Webinar: Yik Yak on Campus – What You Need to Know About the Latest Anonymous Social Scene

Yik Yak on Campus: What You Need to Know About the Latest Anonymous Social Scene

Update: I’m giving a webinar on Wednesday, February 18th, at 2PM Eastern Time on Yik Yak on Campus: What You Need to Know About the Latest Anonymous Social Scene.

I’ll show you how Yik Yak works, provide examples of cyber-bullying AND positivity in actual mobile posts, and outline a strategy for anonymous-mobile discourse at your campus.

Students are quickly flocking to this application, posting anonymous “yaks” and engaging in good, bad, and ugly communication. A number of institutions have seen high-profile incidents involving the app in recent weeks including sharing of sex tapes, hate speech and harassment and threatening to commit a violent crime on campus.

Colleges and universities from across the United States are struggling with how to respond and whether or not there is value in being present on the platform.

What you will learn:

  • The history of Yik Yak and why it was geo-fenced at high schools.
  • Strategies for engaging your students via Yik Yak in a positive way to encourage positive change on campus.
  • Examples of troubling, real campus crises triggered by “Yaks” across North America and discover the practical ways to respond if similar “Yaks” appear on your campus.
  • Social media guidelines — for applications even beyond Yik Yak — that you can successfully adapt, construct and engage the campus community through your own social media standards.
  • How you can use Yik Yak as a social listening channel to explore your own campus themes and learning opportunities.

Once again, I’ll be partnering with PaperClip Communications for this webinar. Check out their site for more information and to register.

More info about Yik Yak: A recent post that I wrote about Yik Yak and why it is causing so many issues at campuses in the United States.

On “Side Hustles” and Being Your Own Boss

podcast with Eric Stoller

Every time I make it “around the horn” to celebrate another successful year of consulting, speaking, and writing, I get a bit reflective about the journey. As if on cue, Dustin Ramsdell from the The Student Affairs Spectacular Podcast, invited me to do an interview about my endeavors.

Here’s the full audio interview where I go into detail about my journey as a student affairs professional / higher education consultant. I manage to throw in some thoughts on work/life balance as well as some insight into what my typical day is all about.


Spoiler alert: life is great, work and life aren’t a dichotomy, and it’s been 4 years since I started doing this work full-time. Thanks Dustin for giving me some time on your show.

[image credit]

Digital Identity Keynote at Curry College

Eric Stoller - Digital Identity Development keynote

I started 2013 off with a digital identity talk at Curry College for their Career Services Conference for Seniors. They were an awesome group! I’ve included the video of my talk and a Storify from the event:

Continue reading Digital Identity Keynote at Curry College

Digital Identity, Social Media, Privacy, and Balance

Digital Identity and Social Media

Part of the experience of being a keynote speaker at the Jon C. Dalton Institute on College Student Values is that you get to do an interview with the Character Clearinghouse at Florida State University. The questions from Pamela Crosby, the editor of the site (as well as the Journal of College and Character), were stellar. Here’s an excerpt:

Why should students care about their digital identity?
Students should care about their digital identity for a variety of reasons. As members of a campus community, it is important for students to know that their online actions can have impact. Student Conduct offices are no longer just concerned with what happens in the brick-and-mortar campus spaces. Additionally, most students are pursuing future careers, and higher education is their launch pad. Social media posts can show up in search engine queries. Companies are no longer just looking at your resume. They want to know what you are doing (and saying) online too. Now, that’s more of the punitive side of things. Digital identity is about much more than just worrying about its effects on future employment or conduct violations. Students with a fluent grasp of social media can accelerate their learning, develop meaningful connections with peers, and grow their professional network. What we do online can affect our face-to-face interactions…and vice versa.

Why should higher education be concerned about students’ digital identity?
I think that when the original work on “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” first became popular, it caused an educational disconnect. Administrators and staff at institutions seemingly (without a lot of critical discourse) bought the rhetoric that students were digitally savvy. In fact, students are no better at creating and cultivating their digital identity than anyone else. We’re all digital students in the sense that we are constantly learning how to use the social tools while they are constantly evolving. Schools need to be intentional about how they incorporate digital identity development into their educational constructs. Social media are not a trend or a fad that are going to someday evaporate. We need to be proactive with teaching our students how to build their digital identity versus being reactive whenever they post something that we wish hadn’t made it onto the web. Like anything in education, critical conversations about digital identity are essential. It’s like that movie, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” we have to jump in, create our own digital identity, and educate our students too.

