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There and Back Again:
A High Technology Odyssey
By Kevin
Drumm, Ph.D.
VP Enrollment Management/Student & Public Affairs
Springfield
Technical Community College
With powerful computers running programs
that model the building blocks of life, …
researchers are making new discoveries every day about
the mechanics of living cells.
Klaus Schulten wields an electronic probe, gently pulling
and poking the protein molecules displayed on his
computer screen until he feels the force of their
resistance. This rare interaction, a novelty today, is
made possible by new scientific software and
high-performance computers." (From The Chronicle of
Higher Education, June 28, 2000)
Introduction
As technology in the classroom or the lab approaches
Star Trek proportions, what do these exciting
scientific and soon-to-be pedagogic developments portend for
the practice of student affairs and services over the next
decade or quarter century? Clearly, the high-touch culture
that has been the bedrock of student development practice
for decades will be impacted by the advancement of
technology both inside and outside the classroom.
Consider that for the first time since the invention of
the television, 14-year-olds (high school freshmen) now
spend more time on the Web than they do watching TV,
according to a recent national study reported on NPR last
month. Most of us older folks spend at least six hours per
day watching television, according to another recent poll.
So, then, let's consider the ramifications of a freshmen
class in 2004 that has on average spent six hours a day or
more on the Web… What will these students be looking
for in a college experience?
To answer this question I will look back a bit at my own
career, which has, in a way, gone technologically backward
in the past few years while otherwise advancing by the
standards of the old analogue paradigm of our profession. I
will explain below. I will also speculate below on what it
might mean for student development if we require our
students to go technologically backward when they get here
in four years (with all due respect to our history
departments). Further, what happens to older students if we
do not bring them up to speed for a networked world?
Back to the future
It is even hard for me to believe today, as I occupy a
traditional student affairs vice presidency, that eleven
years ago in 1989 I left doctoral study as a dreaded ABD for
the pursuit of a job in a virtual college start-up with the
University of Maine at Augusta and the Community College of
Maine. At that point I believed I would spend the rest of my
life as a distance educator. To me it was the future of
higher education and I was on the cutting edge--a real
pioneer--or so I believed at the time. It turned out that I
would be on the bleeding edge! Three years after taking on
the exciting challenge of developing student services for a
virtual college with 50 locations throughout Maine, the
recession caught up to me and many of my colleagues who were
new to the U Maine System and were out of our jobs. Another
vestige of the analog paradigm had bitten me: seniority, or
last-in-first-out. Try innovating when your newer people are
the first to be let go in difficult times. It happens
repeatedly in higher education and it stifles much
innovation along with many vestiges of the old paradigm.
I went on to spend six more years as a distance education
administrator and teacher, but in each case the forces of
traditional higher education got the best of the distance
education efforts. Of course, any historian of higher
education could have predicted that such early starts would
be reigned in by the prevailing view of the classroom.
History definitely repeats itself.
The Maine project to deliver live television classrooms
across the state, accompanied by networked services as well
as staffed satellite services in 50 to 100 locations, was
reigned in by a vote of "no confidence" in the System
Chancellor by all seven campuses of the U Maine System. This
outcome was unprecedented in the history of the Maine System
and probably the nation. The thought of a virtual college
was so threatening to the existing order that seven
disparate university faculties rallied to nearly derail the
project and slow it down dramatically. The operation is now
part of the U Maine System Office rather than a freestanding
virtual college.
My next position was with a virtual university, but its
new president was focusing on building new buildings and
adding traditional academic programs by acquisition or
curriculum development - strategies of our old analog
paradigm, and definitely not done with a digital age in
mind. I was on a short, two year grant, so it was easy to
move on to the distance education division of a small
private college. Their 5000 students from around the world
were at the time studying via a highly effective
faculty-directed independent study process; the oldest form
of distance education. Here again, a new president entered
the scene and made the strategic choice of building more
traditional buildings and investing in the old
infrastructure rather than updating the distance education
program to a networked program. I stayed there only two
years as well.
Finally, I saw the light after seven years as a distance
educator and sought out a traditional student affairs vice
presidency and landed it. I stayed there also two years
before being recruited into my present position as VP for
Enrollment Management/Student & Public Affairs at
Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) in
Springfield, Massachuesits. STCC is a wonderful college with
a modest distance learning effort, which is soon to grow
into two degree offerings of the otherwise 45 that we
offer.
What's missing
While I love my current analog SSAO position in a first
class college, I miss the digital-age access to higher
education provided by technology for those who are afraid to
step foot on a college campus but are otherwise bright
enough and who would go to their local library or community
center to experiment with a college class. Community
colleges are all about access and technology provides
unparalleled access for busy people, rural people, timid
people, people with disabilities, and anyone who puts a
premium on their time, their family, their job or simply
whatever conveniences or other barriers may be getting in
the way of college. So, I miss achieving a level of access
that only technology can provide.
