Switching jobs within a higher ed institution… good or bad idea after 12 months?
Just about a year ago I switched jobs on campus from one that focused on applying a broad range of web technology with a marketing and communications focus to a job where I was to focus on user experience of one particular project. I posted some thoughts on what I would have liked to have done in my previous job if I was still there. Have to say, after 12 months I have no idea if any of my list was achieved or even is a big deal to folks that are dealing with U of Waterloo’s web space but it is strangely still important me and I still feel a bit like I need to figure out how to achieve it.
What is truly strange about changing jobs and staying on the main campus is that I don’t really feel like I changed jobs, I just changed projects. Maybe it’s because in my previous job I had a pretty high profile across campus with regards to the web (being the first and only – for a number of years – person hired to work only on the web on campus) and with my current job we are working on a pretty high profile project.
When there was an opportunity for growth presented to me I felt like I had to take it but really wasn’t sure in my decision. However, I have learned a lot that I would not have learned in my previous job which makes the decision to switch jobs a good one a year later. Is my current position better or worse than my previous one? Neither, it’s just different. For me, the motivation to change jobs came from the desire to learn new things and gain from new experiences but there is always a risk in leaving the job you know (or established). I think for a lot of people that work in a large organization and are happy where they are, they can get trapped by the conflict between doing what they know vs the joy of learning something new vs the risk of finding yourself in a bad situation.
In my role as President of Staff Association I have tried to promote changing roles or jobs on campus is a good thing to do both personally and professionally. More needs to be done at Waterloo to encourage folks to move around and I have a feeling in higher education in general a culture of ‘moving around’ doesn’t exist. Given how phd’s don’t change departments… ever… it isn’t a surprise that would influence the culture of higher ed.
How can Microformats help Higher Education
In my paper, my research focused on an assessment technique and possible application of Microformats on a higher education home page. What I don’t think I included in that report was a really good reason why you would apply the formats to your entire site or if the current formats are good enough. There are many making the case out there that cover the ‘why’ with my favourite being that you can make your web site or web application your API. That line of thought is what I applied when UW Events was built.
How does that work in higher education specifically? In higher education there are many issues that make a universal application or Microformats fairly difficult. But higher education web sites have so many consistent patterns in content and design along with a general attitude of openness that there is a huge opportunity that could be realized through the application of current and future Microformats.
Using the following diagram you can apply a couple use cases.
One of the use cases that initially comes to mind is the student that is trying to figure out what courses are offered at what school and where those schools are:
- geo and hatom can give a student an idea of the location and the latest news coming out of the school
- a new format for course information (lets call it hCourse for now) can help a student compare courses across different schools
- hReview can mix in prof rating and/or course rating web sites that use hReview to mark up their ratings and a student can get a better picture of things.
Another would be a prof trying to determine where to spend their next sabbatical without knowing much about the smaller schools in a particular area:
- the geo information can accurately place the schools
- hatom would give them quick access to the latest news
- a format for course information (hcourse) can help them connect with new colleague with similar interests
- hreview can reveal a hidden quality a smaller institution might have
A third scenario might be a person that is looking for a good resource on a story or book. Usually that information is being sent to the typical media outlets.
- hatom identifies the news so it can be easily found through searches
- geo can tie that information to a particular area
This is just off the top of my head, I could probably go on for a while about how easier to find and more accurate content could enhance the experience for people that are looking for information. I can think of some political barriers to this but thankfully it doesn’t require a top down decision to apply it. In the spirit of higher education, application of Microformats can be done on a grass roots effort without any decisions needing to be made 
Summer laziness
For the past few weeks I have slowed into a summer routine of not looking at my watch and just doing whatever comes to mind. It has been a nice pace over last summer where we were flying or driving all over the place and not being home for around 14 weekends in a row.
Besides my obsession with what has been going on in the NFL pre-season or finally being rewarded for attending a CFL game I really haven’t been getting into too much.
I do plan to catch up on stuff this week and get a few posts out… or maybe not. A week into August already and I am just going to enjoy this month