Catalyzing Change, Building Community and Creating Identity Through Digital Storytelling by Hamza Khan & Ian Crookshank Cacuss June 2014

1. Catalyzing Change, Building Community,
and Creating Identity through Digital
Storytelling
#CACUSS2014 and #RyersonSA

2. Sessional Outcomes
● Participants will:
o Learn the basics of two theories for managing transition and change
o Learn how a platform for storytelling will help them navigate large
scale or small scale change at their institution
o Audit their own departmental practices with regards to storytelling
o See how their own engagement in the session can be used to tell a
story and share learning

3. Tweeting Encouraged
● #CACUSS2014
● #RyersonSA

4. Agenda
● Context - What is #RyersonSA?
● Theories of Change
o Schlossberg
o Kotter
● #RyersonSA and Digital Storytelling
● How Digital Storytelling has addressed
transition at Ryerson
● How can this be applied elsewhere

5. Context
● History
● The birth of “Student Affairs” at Ryerson
● Who are we?
● What do we do?
● Why a new approach?

6. Theories
● Schlossberg
o Transition Theory
● Kotter
o 8 Steps to Change

7. Schlossberg
● Transition any event or non-event that
results in changed relationships, routines,
assumptions and roles.
o Events can be expected (graduation/retirement) or unexpected
(separation/dismissal)
o Context = one’s relationship with the transition and the setting
o Impact = degree to which one’s life is altered

8. Schlossberg (cont`d)
One’s ability to “cope” comes from 4 S’s
1. Situation
2. Self
3. Social Support
4. Strategies

9. Kotter’s 8 stages
● Create Urgency
● Form a Power Coalition
● Create a vision for change
● Communicate the vision
● Remove obstacles
● Create short-term wins
● Build on the change
● Anchor change in corporate culture

10. Why #RyersonSA?
● In Schlossberg we noticed
o Individuals did not have much control of the situation
o Self-doubt and lack of identity
o Social support was challenging given our physical
proximity and lack of time to gather
o Strategies
 Committees, social opportunities, but how to
carry outside of those moments in time

11. Why #RyersonSA?
● The creation of an online and intentional
digital community and the advent of a digital
storytelling culture within student affairs
would help us overcome the challenges

12. Utilizing Kotter’s theory
● We asked:
o Using the vision for Student Affairs how can we
create buy-in?
 How can the blog and hashtag communicate the
vision (explicitly and implicitly)?
o How can we remove the obstacles noted above?
o How can we utilize the digital sphere to continue to
tell the story of change?
o How will it be anchored in a budding culture?

13. RyersonStudentAffairs.com
● More than just our blog
o A place for staff to contribute to the growing student
affairs dialogue
 Ideas, insights, learning, reflection
o A place where we can get to know and recognize
each other
 Staff spotlights, Staff announcements
o A place where anyone on staff can contribute their
story or have that story highlighted
● We encourage authenticity in voice
o If you are bringing it to work then it might make a
good post

14. #RyersonSA (The Hashtag)
● Coupled with the blog the use of the hashtag
has expanded our physical community into
the digital realm
● Has seen major uptake from staff across the
department

15. RyersonStudentAffairs.com
Statistically Speaking
● Approximately 3.3K hits by 1.4K users
● 5.8K pageviews
● An average of 2 pages per session
● An average session duration of 2:20
● 62.3% returning visits
● 37.7% new visits
● 62% readers accessed website via social media (48.71% Twitter vs. 47.34 % Facebook)
● 25.9% accessed website directly
● 11.4% readers accessed website via organic search (search terms included: "cannexus 2014",
"holistic learning theory", "ryerson experience with academic llcs", "what opportunities does the
arts have for students?")

19. #RyersonSA Stats

20. What are we tweeting?

21. Successes
● Community Building
● Breadth of topics
● Content
● Reach
● Cultural Change
o Affinity
o Pride
● Personal voices and authenticity

22. Challenges
● Educating on how to write an impactful post
● Long-Form Blogging intimidating to some
● Blasphemers
o non-social media folks
● Folks reluctant to share so publicly
● Dialogue

23. Tour the Site
http://ryersonstudentaffairs.com

24. What’s next...
Using storify we are going to pull tweets from
this session into our next blog post.
www.storify.com/???
#RyersonSA

25. Roadmap
● Pre-Existing Conditions
o A call to action/a reason/the “why” (in the case of Ryerson, this was change - intention to
build community to navigate this change)
o An Executive Director who is eager to innovate (maybe list #RyersonSA values?) and
comfortable with staff being in the spotlight
o Ryerson as a campus (enabling a unique web presence, authentic voice, etc.); an
environment conducive to this type of project
o In-house expertise
● “Created” Conditions
o Emphasis storytelling and authenticity during PD sessions/training
o Modelling behaviour
o Encouragement and prompting
o Seeking stories
● Financial Resources
o Domain + Hosting (Ryerson went with GoDaddy.com) ($50-100/year)
● Human Resources
o In-house expertise
o Dedicated editor
o Time & energy put into design and writing, editing, etc.
● Processes
o Editorial calendar

26. Moving Forward
Creative Unit
Community Manager

27. Questions?
@IanCrookshank
@HamzaK