ten links to a delicious account on their possible career/major choices (all students are undecided on a major). I hope that this sampling of students will be a good place to start thinking about the broader implications of this technology as well as the bugs that still need to be worked out.


Deliciouss' use in academic advising is something that I am hoping to present at the Region 1 NACADA conference being held in Saratoga Springs, NY in March 2009. If you are interested in learning more about this service and how I am using it please feel free to email or comment and I will get back to you with more details. Also, if you are advisor who is interested please continue to visit the blog and more details will be forthcoming if the proposal is accepted for presentation at the Region 1 conference. I am hoping to make it successful enough to be presented at the 2009 annual conference next year. I welcome any thoughts or criticisms you may have.

Facebook & Delicious in Academic Advising

This semester my interest has really been sparked by web 2.0 and finding ways to implement those techniques into my role as an academic adviser. A colleague of mine had an idea last semester of a program where students could come together with academic advisers and their peers to discuss any issues they wanted to that were related to their academic lives, future careers, or just things that were bothering them on campus.

She asked me to assist her with this project and I thought this might be an opportune time to integrate a Facebook academic advising community (something I had been thinking about for awhile). At first, it took a long time for the group to get off the ground but when it did it thrived!

Students responded to discussion board questions and videos. They also took some initiative and posted things of their own that they wanted us to discuss. Overall, we currently have more than 100 members signed up and around 20 who are actively participating. When the Facebook section of the group took off, we were contemplating disbanding the in-person portion of the group. When we posed this question to the students, however, they told us not too! They wanted in person interaction and were really enjoying the group dynamics.

This was not the response I was expecting from these students. I am curious if anyone else is surprised by their reaction?

The other project that I have been working on this semester is the implementation of a delicious account specifically to help the students that we serve in our center: undecided students and students who are interested in changing their major. Since I love delicious with all my heart I wanted to give my students access to that same interface if they wanted it.

My delicious page for academic advising has everything from general advisement information to information on career fields that might be of interest to students. It is my hope that if students can get a taste of what they can do with a particular major or learn how to better network early on in their academic lives, they will be better prepared for their futures. I also hope that by introducing them to this website, they will better be able to organize information that is related to their academics.

As far as I know, no other academic advisement center is using delicious in quite this way. If anyone is out that that is, I would love to see it! Maybe we could share some ideas!

Please feel free to take a look at my delicious account. Any comments or feedback on it are appreciated.