For most of this decade, professors embraced the pedagogy of engagement, wooing students via technology and ignoring the costs because traditional methods, from textbooks to lectures, purportedly bored students who multitasked in the wireless classroom.
Now many state institutions are facing huge budget cuts in the worst recession since the Great Depression. In Iowa, we began our fiscal year with a 15-percent cut and were informed in October that we have to trim an additional 10 percent because of state shortfalls. Other states have it as bad or worse. Budget analysts in Louisiana see money for higher education declining by nearly 60 percent in the next two years. Gov. David A. Paterson of New York, facing a $3-billion deficit, ordered state agencies to slash their budgets by 11 percent, in effect reducing support for the State University of New York by $90-million and to the City University of New York by $53-million. California is coping with a $60-billion budget shortfall resulting in 20-percent reductions for major universities in addition to furloughs and tuition increases.
Those facts alone merit an immediate technological and curricular assessment, or else hundreds more professors and staff members could lose their jobs in the coming weeks and months. You may lose your job.
In making decisions about who goes and who stays, administrators typically evaluate which positions and units are marginal, useful, or essential. They fire or furlough on that basis. The irony is that we seldom assess technology in that manner, ascertaining which devices, applications, and tech courses are marginal, useful, or essential. In a sense, you cannot blame the budget cutters for overlooking the implements of our demise. Technology, interwoven in nearly everything we do in academe, has become an invisible, autonomous system that is, at times, so convenient we cannot recall how we ever functioned without it.
Lessons in e-history. The bull market of 2005-7 treated higher education well. Benefactors and corporations donated billions, and our foundations flourished. Colleges and universities invested heavily in virtual worlds, student-response systems, and social networks without considering their escalating costs. After all, our learners deserved all the digital acumen we could divine so as to prepare them for those fabled technology jobs yet to be invented.
Many of us believed the Silicon Valley hype. Better still, we could raise fees and tuition to cover budget overruns because students had easy access to loans.
It was the best of nonlinear times. We expanded curricula, creating new courses to accompany the gadgets that students brought with them to class under the untested hypothesis that what entertained them would also engage them. For example, a record number of colleges and universities—254 in 37 states and the District of Columbia—offer courses and degrees in video-game programming and design, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
Campus administrators were often willing accomplices to those curricular efforts, which resulted in more credit hours than necessary for technology-related degrees and more sequences than ever within those degrees. The Chronicle has profiled many such courses, such as "eCommerce/eBay" and "Digital Editing: From Breaking News to Tweets." They proliferated to such an extent that the satirist Robert Lanham conjured a mock course called "Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era."
Campus libraries jumped on the bandwidth bandwagon, too. Once the body and soul of the university, libraries and their archives divested paper holdings in return for pricey data feeds of digital journals and e-books.
The pursuit of digital engagement became so acute that many business students found it easier to market imaginary products in virtual worlds than in real ones. Geology and horticulture students took field trips in that ethereal realm rather than explore and grow in inclement weather.
In the past, classroom engagement implied deep critical thinking and inspired commitment. Somehow that metamorphosed into convenience, which technology provides, for a fee. Centers of teaching excellence, once celebrated for curricular assessment and peer mentorship, increasingly began offering more workshops and seminars on technology, as if those centers were brand managers for companies like Linden Lab, creator of the virtual-life world Second Life, or Turning Technologies LLC, proliferators of clickers surpassing 14,000 on my campus alone.
The same digital phenomenon seemed to happen on every college campus, often with administrators celebrating technology the way they used to boost athletics programs, showcasing how "in touch" they were with innovation. Too few of them, however, were monitoring costs. And why bother? Professors told them that clickers, social networks, and virtual worlds were "free" (at least initially). Then purchasing departments started receiving invoices for site licenses, application updates, bandwidth expansion, state-of-the-art multimedia labs, and upkeep and replacement of equipment.
On some campuses, departments that invested in digital engagement never publicized the fees they were spending to rent virtual land, allowing faculty members to use institutional credit cards to equip and clothe avatars and their cartoon environs. Worse, users ignored terms of service that shifted liability to institutions or caused conflicts associated with online harassment and student privacy. Many users simply clicked "I agree," participating in a virtual world that not only defied gravity (avatars can fly) but that also defied common sense.
All of that technology cost money, passed on to students, in a market-driven economy that proved as illusionary as a house of pixels. Now those bills have come due, and it's the avatar, clicker, tweeter, or you that is going to go.
Lessons in e-future. I'm not being nostalgic in raising these matters. Those who tweeteth their demurs already without finishing this article are being technostalgic, believing that we can continue to afford the costs and pedagogies spawned by digital devices as if the subprime and student-loan scandals never happened.
