Getting the Most Out of ACUPA Forums and Blogs

To satisfy your desire for a blog post describing some of the features of our website, my next few posts will address a bit of what is offered at acupa.org.

Blogs and forums have the same purpose, to promote communication between members and share information. However, the order and structure of communication is different between the two. They also differ in how you are notified that someone has posted to a forum or blog.

Forums

Forums are threaded ongoing discussions. Any member in good standing can begin a new topic in a forum, or post a comment in any forum discussion. By default, the latest post displays at the top of the list within a forum. Replies within a forum topic are sorted chronologically, so the most recent reply always appears at the bottom. Forums allow for internal quoting and the member’s profile photo is displayed in their forum posts.

The best way to stay on top of discussions in the forums is to subscribe to those that interest you. You can subscribe to get instant updates in your email anytime a forum has a new post. Or, you can subscribe to the digest, which will email you no more than once per day when a forum has a new post. To learn how to set up your forum subscriptions, hover over the “Forums” option in the top navigation and click on “Forums: How-to” from the drop-down menu.

Blogs

Blogs are always organized so that the latest post is at the top of the page, regardless of the addition of comments. Blogs do not pull member profile pictures, but do link to the posting member’s profile. The site-wide blog, to which all members are subscribed, is called Policy Matters. You receive an email notice whenever a new blog is posted. If you would also like an email notice about any comments made on the post, follow these steps from the Policy Matters screen: 1) Click on “Manage Subscriptions,” 2) Click on the speech bubble icon so that it turns green.

Currently, only members of the Blog Committee can post to Policy Matters, but if you would like to write a blog post, the committee would be happy to publish it for you on the Policy Matters blog. If you are interested, please contact Jessica Teets at teets@purdue.edu. 

The Impact of Automation and AI

One aspect of my job is to research emerging issues for my campus and make recommendations for how we should be preparing for them.  This post evolved from a policy and practice brief I recently wrote for my institution on the role of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) on the economy and the subsequent challenges for how we prepare students and operate as an organization. 

While campus traditions and cultures vary, most of us have experienced—and currently work in—an educational system that prepares workers for an Industrial Revolution-based economy.  Our modern economy, however, is changing in ways that will likely affect both the way we prepare students and our own workplaces; one of the drivers of that change is automation and AI. 

Most people are familiar with the impact of automation on factory and blue-collar jobs that began to speed up in the 1970s.  What many don’t appreciate is that increasing numbers of white-collar professions, such as radiology, accounting, stock trading, paralegal work, and even some aspects of journalism, have already been significantly influenced by machines that can do the work as effectively as humans.[i]  Yes, some of the news stories you are currently reading are written by nonhumans.  A 2013 Oxford University study predicted that nearly half of all jobs will be in danger of automation in the next two decades,[ii] and a 2015 McKinsey report predicted that 45% of all work can be automated by technology that’s currently available.[iii]A survey found that most researchers believe that AI systems will probably (i.e., more than 50% likelihood) achieve the ability to work at the same level as humans beginning around 2040.[iv]  Even more moderate predictions see a large impact on the workplace, with 9% of the workforce being displaced.[v]

Skeptics say that the world economy has previously experienced several major technological disruptions—such as the power loom that displaced weavers and the car that eliminated most of the relevant products and services for horse-drawn carriages—and each time the economy recovered as people reskilled. Several experts say, however, that the disruption caused by AI is different because it is exponential in its ability to change and adjust.[vi]

Even if the more dire predictions don’t come to pass, it’s certain that AI and automation will impact our lives as workers, as well as those of our graduates. While it’s unlikely that instruction and service units will be completely automated, technology is currently in use that automates important functions like grading, tutoring, and answering basic inquiries from students. 

Because so much is unknown about the impact of AI on education, there are more questions than answers at this point, but it’s important, nevertheless, that campuses begin to engage these coming changes and, as part of that process, give thoughtful consideration to what they mean for our own campuses as workplaces.  Has your institution begun thinking about these issues?  Has your institution begun using AI to perform functions that were previously done by humans, such as chatbots to answer basic student questions? In an era of scarce budget resources, what stance, if any, does your campus take on preserving the jobs of human workers versus using technology that can perform some or all of their functions?What policy and ethical implications do you foresee, as AI becomes more integrated into the work of education?

Tips to Help Word Work for You

Note: This is the first lesson in a planned, ongoing series of posts based on expressed interest and requests from this post. In future posts in this series, previous lessons will be linked at the bottom for easy reference.

To say that Word is highly customizable is a gross understatement. You can, if desired, change every menu, toolbar, and command used by Word. You can change the way its interface looks, the way the program itself operates, how it reacts to every keystroke, and so much more. Customizing Word according to how you utilize it can save countless hours and increase both in-house and external user experience.

