Student Affairs
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The on-line magazine about
technology and Student Affairs
Gary D. Malaney - Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst
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Stuart Brown - StudentAffairs.com
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Student Affairs Gary D. Malaney - Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst Editor Stuart Brown - StudentAffairs.com |
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Student Affairs Digital Showcase
Will Barratt, Ph.D. Indiana State University willbarratt@indstate.edu Posted: February 10, 2003 Student Affairs Online, vol. 4 no. 1 - Winter 2003 Welcome to the Student Affairs Digital Showcase. This regular feature is for everyone in student affairs who is interested in using IT to further student learning and development and to create more free time to work with students. The material is divided into basics, a intermediate level feature and advanced stuff to help the reader identify what to read. The advanced material is really high intermediate, but the advanced users create their own forums. The hyperlinks in this article will take you to interesting places, and will open a new browser window, leaving this article open, so you don't have to continually use the "back" feature, but make sure to close the new windows when you are done or you will soon have many browser windows open..
Understanding basic IT language and concepts is important. Learning what can be done, and learning the limits of what is possible is a good place to start. In spite of what you may have heard, IT will not solve most of your student development and office management problems; but it will help, and it will often help a lot. The basics in this issue cover web and e-mail language and concepts. The items below are grouped conceptually, and not alphabetically. Internet: The collection of all machines linked together and using TCP/IP. No one, no government, no company nor any group owns the Internet. It is created, maintained and regulated by agreements between users.
ftp: File Transfer Protocol – in non-technical terms, ftp is one way to move files around the Internet, and was one of the first software applications developed in the initial stages of what eventually became the Internet. ftp software is used for uploading files (moving a file from your computer to somewhere else) or downloading files (moving a file from somewhere else to your computer). A browser, such as Netscape, primarily downloads files to your computer, and can download using ftp by using ftp:// as the url prefix instead of http://. There are many good ftp programs, and you should consult your campus IT people to see what works well and is supported on your campus. html: Hyper Text Markup Language (html) is a way to format information on your computer screen using your browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape). html is a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) which is what commercial printers use in formatting material. html has specific commands for formatting the screen display like bold <B> and ending bold </B>, italics <I> and </I>, or creating tables <TABLE> and </TABLE>. There is a limited set of commands within html compared to SGML. Nearly every web page on the Internet is written in some form of html. The World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/) takes responsibility for standardizing html. In Internet Explorer click View and Source (up on the menu bar above) to see the html that has created this web page, or in Netscape click View and Page Source to view the html. Other browsers will have other ways to view the html. http: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol – Browsers, such as Netscape and Internet Explorer, use html to format web pages, and http is the transfer protocol (the agreed way to move files) for web pages. telnet: telnet is a way to log into a computer from a remote location. Older e-mail software used telnet, and some administrative systems still use telnet but it is going out of fashion. Many browsers can use telnet by having telnet:// as the url prefix. To use telnet you will need an account on a computer that accommodates telnet. POP: Post Office Protocol is a way to access your mail from a mail server, often called POP Mail A mail server is like a giant collection of electronic mailboxes or accounts. Using POP you can only download your messages from the server to your e-mail software. POP is only used for retrieving E-mail. IMAP: Internet Message Access Protocol allows you to manipulate messages on a mail server and create folders. More sophisticated e-mail software and mail servers use IMAP for retrieving e-mail. IMAP, like POP, is used only for retrieving E-mail. SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the way that E-mail is sent from your e-mail software. POP and IMAP are only for retrieving E-mail and SMTP is only for sending E-mail. In most E-mail software these three are invisible to the user. URL: Universal Resource Locator is the specific address or any file in the Internet. http:// and ftp:// are the most common prefixes for any file's url. Web Based E-Mail: Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Netscape Mail all use a web based interface for e-mail so that the user (you and me) doesn’t have to use e-mail software that employs POP, IMAP for SMTP. While these protocols may be used, the web based e-mail user is generally unaware that these protocols are being used. Some web based e-mail providers allow people to use POP mail or IMAP from those accounts, and some do not.
