Connecting to the iParent | From the Bell Tower
The best path to reaching the students may be through their parents Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA Oct 14, 2010It's a question that academic librarians ask themselves each time the new school year begins: how can we do a better job connecting with our students? Each new crop of students is an opportunity to create more awareness about library resources, establish more meaningful relationships, and better leverage the parents to reach the students. Wait a minute; what was that part about parents? Since when has that got anything to do with engaging college students? The answer is that academic librarians may want to start thinking about the parents as much as they do the students. According to a new book all about the "iConnected parent," parents are taking advantage of communication and social technologies to stay far more connected to their students. Call it the age of the iParent.
Beyond the helicopter parent
It's completely normal for parents of college students to want to stay in touch with their sons and daughters as they go through the college experience. In days gone by an occasional phone call and the annual parents' weekend accounted for the bulk of student-parent contact. Cell phones and email changed that forever. Anywhere, anytime communication birthed the helicopter parent, a new species that kept more constant contact with their student, and which occasionally made the lives of faculty and administrators miserable. Junior gets a D- on his mid-term paper and the next thing you know Dad is on the phone with the department chair wanting to know how his 3.99 GPA high school student could possibly do so poorly.
The iParent takes things to the next level thanks to texting and social media. Now parents and students not only communicate effortlessly anywhere at any time, but now they text, Skype, and keep track of each other's geolocations to stay endlessly connected. Instead of waiting until Junior gets a poor grade, Mom and Dad can stay on top of the situation, providing help and advice all along the way. If this strikes you as possibly unhealthy and potentially catastrophic, you may be right.
When contact becomes a problem
The book's authors, Barbara Hofer, a psychology professor, and Abigail Sullivan Moore, a journalist, conducted a multi-year investigation into the digital relationship between students and parents. Over four years and via hundreds of students and parents, Hofer and Moore gained amazing insight into the world of iParents and their children. They found that college students contacted their parents an average of 13.4 times a week.
Some excess communication is questionable, but what's more essential is the nature of the conversations. Getting an instant answer from a parent can be a great thing—but when it goes overboard it can actually become unhealthy and unproductive for the students. Hofer and Moore, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, stated that self-regulated students (those who manage their own lives) were happiest in college and in their relationship with their parents.
The iParent effect is a harmful one when it keeps college students stuck in high school mode. They become less satisfied with college and less well equipped to deal with the rigors of higher education. Pretty soon the iParents phone their children to wake them up for class, remind them to study, and perhaps worst of all, do their work for them.
Are we missing an opportunity?
While our colleagues in the admissions office, student services, and academic departments may dread the iParent, for the academic librarian connecting with the iParent could actually be a good thing—for both them and their students.
If we all agree that it's a bad thing when iParents do the research and writing for their students, then we can help by giving iParents a better way to help their kids with research. If we can reach the iParent, and they know when to contact us for help—and could put us into touch with the students themselves—then that better positions us to meet our objectives for providing research assistance to the students.
But, how does an academic librarian connect with the iParents?
Try this postcard
A year ago the librarians at my institution introduced an instruction/information session designed to let the freshmen's parents know how we can help students to succeed academically. Our none-too-subtle session title is "Mom, Dad, Help! I Have To Write a Research Paper." Attendance was just so-so.
We decided to try something a bit more novel this fall—the parents' postcard. During student orientation week we distributed post cards (see the example at right) to every parent who'd give us their attention. The instructions were simple. Just write a library or research oriented message (e.g., "Get to know your librarians") on the postcard, provide the student's name and campus address. Six weeks later we mailed the postcards to the students. In addition to a personalized message from their parents, they get a reminder to use the library.
Although we failed to reach as many parents as we hoped to, those we did told us they loved the postcards. Next year we may send them in advance of move-in week, asking the parents to complete them before they get to campus. I've also heard of libraries that give the parents refrigerator magnets with reference contact information. Who doesn't need another fridge magnet?
Next outreach frontier
Books like The iConnected Parent and surveys that report a noticeable increase in over -involved parents do point to a growing concern for higher education instructors and administrators. The college years are a time for students to transition from late adolescence to adulthood. When students remain super-connected to their parents, depending upon them for help with even the simplest life challenges, it defeats at least one vital purpose of higher education: achieving independence. But these clouds of concern may hold a silver lining for savvy academic librarians.
Creative, rigorous outreach strategies are more important than ever for academic librarians who want to build awareness and engage their user communities. iParents represent a new frontier in outreach opportunities. Any efforts made, however, should aim for a balance between leveraging parents' natural desire to hover over their students and the promotion of independent research and thinking. Academic librarians represent a natural bridge between parents and their college-age children. What we can offer and the ways we deliver it just may present a model to our administrative colleagues for building better relationships with parents.
Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his website.
