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Higher Ed Live Video Recap of #hewebMI

Instead of my usual post-conference round-up, after last week’s HighEdWeb Michigan I had the chance to be on the Higher Ed Live video recap with a couple of the organizers and some of my fellow attendees. Aside from the ADD-inducing nature of watching real-time feedback flowing in over Twitter, and attempting to talk and tweet at the same time while never having any idea whether I was “on-camera” or not, it was a fun experience… almost as fun as hanging out with all these great colleagues in real life. Video of the recap is embedded below.

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Higher Ed Web Org Chart: Separation from the Top

Another quick update on the data from my survey of web departments in the higher ed hierarchy, as I delve a little bit deeper into the data. This time I looked at the number of levels that separate the web department from university presidents (or their equivalents). This info is somewhat less than exact, as it requires a bit of parsing of the data, as I didn’t exactly ask the question in that form; rather, the answers are culled from the more vaguely worded “As best you can, please describe the chain of command as it relates to the web group.” 

In any case, there is an average of 1.8 levels of hierarchy between the head of web departments and the leaders of their schools. Unsurprisingly, large schools seem to have slightly more levels present, but the difference is not large: 1.9  for schools of over 5000 students (n=34), 1.7 for smaller schools (n= 35). Interestingly, schools where the web department exists within IT seem to have fewer layers between the web and the president: (1.5, n=11) vs. (1.7, n=51) for those where the web lives under marketing.