Mark Greenfield

For most people, when you mention web content they automatically think of words, perhaps augmented with pictures. But with the recent growth of Rich Media, web content now includes audio, video, animation and other interactive elements. As computer performance continues to improve and broadband access becomes ubiquitous, delivering rich media via the web provides a more compelling experience for users. Witness the popularity of Podcasting (the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year for 2005) and the explosive growth of Youtube.

Using Rich Media to reach millennial students is very effective. They are very comfortable with both creating and consuming all forms of rich media. Rich media also greatly improves training materials. Teaching students how to use web based tools such as web registration has always been a challenge. Using a combination of text, diagrams, and screen shots had limited effectiveness. Now we are using Adobe Captivate to create screencasts with great success.

One big challenge with Rich Media will be accessibility. As much as I like YouTube, I don’t see how someone with an auditory disability could use that site. I’m hoping that everyone involved with the tools that are used to create and use rich media will focus on improving accessibility.

Previous Top 10 Web Trends

• Web Trend #10 - The End of Print
• Web Trend #9 - Everyware
• Web Trend #8 - Virtual Reality
• Web Trend #7 - The Web as Platform
• Web Trend #6 - Syndication and the End of the Web Page Paradigm
• Web Trend # 5 - E-mail is So Dead

The new uwebd social network is paying dividends.  The network is just 6 weeks old but I have already met many new, knowledgeable  people with great insights into higher education web development.  One of these people is John Strubel, who has recently launched a new site called eduDesigners.com. The mission of eduDesigners is to connect higher education web developers to share development techniques, tips and knowledge about the web design process in the field of higher education.

One of the main features of this site will be .edu profiles.  John selected me for the inaugural profile and he plans on adding more on a regular basis.  I’m looking forward to this site being another great resource for higher ed web professionals.

Last year I was one of several thought leaders who were asked by the 2006-07 National Association of Colleges and Employers Future Directions Task Force to write an essay on “how college students and employers will interact and connect in the year 2017″. Below is the essay I submitted. While the focus was on Career Advisors, the ideas are certainly applicable to higher ed web professionals. I’m convinced more than ever that our profession will undergo dramtic change in the next 10 years.

Here is a link to the full report called “Through the Looking Glass: The Future of College Recruiting”.

Higher Education Gets Flattened
By Mark A. Greenfield

2017. Welcome to the New World Order.

The World Is Flat, the seminal book written by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, describes the fundamental changes that happened at the dawn of the new millennium. Outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, and the other flattening forces have created a connected world, and business will never be the same. Exponential change is here. While higher education is notoriously slow to change, change will happen, and quicker than you think.

Globalization 3.0, the arrival of the technically adept Millennial Generation, and the ongoing Communications Revolution will create a perfect storm that will forever change the college campus. Rising tuition prices and increased competition for the best students and best faculty will require colleges and universities to operate more as a business. In addition to fundamental pedagogical changes, all support services will be subject to the forces that have flattened the business world. The services and processes provided by career centers will be disaggregated, distributed, produced, and reassembled with amazing efficiency. It may well be that many of the functions of the college career center will be outsourced. If placing orders today at the fast food drive-through is handled by a call center hundreds of miles away, anything is possible 10 years from now.

By 2017, providing guidance to college graduates as they make the transition from college to work will require a new paradigm. Many basic assumptions that exist today will no longer be relevant. How do we prepare our graduates for jobs that don’t exist yet? With the growth of free agency, more graduates will work for themselves or small companies instead of large corporations. Americans working for a foreign company may be as commonplace as working for an American company. (Defining an American company may be impossible). With the half life of knowledge now measured in months and years instead of decades and centuries, lifelong learning will become essential and nontraditional students may outnumber traditional students.

In this sea of change there will be an opportunity to redefine the role of higher education professionals and company recruiters. As Daniel Pink describes in his book A Whole New Mind, we are moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. As many services of the career center become even more virtual and automated, the key will be to focus on the value chain. Automation and outsourcing of the routine, lower level work will allow more time to focus on creativity, leadership, and innovation, and ultimately better services to students. The time to think about these issues is now, before higher education gets flattened.

2017. Welcome to the New World Order.

Previously I posted about the 90:9:1 rule which states that must users of online social networks lurk rather than participate. I decide to analyze the activity on the new uwebd social network on Ning to see if this applicable.

I did the research when the site was one month old and had 249 members. There were two very active members, 37 members who had some activity (at least one post/comment) , and 210 members who had not been active since joining; resulting in a 81:18:1 ratio. If you changed the definition of “some activity” to be two or more posts or comments, the ratio changed to 91:8:1. (Note that this does not include anyone visiting the site who are not members. Based on data from Google analytics, this number is very small.)

Some other quick numbers:

• 60% of members have added a profile picture
• 18% of members have customized their profile page

As of this morning, there are 337 members, 19 groups, and 87 general forum topics. I encourage everyone involved with higher ed websites to not only join, but to participate as well. Again, the site is located at cuwebd.ning.com.

I want to warn people that my domain name markagreenfield.com is no longer under my control and appears to be being used for unlawful purposes.  The content currently being displayed there appears to be similar to my content, but is not.  I have  transferred my site to the markgr.com.  My web hosting company continues to try to get to the bottom of this. Hopefully I’ll get markagreenfield.com soon.

I’ll keep you posted.

I am pleased to announce that I will be the opening keynote speaker at the eduWeb Conference being held on July 21st -23rd at the Trump Marina Hotel in Atlantic City. I’m also excited that Karine Joly of collegewebeditor.com fame will be the closing keynote speaker.

I will choose a topic for the keynote speech during the next few weeks. Given the exponential change happening with the web, who knows what the topic of conversation will be a few months from now.

The forecast calls for single digit temperatures this weekend so the idea of a trip to Atlantic City will help me with the mid-winter blues. I hope to see you in July in Atlantic City.