Neither am I hypothesizing here. I cannot speak for my entire university, but I can attest that our school of journalism and communication considered the price of digital and curricular expansion, reduced both or found external means to finance them, and so has been able to absorb reversions and budget cuts—with more to come—while maintaining essential technologies and reasonable workloads.
We had a supportive dean who encouraged us to face some hard truths. We did and decided we wanted to do the following:
• Instill in learners a commitment to make a difference in society, and do that through the fundamentals of teaching excellence—preparation, organization, and mastery of the subject matter.
• Negotiate with vendors for essential technology, such as statistical-analysis programs and videography, and introduce those applications and hardware into existing courses, rather than create new or experimental ones.
• Use seminar or workshop modules for curricular innovation, particularly with timely or topical subjects (often the case with technology), rather than propose new courses that need to be scheduled and staffed on a regular basis.
• Streamline curricula to maintain workload by eliminating low-enrolled or potentially duplicative courses, as well as end emphases that double as "silos." (We deleted emphases in public relations, print, electronic media, and visual and science communication in as much as they weren't acknowledged anyway in official journalism degrees.)
• Revise elective courses so that media specialties are taught across those former emphases, giving students a sense of the integrated media world. (Incidentally, intra- and interdisciplinary course combinations can work in any department, not only journalism.)
• Reserve smaller laboratory classes for majors only, to reduce the number of extra sections.
• Funnel nonmajors into larger elective classes, preventing them from claiming seats in required courses so as to safeguard degree progress for our majors.
• Look to corporate benefactors rather than our budgets to pay for the latest communications technology, providing paid internships for our majors.
• Ask professors to do academic advising, spending more face time rather than Facebook time with students so as to ensure a good retention rate. (Professors who resist advising can teach an additional class.)
If additional budget cuts materialize, we may have to streamline again, using technological convergence as the impetus to meld existing courses rather than fabricate new ones. Our success, so far, is a credit to professors and staff members who put the school's interests above their own.
I challenge anyone objecting to these arguments to look in the eye of secretaries, janitors, adjuncts, advisers, and professors of eliminated programs and say that avatars, clickers, social networks, and tweets—and the pedagogies, IT expenses, and teaching centers supporting them—are more important than feeding their families. To believe we can afford both indicates how incapable many of us are of making the difficult choices that the times require.
Comments
1. mbelvadi - November 09, 2009 at 07:01 am
The inclusion of libraries doesn't really fit with the rest of the article. Unlike your other points, the content of the material isn't changing, just the format. the digital articles and ebooks aren't a different set of intellectual property from what was purchased in the past - almost all of them also have a print existence and the libraries are just delivering the same words and graphics in a more accessible format. Don't mix up your legitimate criticism of doing geology in Second Life with a misplaced nostalgia for the crinkle of dead trees.
2. earlixd - November 09, 2009 at 11:08 am
Michael made two very important points that I think bear repeating: Technologies often are not evaluated for their necessity in teaching and learning, and even if they were, their true costs frequently are not known. My school only moved away from videoconferencing to an asynchronous course delivery platform after we realized that salaried time (invisible on the videoconference cost sheet) could be used to fly the distant students out to their courses for the term.
As an instructional designer, I am often asked what technologies I recommend to assist teaching and learning. Having mastered videoconferencing, web conferencing, and having familiarity with high fidelity simulation, Second Life, Web 2.0 social networking, and flash learning object generation, I have a tremendous inventory of solutions at different price points. One approach that benefits nearly every course, however, is free: Fill in an Instruction Matrix. Take the time you would have needed to master those new technologies to think out every ability successful learners should master, how to chunk and sequence the instruction, what activities will authentically allow students to learn them, and how to assess that learning. And while you can't take the money you would have spent on your clickers, servers, codecs, and salaried support personnel to buy a Lexus... you might save a job (or two).
3. derekbruff - November 09, 2009 at 11:59 am
I'm all for sensible use of university funds, but if we're going to talk about financial implications of the use of educational technology, I think it's misleading to lump Second Life, classroom response systems, and Twitter all in the same category. Second Life typically takes a significant front-end investment of time (and, therefore, money) for a department or campus to use (in creating virtual content). Classroom response systems take less front-end investment but do have recurring costs associated with the purchase of new hardware (the clickers themselves, which typically run $20-50, depending on the model). Twitter, of course, is a free service.
