![]() ![]() In a sense, it's a matter of faculty and administrators catching up and becoming as tech-savvy as the students. Universities are working to find a middle ground where they are providing tech-savvy students with the information access they expect, while not creating too strong a disincentive to attend class. Universities would also be susceptible to liability claims if the system didn't work as it was supposed to.Īs information shifts away from the actual classroom to the virtual online world, debates are rising among faculty and administrators with differing opinions on whether pedagogy or technology should come first. Additionally, students must subscribe to many text-messaging services, so the system likely will not reach all affected students. Īs this approach is in its infancy, it's not clear yet whether text messaging is a more effective method of emergency warning than traditional means, such as air-raid sirens. When a University of Colorado-Boulder student was stabbed on campus in August 2007, the university immediately sent a text message to the 1,300 students and faculty who signed up for the CUConnect emergency-notification system. With nearly every student now carrying a cell phone, many universities have begun text messaging students to alert them to emergencies from a possible shooter on campus to inclement weather. The shootings at Virginia Tech in early 2007, in which 33 students lost their lives, led university administrators across the country to look at using technology to improve their emergency-response systems. Now let's look at some ways universities are employing communication technology outside of the classroom. Students have been known to skip lectures once in a while, but technology now enables them to obtain the information presented in the classroom from remote locations.Īn "Introduction to Computing" class at University of California, Berkeley where lecture recordings were available for download had an enrollment of 200, but only about a tenth of the students ever showed up to class. However, this trend diminishes the need for students to actually show up to class. Stanford University professors has a page on iTunes where students can download lectures. Many instructors also make lectures available as audio or video files on the Web that students can also download to their iPods as podcasts. With the Web access they have in their dorm rooms, students at the University of Maine are able, via the "Ask a Librarian" service, to request information from the library over e-mail, text message or live chat. ![]() Weaned on the Web, they don't want to have their research time limited to library hours. Many students enter college with the expectation of 24-hour access to information. ![]() A Bioinformatics class incorporated videoconferencing in a discussion on protein databases.In an ancient poetry class, students use digital markers to annotate poems displayed on Webster screens (large display screens).In Psychology of Media, students do research in an immersive 3-D environment with Media X Works software.In a class on online learning communities, students use wireless laptops to research and record their work, then use Iroom software to send their work instantaneously to a shared Whiteboard screen at the front of the room.We'll explore specific examples of how technology has been integrated into college campuses and go on to consider the impact communication technology is having on the lives of students and faculty. In this article, we'll look at how innovations in communication technology are transforming higher education institutions, both at the classroom instruction level and across the campus as a whole. A $156 annual technology fee is incorporated into students' tuition. Students waiting to do laundry receive text-message alerts when a washer has become available, and another when their laundry is done. Not only does Ball State's wireless network blanket all academic buildings and residence halls, students with laptops can also go online at the football stadium and even on one of the university's shuttle buses. Intel named Ball State University in Indiana as the "Most Unwired Campus" in 2005. are now equipped with WiFi, a 9 percent increase from the previous year. According to a 2006 survey by the Campus Computing Project, more than half of college classrooms across the U.S. The trend toward laptops has led universities to shift much of their technology budget away from computer labs and toward wireless capability. Among students who came to school with a computer, 97 percent of those computers were laptops, in contrast to 1998, when 87 percent of students' computers were desktops. A 2007 University of Virginia survey found that 67 percent of incoming freshman owned an iPod. ![]()
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