organizational change

This week SJSU launched its advising hub on the university website. It’s certainly a welcomed addition; advising has been a weak point at SJSU since long before I arrived on campus. As the university’s requirements have become more complex, advising becomes more essential. Yet with more students and fewer faculty, having the time for effective advising is challenging. So the advising hub should help guide students toward graduation and reduce some of the need for faculty advising.

At the beginning of Chapter 11 the authors of the text provide a summary of what makes organizational change efforts successful. A key component is acceptance by organization stakeholders in fidelity (a match between the intended use and how its used) and uniformity (all targeted users adopt it). I wonder the degree to which the advising hub will work. I hope it works well, but in my first glance through it, all the text and links are overwhelming. And then there’s this at the bottom of the first page: "WEBSITE DISCLAIMER: This SJSU advising site is new this fall. We have not verfied [sic] that all the information on every link is accurate, and our lists, links and materials are not exhaustive." Scary!

My eyes start to glaze over when faced with a lot of text; I figure that’s true for my students as well. And the advising hub website has a lot of text with pages that go for several screens. In contrast, for a project I’m doing in the spring, I’m working with students to develop podcasts (that will include transcripts) on things students know now about SJSU that they wished they had known when they started. The podcasts will work as an advising tool, but in formats students will find more accessible: they can read the transcript, watch the video, or just listen to the audio.

For organizational change to work, it must be planned and must involve those who will be implementing and living with the change. The advising hub planners may have done that; it's not clear from the site. But the format doesn't seem very user-friendly, so students may not use it as much as the planners might have hoped.

~ Professor Cyborg