Academic Cultural Realities vs. Technology's Promise

In spite of reported strides in technology adoption in higher education, this article, Horns of the Dilemma for Faculty: Legacy Demands and Technology Expectations, offers a view of the reality inside academic culture.

Source: Web 2.0 (05/06/09), a publication of Campus Technology.

Adopting the Latest Greatest Tool

With the continuous development of new and cool tools for teaching and learning, making sense of it all is becoming quite a challenge. Should faculty strive to integrate the latest greatest Web 2.0 technologies? To what end? Aside from teaching, instructors must engage in other critical and time-consuming responsibilities. Compared to past technologies, Web 2.0 tools are more user-friendly and appealing to explore independently. However, for a number of instructors, keeping up with "what's new" is not necessarily highest on their priority list. Their bigger concern is finding the time to integrate such technologies in meaningful ways that markedly enhance learning as well as current teaching practices.

Ironically, the abundance of new, often free, and easy-to-use technology tools may not translate proportionately to increased adoption of technology in academia, at least for now.

Revisiting Facebook and Distance Education

It has been a while since I wrote about Facebook and Distance Education. Judging from the statistics on the interest in that post, I thought it would be a good idea to share new perspectives on the subject.

It appears that Facebook use continues to evolve, joining other Web 2.0 technologies in the trend to integrate them in higher education. Let's consider the case for learning management systems that are now widely used to facilitate distance education. Some have reacted to the growing use of the Web by college students by providing a single sign-in capability for connecting students to both their academic and social endeavors. Some institutions have embraced this development by integrating their learning management systems with Facebook. For any number of reasons, others have taken a 'wait and see' stance. Perhaps, security and privacy reasons are still a major concern; perhaps they are hesitant to mix academic pursuits with what they perceive to be purely a social medium. While the levels of engagement may seem vastly disparate at each end of the technology spectrum, considerations to integrate new tools in education should not be dismissed merely on the basis of the original intent and focus of the medium. To do so may be irrational, if the medium also facilitates time on task and and other educational objectives. As routine, most students are used to juggling multiple unrelated tasks. For many, a key attraction to distance education is the flexibility to do just that, and they are capable of managing their multiple roles quite successfully.

On a different note, a number of colleges and universities are using Facebook to place their brand as a recruiting tool in an enviroment where young people congregate. The expectation is that their presence will be perceived positively, and therefore selected by potential applicants. In the face of economic hardships, coupled by competition for distance education students and others, this move is not only logical but also financially sensible. The more the exposure, the better. As for success stories using this strategy, stay tuned...

I also know that some truths remain the same. Just last week while talking with a college student, she expressed the 'horror' of finding that a much, much older relative had a Facebook account! While societal tendency appears to be leaning toward making Facebook all-inclusive on many levels, some young people (who don't contemplate ever becoming older) are yearning for the 'good old days' when Facebook was strictly their domain, with the sole purpose of promoting their own youthful online social connections.