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)
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?
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.
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.
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…?
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.
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.