BlogU

  • Academic Advising, Wikis, and Shared Knowledge

    By Eric Stoller September 28, 2010 6:15 am EDT

    I have 3 days left at Oregon State University (OSU). I've been an academic advisor for more than 3 years and have accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge about OSU's academic processes. Life as an academic advisor consists of a never-ending stream of academic regulations, registration functions, course planning, substitutions, petitions, overrides, mentoring, teaching, and questions. When I started at OSU in 2007, I knew very little about what it meant to be an academic advisor. I was taking in knowledge while simultaneously communicating it to students. Knowledge wasn't readily available via the web so I was constantly popping out of my office to ask questions. I called it my "year-one advisor workout routine."

    As you may have noticed, I'm a huge advocate for knowledge transfer and searchable data. Not being able to find advising information via the web was a constant source of frustration for me. Knowing that certain facets of information pertained only to advisors, I started thinking about how our advising team could share its collective knowledge. An avid reader and casual editor of Wikipedia, I started looking at wikis as a way for current advisors to share information and as a living training document for new advisors. I knew that I wanted to house our wiki on an OSU server and that I needed a platform that would encourage posting/sharing.

    Having used the self-hosted version of WordPress since 2004, I was exceptionally comfortable with it as a blogging platform. I had customized my site's theme and had used WordPress to create the OSU Admissions Blog. I started tinkering with the idea of using WordPress as a wiki. The WYSIWYG editor in WordPress was fairly intuitive. New posts could easily be updated, comments could be added, and tags/categories provided an excellent way to organize data. A "private WordPress" plugin ensured that only approved users could access the site and post updates.

    The "WordPress Wiki" has been in use in our office since April 2009. In order to get the wiki up and running, I conducted a half-day virtual barn raising with our staff. We filled it with interesting bits of logistical information and made a commitment to use it as our shared knowledge resource. There are currently 96 posts, 58 categories, 77 tags, and countless documents in the wiki. It has become a fantastic resource for our team.

    Two new advisors start in our office next week. I am thrilled for them as they begin their journey as new academic advisors. I know that the wiki will become an integral part of their advising tool kit. They will be able to contribute, access, and learn about advising through a collective experience.

    Do you tweet? Let's connect. Follow me on Twitter.

Go to comments (6) »
Advertisement
Open Job?

Comments on Academic Advising, Wikis, and Shared Knowledge

  • Advising Wikis
  • Posted by Tim Lahey , Director, Advisement and Career Services at Adirondack Community College on September 28, 2010 at 9:15am EDT

  • Thanks for sharing this. I'm a newly appointed advising director and I've been looking for a way to consolidate a tremendous amount of disconnected and sometimes unwritten information about academic requirements here. The wiki sounds like a great way to pull everything together and make the information accessible to everyone who needs to use it.

  • Posted by Paul Cox , Academic Advisor II at University of Iowa on September 28, 2010 at 1:30pm EDT

  • I absolutely share your enthusiasm for searchable data, Eric. At my institution we are fortunate to have a university IT supported wiki platform to use - Atlassian's Confluence. Over the past few years, I have led an effort to create and populate our own media rich advisor wiki. The project started as as a training aid for new adivsors, but has since grown to include content on advisor development, office procedure, institutional policy, and a number of other topics. I find the wiki platform an excellent choice for this kind of knowledge transfer because it is collaborative, the data is searchable and it can be organized in almost any manner to suit the user's needs.

    The wiki model serves us very well, and it serves us right alongside a deeply rooted tradition in our Center of face-to-face contact, both with students and among fellow advisors. With a staff of around 40 advisors, there is always more than one friendly face to answer questions. What the wiki provides is on demand information, without the risk of colleagues feeling like they are asking too many questions or interrupting. It provides answers in a variety of formats (text, graphics, video) and proves quite handy in those times of the semester when you don't have time to get out of your chair and look for the answer you need.

    I applaud your efforts at OSU and trust that you will continue to find useful, innovative ways present and share knowledge.

  • Wiki wiki
  • Posted by Jason Barkemeyer , Academic Advising Coordinator/Eccles School of Business at University of Utah on September 28, 2010 at 6:45pm EDT

  • Over the past two weeks we have started use on an internal wiki. I think organization has been the hardest for some to adjust to with me reminding them to don't try and navigate it through clicks, just search for it.

    But there will be very useful process information for newbies to see and learn without needing regurgitation from the head of a trainer and that information is available whenever they need it.

    We are also enjoying the collaborative nature of the wiki since we can all input on a subject on our own time without needing to come together for a meeting. Group think!

  • Information wants to be free
  • Posted by Matt Livesey , Program Director, Professional Writing at UW-Stout on September 29, 2010 at 9:30am EDT

  • I launched an advisement wiki in 2006 for students in my program (then Technical Communication, now Professional Communication and Emerging Media). It quickly became, and has remained, the go-to resource for both students and faculty advisors. There are two major benefits, as I see it:

    1. Quick and easy updates: It's so simple to make changes on the wiki; I can keep program information up to date without having to edit documents or web pages. Currency is critical in getting people to trust the source.
    2. Transparency: Advisors and students (and prospective students) have access to all of the same information, at the same time. This means that students can help themselves with the mundane advisement tasks (figuring out which courses will be offered next semester, or which requirements they have left to fulfill), and that leaves more time in advisement meetings to have the real conversations--career options, life issues, etc. This is more rewarding for both student and advisor.

    I would recommend a wiki to anyone seeking to make more information available to more people--in the case of advising, that's critical.

  • Wiki for Staff, Blog for Students (and Staff)
  • Posted by David Lichtenstein , Academic Advisor at University of Southern California on September 29, 2010 at 6:30pm EDT

  • Wikis are a great idea for student services staff. The hardest part of learning the job is the "who to call" and "how to do" stuff. Having this info on a wiki can save so much unnecessary distress for new and seasoned advisors alike. Also, it creates standards for procedures and allows this information to persist and change dynamically when needed. I hope to start something like this at my institution in the future.

    I'd like to point you and your readers to a project I've been working on that can assist staff and students with sharing knowledge, especially regarding news, events and opportunities. Most advisors still use email and listservs to get information out to their students. Thus, a psychology advisor rarely hears about opportunities going on in the international relations department--and as a result, the psychology students don't hear about this stuff either. You may ask, "why is it important that students from disparate disciplines have access to this information?" Without going into too much detail, I believe that it is crucial for students to be exposed to a broad spectrum of opportunities during their time in college, not just limited to information from their major advisor. This blog platform has helped transition our advisors away from email blasting students with info (which students will likely ignore) and post this info to the blogs. Also, advisors and other student services personnel can read the blogs to keep themselves informed about opportunities and events across the entire university population. Of course, posts are tagged and searchable making it much easier to find exactly what you're looking for.

    Check out the blog directory (http://college.usc.edu/blog-directory) for the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities blogs.

  • Academic advising resource center
  • Posted by Valerie Myers , Nursing Faculty/Faculty Advisor at Pennsylvania College of Technology on February 16, 2011 at 8:15pm EST
  • Thanks for sharing your story! Academic advising is a very challenging role for faculty advisors. One of the most common complaints of faculty is that they do not know where to find the answers to advisee questions. Having a central location like Wiki is a great idea! I will have to take this back to my institution to see if we can develop a centralized location for advising information. If we have the tools to effectively advise students, I believe we can increase both student and faculty satisfaction with academic advising.

Print
© Copyright 2011 Inside Higher Ed