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Hard to Believe: Texting Not OK, per college students

Guest post by: Betsey Nash

Article Overview: Texting & social media in the work place... Should it be allowed? Here are some results from a local college.

Hard to Believe: Texting Not OK, per college students

Priscilla Simoes is one of those precious resources that helps keep Cuesta College in business. She and I met about 6 years ago when we were going through orientation for new part-time teachers. As I recall she was going to teach Excel or some other foreign language and I was going to teach part of a curriculum designed to turn college kids into great employees. I lasted about 2 years, but she's still there, and has added these "Customer Service" classes to her teaching load. The reason I say it's part-time teachers like Priscilla who keep Cuesta going is because she is not a credentialed teacher, but someone who is applying her years of work experience to her lessons. It's community members like her - and you can find them all over the school - who don't get paid much, but are still willing to teach classes, review homework, administer tests, and grade students. In her case, her experience came from a long career with Ma Bell, and I guess she didn't transition from management to retirement as easily as she'd anticipated. Cuesta was the beneficiary of her boredom.

Priscilla sent me an email last week, saying she had used two of my "ONLY HUMAN" columns as a discussion point in her new "Communicating Using Technology" class. First I laughed, wondering if there was really any student below the age of 22 who needed this class. Then I read on. Seems she assigned my columns (December 17, 2009 & January 28, 2010) on the memo I wrote to staff about personal use of company internet and email. And, she tells me, the discussion was "lively".

The question was: "How much should a business allow its employees to access company equipment and use work time for personal internet and email?" At first glance the range appears to be from "absolutely zero" to "use it all you want", but in real life, it's very difficult to draw the line between "some" and "too much". So, once the horse is out of the barn... etc., etc. Plus, nobody likes a micromanager.

The results of Priscilla's class discussion: She says "Students were split about 80/20 (80% opposed to allowing use at work). Interesting." Interesting? Surprising! As much as college age people appear to be joined at the hip, er, thumb, with their communication devices, I found it hard to believe that 80% of them would agree to put aside their need to connect with their friends and the outside world while at work. That certainly has not been my experience nor that of my clients. This is a huge issue for employers these days.

Then I remembered that Cuesta's motto is "The place for lifelong learning" and wondered if the class wasn't filled with students whose life of learning was a bit longer than 22 years. I haven't asked Priscilla yet, because if I'm wrong I'm going to have to seriously reconsider some generation stereotypes that I had found quite comforting. I'll let you know.

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Article Tags: college students, hr concerns, opinions, social media, texting



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