I miss the incredibly student-centered nature of distance
learning. What can be more student centered than moving
classes and student services into students' neighborhoods or
better yet into their homes? This is why my transition from
residential colleges, and even nine years in residence life,
to distance learning was so easy for me. I found that
technology, if it is used the way it should be, puts the
student in the center of the learning process by bringing
the classroom and services to them rather than asking them
to come to us. As a committed, student-centered student
development professional and sometime academic affairs
administrator, it was the most logical progression and
direction my career had ever taken. Unfortunately, it was
too student centered for folks stuck in the analog paradigm
to let go its own way.
Finally, I miss the diversity in the classrooms of having
students from across the state and into Canada or all over
the world enrolled in the virtual or live TV classes. It is
fascinating to listen to, let's say, a nurse from a rural
hospital talk about the kinds of nightmarish cases such as
hunting accidents or accepted spousal abuse that punctuate
her otherwise slow pace of hospital life; by comparison to a
nurse from an urban hospital who deals with traffic accident
and heart attack victims routinely along with the sick
children of those who cannot afford insurance and therefore
use the emergency room in lieu of a family doctor.
Perspectives from another culture, such as when I shared a
classroom with students from Puerto Rico, add a magical
dimension to the classroom that only a major university
might provide…or technology.
Digital kids
I did not grow up with the technology that I have come to
enjoy and respect for its ability to help us achieve the
goals of student development, but the kids who will join us
in just a few short years have. Roughly 40% of our incoming
STCC students are 18-19 years old and most study in our Day
School; another vestige of analog daze in my current
position. Our degrees should be offered 24/7, as many
degrees are today, and surely some day will be. This is one
of the aspects of a low-tech classroom or campus that will
be a setback for the class of 2004 in spite of the fact that
as a technical college our traditional classrooms are loaded
with technology. If I'm worried, you should be! My bet is
that attrition for this class from traditional colleges will
be higher than ever unless residential colleges and
place-bound commuter colleges like mine "get it" in the mean
time. We're working on it
The Class of 2008 will want many of their classes and
services when and where they want them&emdash;not when we
want to provide them. After all, that is how they have
chosen to spend their time outside of K-8 classes. When they
have free choice about where and how to study after age 16
or 18, what is that choice likely to be…?
This class will all have a digital device which
will combine their cellphone, palm device and desktop
computer, if not their TV and radio as well. They will
probably be surfing DOT.TV URLs instead of DOT.COMs. They
will have instant access to anything on the Web, TV,
radio or a friend, classmate or teacher wants them to. Do
we think they will sit still in a traditional classroom
for a traditional survey course in the freshmen
year…? Do we think they will know how to type an
essay when they can speak into their hand-held digital
devices and create a document to be "wired" to their
professor or a girlfriend or boyfriend. Will they ever
visit a libraray when most periodicals, all the Classics,
and much of the current research in their field of
interest will make it on to the Web before it makes it to
print…?
Digital student affairs
The June 18 issue of Time Magazine touted the
attraction of cybersex and asked the question whether it
would be better than the real thing. If sex is already the
parlance of a Webbed world, what does this portend for the
high-touch services of student affairs…? (Please ignore
the obvious entendre, to make a point.)
While I don't believe student services will the become
exclusively 24/7, every college had better be in the process
of implementing some level of 24/7 service for every student
affairs office you have. For instance, we at STCC are going
to great lengths of time, effort and expense to develop a
virtual orientation on CD while most of our competition
moved to a CD viewbook first. We still do not have a virtual
viewbook. Getting people to become students at STCC has
never been a major problem for us due to our access mission
and attractive, unique degree offerings. But, getting
students to stay is another matter and attrition
dramatically erodes our mission of access.
Through our CD Orientation, our digital-age students will
be able to cruise our virtual hallways 24/7 looking for the
services they need. When they find what they are looking
for, they will be able to click on that office's URL and go
virtually to that office via our STCC Web Site for a listing
of services and staff as well as access to the virtual
services that office is providing or will be soon. The depth
of services won't be available, but with the advent of
hand-held video computing, some day who knows…
We are also developing a virtual student union in
collaboration with the Mascot Network. For a 100% commuter
campus where virtually all of our students work while
attending and many have families, a virtual student union is
probably our only hope of creating a "real" campus community
marginally approaching what a residential campus can offer.
Technology was the answer we needed all along, as building
community on a commuter campus has been nearly impossible
since the inception of commuter campuses.
Finally, we are moving away from a printed paper college
catalog. The withdrawal pangs are difficult at times, but so
far no serious damage seems to have been done to our
publications efforts for not having had a paper catalog for
nearly a year now. Our full catalog is on our Web Site with
much, much more. We will probably print one more paper
catalog for the sake of our potential student population
that does not have ready access to the Web, but it will in
all likelihood be our last paper catalog given how well we
have done this year without one. Our applications are up
nearly 10%--442 of them over the Web as of June 30.
The not-so-scary conclusion
Our mission is clear in my mind, having now headed
student affairs divisions both in the high tech and low tech
paradigms. We know how to provide sound student services and
most of us are at least comfortable cruising the Web.
Further, most of us have access to web programmers or can
readily contract for their services in this digital age. We
must convince campus leadership that at least some level of
24/7 student service is called for within the next few years
and that an initiative and investment are necessary to make
this change happen. This effort must go beyond online
registration processes and reach into every student service
we offer. The digital kids of the 2004 first-year class are
almost here.
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