Instructional Technology

It’s been rather busy for me here at work.  We’re fully underway now to implement blogging in the Seminar for First Year Students.  Exciting, yes, but it does mean I’ve been too busy working with blogs to actually blog myself.  I’m also in the midst of setting up course shells in Blackboard for the second summer session, meeting with IT to get test servers up for a Moodle pilot, discussing the practicality of moving our blog and wiki solutions to an internally hosted solution, rather than an external one, etc.

But I know you’re dying to get something more than that, so let me leave you with this:

Educause, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the intelligent use of technology in higher education, has a fabulous podcast series.  As someone who usually has more time to listen than to read, this is a good thing.

Edit: This podcast episode on ‘The Fear 2.0 Group’ is quite relevant.

Yesterday started with a special presentation by the president of the college.  In addition to being the first staff meeting I’ve been at that started with a prayer (I’m not surprised, I did choose to start working at a Catholic college), it was also a very sobering look at our financial situation.  Investors are to blame for there being a new hiring freeze on campus.

Huh?

Ok, that’s stretching to a logical extreme, but there’s truth in it.  Here’s the piece in the middle; the current credit crisis affects everyone.  (If you’re unclear as to how investments lead to credit crisis, check out this recent episode of This American Life; it will take you from mortgage investors through to today.)  Suddenly, financial institutions are less able to lend money to students.  Homeowners have less home equity to leverage for educational expenses.  Colleges and universities are less able to take favorable loans for capital projects and plant improvements (the physical facilities).  There are other factors compounding things, such as:

• The government stopped subsidizing educational loans.  Previously the government would pay lenders to lend money, essentially.  Usually in the form of paying off the interest of the loan while the student was a student.  With less money coming in from that guaranteed source, the lenders are less willing to take risk in lending to students.  This leads back to the old saw about you needing to have money before the banks will lend you money.
• The rising costs of energy and food, and the unfortunate reality that the cost of higher ed has been rising at about twice the rate of inflation (more on that in another post), have led to major shifts amongst price conscious families and individuals as to where they are putting education dollars.
• People struggling to meet potentially mounting debt levels (due in many cases to sub-prime mortgages) are having to draw off money from funds set aside for college education, or are deferring education while moving directly to the workforce.

These factors, and many others, have led to a ‘perfect storm’ that is sweeping across higher education everywhere, and the result is this: enrollments are way down for the upcoming academic year (as measured by deposits received).  Some institutions are seeing numbers 30% or more below their projected goals.  Many institutions are having to dig deep into their waitlists to make up for this.  Even Harvard, apparently, has had to go back to the waitlist, much later in the year than they would normally.  And the qualities that lead to being selected off the waitlist are having less to do with academic rigor and more with one simple question: Can you afford to attend?

For some institutions, this is devastating timing, as they may only recently have recovered their endowments from the tech stock bubble burst earlier in the decade.  Now that they are no longer spending money faster than they were making it, suddenly, they may be making money a lot slower than they are spending it.  (You might argue that those are the same thing, but it’s a big perspective difference, especially if you’re the one having to manage the money)

At my own college, belts are being tightened even further.  They’ve been tight for a while, as they struggled to get back in the black (originally projected for 2009, now that has been pushed back to at least 2010), but now they’re having to trim off some of the meat, and not just the fat.  No new staff or faculty will be hired for the time being, replacement positions will be examined critically, salary increases, even cost of living increases, are on hold until at least September, when they know where things stand.  Tenure will still be granted as promised, which will prevent an outright riot from the faculty.  Investments in the physical plant will move forward cautiously, for a few simple reasons; namely that they are long overdue, and that they directly affect the ability to recruit students, who respond favorably to improved infrastructures.

Am I worried?  Not so much.  It will be tight and tough, but unlikely to impact me strongly given how cost conscious my department already is, and our already minimal staff levels.  I may not see a raise, which I was looking forward to offsetting some of the salary loss when I moved from my last position, but I think I’ll be ok for the time being.  My biggest thoughts on this are sympathies for the thousands of students out there who want to go to college, but find themselves unable to afford it now, despite having been accepted.  It can only add to the feeling that the middle class is being squeezed from all sides, and I hope for every-one’s sake that it turns around quickly.

By no means is the topic of Instructional Technology limited to the halls of academia.  Because this is a topic of culture, the implications of the technological revolution in daily life are far reaching.  Recently I found an excellent article on Digital Literacy in The Economist, a news source far removed from the daily life of most students.  The article argues, fairly successfully, that literacy in the digital world carries a different, but complementary, weight with literacy in the conventional written word sense, and that in some senses, the idea of literacy is as much in flux as everything else.  As a bonus for the geeks amongst us, it uses Babylon 5 as a positive example.

An excerpt from the article:

Cultural observers bemoan the way electronic media—with their demand for spectacle and brevity—have shortened our attention spans. But as a blogger on Eastgate.com noted recently, that equates brevity with debased taste, and sees patience for long stories as a mark of high culture. But if brevity is to be deplored, what should we make of haiku, sonnets, and ink-brush calligraphy?

Educause is an organization dedicated to the intelligent use of technology to promote higher education.  This article from one of their recent Educause Review periodicals does a nice job of summing up several aspects of the field at the moment.  From the article:

Today’s faculty members face several instructional technology challenges:

• The technology-adoption cycle: Under ideal circumstances, a faculty member may require anywhere from three to four terms to adopt a learning technology tool; even more time may be needed to produce positive results in teaching and learning. Many faculty members are hesitant to experiment with several tools at once and prefer a “one-at-a-time” approach to adoption and integration. The ever-changing array of available tools and the lack of information related to adoption and use together act as a de-motivator.
• Lack of integrated technology tools: Most faculty members are using some type of course management system, but many tools considered to be “emerging” are not integrated into these systems: blogs, wikis, podcasting. Lack of integration results in multiple log-ins, data input, and results tracking. In other words, tools that are not centrally integrated require an additional “use and management” investment that is otherwise unnecessary.
• Learners’ changing expectations: Students and their preferences are often a moving and diverse target. Not all students prefer the same amount or type of instructional technologies, leaving faculty members struggling to identify and select the appropriate tool.
• Institutional changes to technology commitments: Faculty members often adopt and integrate technologies at a different rate—sometimes slower, sometimes faster—than does the institution where they teach. An organization may decide to review, and possibly change, the course management system every five years. Changes in tools and in the commitment to support them result in an unstable, unpredictable environment, which makes innovation and adoption a risky business for faculty.

A nice overview of the state of technology in education, and what tools are out there now that have proven effective, or show promise of being effective.

In the world of technology, there are the Digital Natives, and the Digital Immigrants.  This is not an entirely fixed division, and is not made for the purposes of discriminating against one group or the other.  Like generational gaps (Gen X, Baby Boomers, etc.) there are cultural divides everywhere, and this is just one way of describing a cultural divide.  People on different sides of this classification have different experiences, expectations, and attitudes.
Here is a video entirely conceived, written, and produced by students in, and about students in the classification of Digital Natives, and using a tool embraced by the Natives (YouTube) as the medium of expression, aimed at those who are Digital Immigrants.  This is entirely within the context of the classroom, and speaks directly to what I see on a daily basis.

And here’s another video on the products of technology and technological influence, and how the classroom can embrace it.  Again this is done by students, for a non-student body.  This one is full of more hope and promise, and above all shows why it is important to be looking ahead.  By keeping up with the students, we can help them match pace with their education.

Thanks to the students, faculty, and staff of KSU for both of these.