I’ve been on the road a lot lately: the past couple weeks at national meetings, one for the League and one for Educational Testing Service; and tonight, I’m writing this message in Albany on the eve of a statewide gathering of the Regional Economic Development Councils. Although traveling has lost much of its charm over the years, as my four plus hour delay last Friday underscores, it is now actually much easier to be both on the road and (virtually) in the office. As I sit in distant meetings these days, I can’t even remember what it was like not to be connected—continuously—to my work back home. Around each table, I see my colleagues pull out their iPads or laptops; I see their ears glowing from Bluetooth earpieces or their faces lit from below by the glow of their iPhones or Droids. It’s awe inspiring (how do we balance all this connectedness?); slightly scary (when will we just evolve to incorporate these devices?); and kind of rude (aren’t we supposed to be listening to the speaker?). But, it’s how we work these days.
At all my meetings of late, technology has consumed our thoughts and not just because we’re all tweeting or updating our Facebook statuses. We all seem to be struggling with many of the same questions about the complex nexus of higher education and technology. Here’s a short list:
--We rely more and more on technology to drive efficiencies in our “back office” (e.g., document processing, registration, payroll, data reporting, etc.), but the infrastructure required to achieve these efficiencies is not inexpensive. How will we keep up with the costs and the expertise required to deploy and maintain this infrastructure?
--Our data systems are growing in size and complexity, but we don’t effectively mine this data to inform our practice. Individual data points that map out students’ academic patterns could become incredibly powerful learner analytics that would assist in retention and success efforts. Students’ interactions with colleges create complex narratives that could help shape everything from registration policies to advisement outreach to tutoring interventions. How can we move data into information and then share it so that our decisions are driven by evidence rather than anecdote?
--Online learning continues to grow, driven by student demand and facilities constraints. As they seek to balance their many commitments, community college students seem especially drawn to distance education. Now that we have a significant body of online course results to review, the findings are mixed. Clearly distance education enhances access, but it does not convert this access into retention and success at the rate we want. How can we create the most effective online learning opportunities for our students?
--Looking “upstream” to the students who will be enrolling in our colleges in five or more years, we see that their engagement with technology as “digital natives” is far different from the engagement we have as “digital transplants.” They have grown up with unquestioned assumptions about being supported by and connected via technology that will result in expectations that may be quite difficult for us to meet. How can we plan today for the learning environments, academic and support services, and infrastructure these future students will expect?
--Research across many community colleges identifies fairly consistent points within the curriculum at which students falter on their paths through higher education (e.g., developmental coursework; gateway college mathematics and writing classes; large enrollment prerequisite courses in the majors). It seems that—for many students—what used to work in classroom instruction just isn’t working anymore: we need new tools and new approaches. How might faculty engage in a thoughtful integration of learning technologies into their classrooms and courses to improve student learning?
--Regardless of the seemingly ubiquitous use of technology we see by our students, it’s clear that multiple digital divides remain. The traditional divide (tech “haves” and “have nots”) has not gone away and may even be larger in some populations because of the economy. We are also seeing deficits in students’ information literacy: the critical thinking skills necessary to process the endless cacophony of noise that overwhelms us all. In addition, students demonstrate growing difficulties drawing distinctions that are critical to their future success: between texting and writing; between public and private; between plagiarizing and researching. How can our curriculum and co-curriculum address these gaps?
What are your thoughts on these tech questions? Do you have answers? Do you have your own questions? Let me know on the blog.
Anne M. Kress
President's Office
09/28/2011 |