However, because it would be impossible to cover all the ways in which Word can be customized in a single post, this and each subsequent lesson will focus on one or two simple techniques you can implement to get the most bang for your buck in terms of usage and productivity. As always, leave a comment below with questions or suggestions for future topics.

Tip 1: Creating Custom Tabs and Buttons

When you first install Word, it comes pre-programmed with a few interface tabs. These tabs are located on the top bar of the screen—the ribbon—and include buttons pre-selected and organized by Microsoft according to the most common, basic usage of their program. If all you use Word for is creating simple, single-use documents, this basic ribbon likely meets your needs without sacrificing extra time fiddling with settings and menus. However, if you find yourself creating and recreating similar documents, repeating the same series of button strokes and actions, searching through menus or toolbars to alter settings or styles, or regularly completing other repetitive, time-consuming tasks, you may benefit from customizing your ribbon to better work for you.

Creating custom tabs allows you to organize the tools you need and use most often. (Later in this series, I will discuss how to program your own custom tools to complete simple, multi-step tasks with just the push of a button, but for now, I’ll stick to the basics). While customizing your ribbon, you are likely to discover and unlock some of the hidden features already programmed into Word. Along with buttons for highly specialized-use features are basic buttons that simply reduce the amount of clicks it takes you to get to a desired style or setting. For example, my office uses some of the advanced review features already programmed into Word but nested in a series of buttons and menus in the default ribbon. By including these commands as a button in a custom tab created for editorial review, we can skip the menu hopping and tell Word what to do with one click instead.

How to Customize the Ribbon in Microsoft Word

This feature works the same in all modern versions of Microsoft Word: 2010, 2013, and 2016, as well as in other Office applications, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, etc.

1. From the File menu, select Options. Then select Customize Ribbon. The list on the left will display all the buttons (or commands) already programmed into Word. The dropdown menu allows you to view commands based on their existing placement under a tab in the ribbon or their exclusion from the current ribbon. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with some of the commands available and figure out which ones will work the best for your needs. The list on the left displays the current tabs on the ribbon and allows you to create your own. Think of the tabs as a folder, commands as pages, and groups as dividers. Each page (command) you want to use needs to be placed in a new or existing folder (tab). These pages can then be subsequently linked together by subject and applicability by dividers (groups).
2. Create a custom tab by selecting New Tab. Custom groups can be added to new or existing tabs by selecting the tab you want to place in the group and then clicking New Group. Groups must be placed under a new or existing tab. Select the newly created tab or group from the list and select Rename to give it a new name.
   
3. To add a command to the new group, select the new group on the right, select a command on the left, and click Add. Commands must be placed in new or existing groups. From here, you can organize commands and groups under a tab by dragging them around the list. Once finished, select OK to save your custom tabs and exit the menu. Return to the document view screen to reveal your custom ribbon.
   

Your ribbon can be customized in a variety of ways with commands and macros that eliminate extra clicks and steps for simple, repetitive tasks, saving you time and headaches in the process. The screenshot below is a mapping of one of my custom tabs to give you a better idea how this feature can be implemented for your own use:

Hopefully, you found this helpful and can implement some of these tricks in your own office. Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions, requests for topics, or can share some tricks and tips of your own.

Reorganization of Policy Administration at Cornell

I am continually surprised by the different organizational placement of so many of our policy offices. When the ACUPA membership was surveyed, we found that organizational placement under executive administration or compliance/risk management made up more than half of those offices responding, with another 23% reporting through general counsel and finance.  The balance of the responding offices were in HR, academic/research, or various other areas, with no single one representing more than 6% of total responders.

Where do you report in your organization, and does it matter?  Is the success of institutional policy at your organization necessarily tied to any particular organizational structure, such as the existence of a central compliance function? Could you have any influence if you believed that your policy function needed to be moved in your organization in order to be successful? To whom would you appeal, if you did want to move your office to another organizational unit? These are the questions many of us ask ourselves, and ones I have asked myself regularly for well over twenty years. 

Here at Cornell University, the policy function began in 1989, when “higher education policy” was viewed skeptically, at best, and considered Orwellian by many. We were originally part of the internal audit office.  Within a few months, however, senior administration realized that this placement created a conflict of interest: the same individuals who were responsible for the process for developing the policies couldn’t objectively audit against them. So we looked for a new home.  Thankfully, we had a willing vice president for financial affairs, who took over responsibility for institutional policy.  And there we lived—until three weeks ago.