An Internet search (http://www.google.com) for “online communities” yields a startling number of hits. On-line communities may be allied with a physical community, like a residence hall, a campus, or some campus group, or may be totally virtual, like an interest group for Checker Automobile fans (http://www.checkercabs.org/checkerboard). One important tool for developing on-line communities is communication, and the basic communication tools are the bulletin board, the discussion boards or groups. These terms refer to the basic tools used for leaving messages, conducting asynchronous communications among people in a group and connecting people who have similar interests. As a student development tool, these enhance communication, interaction, involvement and community building. An E-mail discussion list (sometimes referred to as a listserv or newsgroup) sends mail messages to everyone on the list, and is a common feature of student affairs practice (http://studentaffairs.com/lists/). Lists are easy to use for people already using E-mail because lists use a familiar e-mail interface. Bulletin boards have a different interface that takes some learning. To use a bulletin board, discussion board or a group you usually must register as a user, getting a username and password (un/pw), and use these to log into the appropriate web site to read messages or to send (post) messages . A un/pw combination is needed because messages are generated from within the bulletin board, and will be associated with that un/pw. When you log into E-mail software, your un/pw is similarly attached to your messages and establishes your identity. While there is variety in the software used to create bulletin boards, discussion boards and groups, there are some common elements. Three Examples and an Alternative:YAHOO Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) There are many providers of "groups" but YAHOO is the most widely used. YAHOO (Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle) is a commercial, advertising revenue based provider of Internet services. While the advertisements are not student development oriented, 4 CDs for only 4.99 is hardly a developmental message, the services that Yahoo provides can be used for student development ends. YAHOO sponsors many thousands of groups, and users may join groups using their YAHOO username and password. A “group” in YAHOO contains a standard set of features quite typical for commercial products:
Much like E-mail lists group membership may be open to everyone or restricted and require the permission of the group owner. Once the user has a free YAHOO username/password (un/pw) the user may join a group, or request membership, and select from among several options. One option is getting each message as an E-mail, getting an E-mail digest (a collection of messages sent together), only getting messages from the group owner, or getting no E-mail at all. For this article I have created an open membership YAHOO Group as an opportunity for people to learn to use a Bulletin Board. The group is called Student Affairs Information Technology, and can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/studentaffairsit/. Take a few minutes and visit that site, get a Yahoo un/pw if you don't have one, become a member of the Group and visit all of the features. I have put something in each of the sections so that new users can discover how this works. If you visit and join, please add a message or something else to the site, at least as a learning experience. Note that it took about five minutes to create the Student Affairs IT Group. As a second experience, from http://groups.yahoo.com follow the links from Schools & Education to University Life and scroll thorough the list of over 10,000 University Life Groups available. Yahoo supports nearly as large a number of University Life Groups than NASPA and ACPA have in combined membership. As a third learning experience, from http://groups.yahoo.com search Yahoo Groups using the keywords “Student” and “Affairs” to see how Yahoo Groups are already being used. Visiting some of these groups is educational. NASPA Forums are available online at http://www.naspa.org/forum/. While not yet widely used, these forums have great potential for community development and the exchange of information. The bulletin board technology is quite different than Yahoo, but reflects a common design. Anyone is able to read the messages but a username/password is required to post messages within these forums, and you can get one from the web site. The technology supports posting and responding to messages, message threads and folders. The features of the NASPA Forums make it a more 'classic' bulletin board, and features like links, photos files and members found on Yahoo Groups are not to be found here. Please remember that NASPA is a relatively small organization compared to YAHOO. The NASPA forums are worth the effort to explore and one is dedicated to IT issues in student affairs so take the time now to log in and look through the groups. Campus Pipeline Groups are one feature of Pipeline (http://www.campuspipeline.com) . While many campuses use Pipeline, which is an expensive commercial product, many do not. Even among the campuses that use Pipeline not all have the Groups feature enabled. Pipeline Groups are remarkably similar to Yahoo Groups, and since the student, staff or faculty user already has a un/pw from their university, specific login is not needed to use Pipeline Groups. On-campus student organizations, residence hall floors, academic departments and other collections of people can create a group. Access is restricted to university members only, so no example is available. ACPA uses listserv technology rather than bulletin boards. The lists are generally used by the Standing Committees and Commissions within ACPA, and there is a good collection of lists already. For access to the list of lists, visit http://lists.acpa.nche.edu/lyris.pl and to view their policies visit http://www.acpa.nche.edu/listserv/listservpolicy.pdf.