Who are you?

Can knowing a person’s name make a difference?

As part of my Master’s Degree program through Excelsior College, I was asked to follow hashtag #highered for 48-96 hours. When I first read this, I was thinking that it was a misspelling and that they really meant for us to follow #hired. Upon further reading of our assignment, I found the term #highered used more than once so I figured it was not a misspelling and I better get some searching done. My first step was to do a google search before getting on Twitter to see if this was really a word. As it turns out, according to Urban Dictionary “highered” is a term but not really what the class was trying to point me too.

I am something of a hashtag/twitter rookie and I didn’t know until I put the term in my twitter account that it was really referring to Higher Education. I saw the use of the word with different caps being used (Higered, HigherEd, higherEd), but the common theme was about college and education. I also observed that #highered is used a lot in tweets, but that it really was not an overly popular hashtag. I scrolled back through hundreds of tweets over 48 hours looking for retweets and comments. Most of the tweets did not get retweets or responded too. The ads that are intertwined had higher numbers than the tweets. I am not sure if this is because the time frame was over a weekend or if it says something about our society in that they are more interested in movies and amazon prime than #highered.

I did find one interesting tweet from Teaching and Learning Conestoga out of Ontario that addressed learning student’s names. The tweet spoke of how more effective learning and engagement can take place when the professor or teacher knows the student’s name. I am not sure if @TLConestoga would be considered a huge influencer in the #highered community, but they had more followers than any of the other accounts that I found in my search.

I also think that this tweet sends a great message to more than just educators. Leaders in industry could learn from this as well. As Business News Daily (Skye Schooley Staff, 2019) puts it, there is a difference between being a boss and being a leader. I have found during my 30 years of Naval service that a leader that knows the names and backgrounds of those that work for them were generally more productive and successful. Forbes (2017) has some great idea’s on how to know your employee’s and students. When a manager or leader calls a person by name and knows more about them, it shows the person that the leader cares.

References:

Forbes Human Resources Council. (2017). Seven Ways Leaders Can Get To Know Their Team Better. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2017/03/23/seven-ways-leaders-can-get-to-know-their-team-better/#79eae11b4449

Skye Schooley Staff. (2019). Are You a True Leader or Just a Boss? Retrieved from https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1404-characteristics-good-boss.html