While I’m fairly certain it was not because of my long-held opinion that the university should consider moving the policy function out of the finance area, it appears as though this is the direction the university is headed.  A new chapter has begun for me at the university and, as of now, the policy office reports to the “associate vice president for EH&S and risk management,” a big title for a growing university unit.  Formerly just “Environmental Health and Safety” (EH&S), the unit expanded some months ago to include the area of risk management and insurance and, now, university policy. Cornell does not have a centralized compliance office, and I wonder if that might be the next function to join our unit.

I’m excited about the change, and I look forward to a renewed effort on policy, from the vantage point of institutional risk.  Already, I have begun meeting with the office of risk management to chat about creating “risk registers” and learn about how cooperation between the two areas will drive policy that is stronger, leaner, and more focused.

Using Technology and Automation to Augment Your Policy Process

When I was an editing student in college, an older professor asked me to proofread a nonfiction book he had authored and get it ready for publication. He emailed me his files and a letter from his publisher that outlined their style guide, and mentioned that the publisher had rejected the files in their current state because of “formatting incompatibilities.” I didn’t know just what they meant until I attempted to format the document myself and noticed a host of bizarre issues: certain passages were locked, fonts and margins were inconsistent from page to page, and some paragraphs had collapsed entirely upon themselves into a single jumbled line of incomprehensible text. The most frustrating part was the more I attempted to fix the formatting through the normal Word interface, the more issues and problems it would introduce.  

So how does this apply to what we do in policy and the vastly unique roles of our individual policy offices? Little did I know (but would quickly learn), that underneath the text we see on a digital screen is an extensive web of coded language that instructs the program how to respond to a user’s inputted action (keystroke, voice, touch, etc.). This code can act in unwanted ways when a user inadvertently introduces invisible instructions to the program (usually through formatting marks, bookmarks, styles, etc.). In the case of my professor, he had unknowingly used some formatting options that had left invisible, residual coded marks after the original text was deleted in earlier drafts. By exposing these marks through advanced formatting options in Word and then eliminating them through the outline view, I was able to fix the coding issues. This was the moment I learned that Word is so much more than a word processor; that it, and other Microsoft Office products (Excel, Publisher, OneNote, OneDrive, etc.), contain a pre-coded network of untapped potential for application, productivity, and automation solutions that most casual users never know is even there. And with a little instruction, these and other programs that we already use can be customized and applied in individualized ways to solve the unique demands of our offices.

For example, my position in my university’s Policy Office involves editing policy drafts and completing research for policy writers. These writers, while incredibly intelligent subject-matter experts in their field, come with varying levels of technological proficiency. When I first started, I would email out our university’s template files for policy drafts, summaries, comments, etc. to writers, and what I would get back would sometimes be barely recognizable as our own template. A lot of my time was spent fixing accidental formatting errors caused by inexperienced users, multiple authors/drafts, or general human error: fixing fonts, sizes, and margins; moving stray lines and logos back where they belong; and just generally enforcing our university’s style guide (e.g., fixing section numbers, alphabetizing). All manual, repetitive, and tedious—but necessary—tasks.

Through a little Googling and dabbling in some of the advanced capabilities and developer options of Word (VBA), I was able to create a template that does not allow a writer to do anything I don’t want them to and automates the stuff I don’t want to do. The design is locked down. The styles, locked. The numbering and alphabetizing is all automated and customized to our style guide. They cannot misnumber a section; my template won’t let them. They cannot move, alter, erase, or change anything other than the sections they need to. And that was just template version 1. Using that template, I am currently creating a custom UserForm app (all through Microsoft Word using its existing features as intended) that will automate all the templates that we use in our office. Upon completion, a writer will be able to simply fill in the UserForm fields and submit, and the template will be generated and auto-populate with their answers.

The above is just one example out of the countless customizable solutions that anyone can create with just a little advanced insight and know-how. By understanding and harnessing the full capabilities of these programs, advanced users easily automate repetitive tasks, eliminate user error, increase efficiency and productivity, seamlessly enforce institutional standards and styles, and create better, cleaner documents and spreadsheets that enhance their policy and research processes.

The purpose of this post then is to gauge interest for a reoccurring segment on the Policy Matters blog (alongside its other fabulous editorial content) that that will educate interested ACUPA members on different ways they can optimize their own policy process by creating simple solutions customized to the unique needs of their office. This segment would consist of short, beginner-friendly tricks and tips for utilizing the popular office programs that we already own and use to their full potential, tailored to a policy administration environment.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Do you think this information might be helpful or applicable in you and your office’s functions and roles? What unique administrative challenges do you face that you would like to find solutions for (anything, seriously!). Is there anything else in particular you would like this segment to cover?