(this link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) Student Development and Bulletin BoardsCommunity Building - At the very least, bulletin boards bring people together who have similar interests, belong to the same organization, have the same major, live in the same building or have something in common. Communication - It may be more convenient for faculty and staff to interact with students using E-mail or bulletin boards than meeting with students in person. Interpersonal interaction is one of the foundations of student affairs as a profession. Technologically mediated interaction like the telephone, or asynchronous interactions like E-mail and discussion boards may be anathema to us, but they are a reality for the Millennial Generation and the technologically enhanced students who are on campus today. Reading the Pew Internet and American Life report on The Internet Goes to College will help readers understand student Internet use. Communication Skills - Computer mediated communication requires thought and analysis. Without the cues available in interpersonal or voice-only communication, issues of context, emotional content, and of presenting one's own point of view clearly become much more important. Practice and careful consideration are required, and these technology mediated communication skills are not generally taught in an Introduction to Interpersonal Technique class. Involvement - Using a bulletin board for asynchronous communication with peers, faculty or staff engages the student in campus life and campus work outside the classroom. Student Learning - Bulletin boards are a source of learning for students. The learning may be related to writing, to interacting with others or about campus issues or to myriad other things.
E-mail is neither secure nor confidential communication. An E-mail message can be accessed as it moves across the Internet, it can be read from the mail server where it is delivered and some e-mail programs keep a copy of what you send in a Sent Mail file. Even deleted messages may be available since deleting a file only marks the file’s disk space as free for use when something else needs to be saved. A file is not erased from the disk when it is deleted unless special software is used. On most campuses, the IT department will not read your E-mails without a court order. In the corporate world, the IT department is often charged with the task of reading E-mail. There are important on-going discussions regarding E-mail privacy, but the summary is that if you use a university computer or a university E-mail account, then you have no expectation of privacy. Occasionally there are good reasons to keep E-mail confidential, private and secure. Letters of recommendation, client files, test data, research data and all of the other important documents we send using E-mail or as E-mail attachments need protection. In some cases these documents require protection according to codes of ethics and legal constraints. Using a secure server is one way to maintain security between two points in the Internet. If you notice the little lock or key icon in the lower left of your browser then you are using a secure connection.. Your browser uses encryption to send data to the site you are browsing, and the computer on the other end decrypts the data. This is usually used for on-line transactions and credit card numbers. This provides a measure of security, but should not be considered absolutely secure. There are on-going discussions about how much security is 'good enough' and how "hard" the encryption should be. A secure connection only protects the data when it is in transit between the two computers. To maintain confidentiality, you need to encrypt your E-mail and attachments before you send them. Inexpensive and high quality encryption (called “hard encryption”) software is readily available. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is quite user friendly and is one of the oldest sources of encryption software. It is commercially available in a personal version (Version 8.0 was recently released) at http://www.pgp.com or a version with fewer features can be downloaded for free from http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html. PGP is an interesting case study in First Amendment and national security issues. In the USA it is legal to encrypt data and E-mail, but for over 10 years the US Attorney Generals have tried unsuccessfully to restrict the use of products like PGP. The short story is that if you want secure E-mail communication; encrypt your
messages before they are sent. If you use a common chat program, PGP will
provide security for those communications also. The user on the other end needs
similar software to decrypt your messages and files, but the chat, the mail
message and attachment remain encrypted on the server, maintaining
confidentiality.
Technical details:
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