Read the rest of the interview at the Character Clearinghouse site.

Getting Radical at the Big Ideas in Higher Education Conference

Eric Stoller - Big Ideas in Higher Education Conference

The most-commented, most-discussed post that I’ve ever written for Inside Higher Ed was last year’s “Where Are the Radical Practitioners” entry. It quickly collected far more comments than I had expected, and I made the decision not to answer any of them due to the epic amount of time that it would’ve taken to constructively engage with all of them. Out of frustration and needing to vent, I did write up a quick “pseudo addendum” and posted it to this blog as “Radical and Student Affairs.”

What happened after that was an intriguing journey as I was asked to talk about being radical in student affairs at the Big Ideas in Higher Education Conference. In hindsight, I don’t think I really needed the social media aspect of my Big Ideas talk. Next time!

Unlike any other conference that I spoke at last year, 99% of Big Ideas featured speakers weren’t employed in higher education. It made for a fascinating event. My favorite part of the Big Ideas experience was meeting so many cool speakers. Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere and I had a great chat about our appreciation for retro Saucony sneakers. Amber Rose Johnson gave a slam poetry reading that gave me chills. And then there was Dayna Steele…well, she’s a legit rockstar! The full slide deck and video of my talk is after the jump. Continue reading Getting Radical at the Big Ideas in Higher Education Conference

The Mobile Campus Revolution: It’s Not Rocket Science, It’s Star Wars

Mobile-Eric-Stoller

In addition to writing a couple of blog posts for InsideHigherEd while at Blackboard World, I also managed to put on a session about “The Mobile Campus Revolution.”

The fine folk from echo360 were on hand to record my talk with their lecture capture tech.

In order to embed the lecture capture content, I had to embed it in a separate page:
The Mobile Campus Revolution: It’s Not Rocket Science, It’s Star Wars

*Amazing sketchnote art courtesy of Gerren Lamson

**Sadly, there wasn’t any Red Bull available at the New Orleans Convention Center…an alternative energy beverage was consumed during the taping of this talk.

Mobile + Higher Education + Ewoks at #BBW12

It’s official…I’ll be speaking at Blackboard’s annual users conference – BbWorld – in New Orleans. The topic for this talk is mobile + higher education. And, because I’m such an uber nerd, I’ll also be doing my best to incorporate Star Wars into my 55 minute talk. The kind folk at Blackboard wrote up a blog post intro’ing my participation…Blackboard Mobile is definitely a cool segment! Here’s the session description:

The Mobile Campus Revolution: It’s Not Rocket Science, It’s Star Wars

Want to better engage your current (and prospective) students? Building bigger Death Stars is not the answer – instead, be a better Ewok! Eric Stoller is a nationally known thought leader, speaker, author, consultant and blogger in the areas of higher education, student affairs, and technology. Join this avowed student affairs radical as he discusses the human-centered technology revolution and mobile’s critical role at the center of the student experiences on campus.

May the force be with you!

Social Media and the SSAO

Social Media and the Senior Student Affairs Officer (SSAO)
Educate, Engage, and Energize Students

With the rapid growth of social media and accompanying surge in online activity, particularly among university and college students, student affairs staff are using the latest technologies to engage students and forge stronger ties to programs, services, and events. Increasingly, senior student affairs officers (SSAOs) are building their own communities and initiating important conversations through a variety of social media sites. This article provides an overview of social media and how it can help student affairs make and keep vital connections. Continue reading Social Media and the SSAO

How I Became A Student Affairs Professional

How I became a Student Affairs Professional What began as a quick and easy way for me to share my student affairs journey has become a collection of clips from several student affairs professionals.

I posted my “How I became a student affairs professional” video on YouTube at HigherEdLive.com and invited other folks to do the same.

It’s always fascinating to me to hear someone tell the tale of how they got into student affairs. Have you shared your story yet?

If you post a video on YouTube of how you became an SA pro, let me know and I’ll add it to the original collection.

How did you become a student affairs professional?

According to a recent poll from the Student Affairs Collaborative blog, a lot of folks found their way into student affairs via Residence Life, Student Government, and Student Activities involvement.

Share your story in the comments, tweet it to me @EricStoller, or shoot me an email.