I'll also point out that Bugeja has focused here on the cost of instructional technology, but not on the benefits to student learning. There's plenty of research that shows that student learning is positively affected by instructional methods that involve more active student enagement before, during, and after class. Technologies that support or facilitate such instructional methods are certainly worth exploring, if our goal is student learning. When conducting a cost-benefit analysis, it's only appropriate to spend as much time thinking through the benefits as it is thinking through the costs.
4. bwatwood - November 09, 2009 at 05:55 pm
It is good that Bugeja is starting a conversation. My own take is in my blog at http://bwatwood.edublogs.org/2009/11/09/what-walls-need-tearing-down/
5. ira_socol - November 09, 2009 at 06:31 pm
I can never really argue with Michael Bugeja's logic, but I can (and have) argued with his starting points.
Yes, the choices facing universities are uncomfortable ones. But we have to ask, do we stop purchasing new books? Do we stop bringing speakers to campus? Do we stop attending conferences? Do we turn off phones and block the use of postage? Perhaps, but with each of those steps we (perhaps) damage our educational mission. And the technologies Bugeja brings up are (in some cases) simply the contemporary equivalents of our basic communication tools.
Now, Michael knows that I hate "stupid" technology spending. Outside of a few isolated cases, I think campus spending on Second Life is ridiculous. I have joined Michael in a deep dislike of "Clicker" spending by universities. Before campuses wasted money on these systems it was obvious that better, virtually free, systems were coming online. Likewise, many universities seem to compete for "spending the most for the least," fueling the profits of Apple, or even Kurzweil, when much less expensive systems are available.
But all that said, digital journals are so much better for learning, and for the range of non-traditional, non-typically-abled students, that a return to the "information is scarce" days of paper journals is unconscionable. And the engagement opportunities offered by campus-wide wifi has made many university experiences much superior to what came before. We should not turn our back on the access opportunities, or the training of students for the future, which come with 21st Century communication skills.
Yet, I will point out that every university could save a fortune by embracing the free Google Apps for Education, and Google Sites, replacing expensive internal email systems and course management software. Every university could negotiate far better deals for one-to-one student computing and stop building so many computer labs. Every university could investigate going "open source" or purely online, and stop licensing Microsoft.
Technology should not be rolled back. But just as universities never cared how much "Gutenberg-Era Technology" (Text Books) cost, they've not cared about the costs of contemporary choices.
It is time to do that.
6. elliana - November 10, 2009 at 03:20 pm
I have to agree with mbelvadi. Online access to journal articles through my university library has been a lifesaver for this grad student who also works full time and has a family i would like to spend *some* time with occasionally. Being able to do work at night and from home during library 'off' hours is a HUGE benefit worth the investment our library puts into it. I honestly don't see how this fits in with things like creating avatars and spending University money to outfit them.
7. mmm1919 - November 10, 2009 at 03:34 pm
While I agree that digital and electronic library materials shouldn't be lumped in with this list, libraries are facing less control over what they are buying in terms of license agreements and escalating costs from the vendors of professional literature.
Essentially the journals are "rented" over and over again as opposed to buying them once. But increased access is made available (who is going to complain about being able to access a journal from any location?) and it saves on space, which allows libraries to have less to worry about in terms of what to send to off site storage or begging the admin to build them a larger, pricier facility.
8. mcosgrave - November 11, 2009 at 03:31 am
Technology is not the solution to every teaching and learning problem, but wisely used it does enormously enhance learning, and it is wrong to blame it for every ill we now face.
The problem is not technology, it's stupidity, and particularly the attitude that 'the more I spent, the more important I am' which appears in every field, not just academe. This has led univerisities to spend money on proprietary technology solutions instead of perfectly fine free options.
Some of Bugeja's criticisms have nothing to do with technology - how much technology you use in teaching should make absolutely no difference to how you instill in your students a commitement to make a difference in society, and it is wrong to blame technology for people's failure to do that. Bugela is advancing a very crude, luddite line here - blaming technology for everything when the faults lie not with the technology, but with the poor choices of those who use it. People who use technology poorly or wastefully in teaching often do so because they have not thought it through properly.
Properly blended with other teaching, technology can save money, and enhance learning. At the end of the day, that is what we are about, not making jobs for janitors. Universites that deliver the best learning experience will retain students, will retain fee income, and save jobs. Universites that have thrown money at over-priced technology will lose it, and those of us who took the long view and supported free, open source solutions, will still be able to maintain it.
Bugeja is entitled to his view, and I'm glad the Chronicle gave him a platform to expose it, because while him makes some good individual points, the underlying position is deeply flawed.
9. laoshi - November 12, 2009 at 07:30 pm
"in the worst recession since the Great Depression"
WTF? Recessions are different than depressions. We are hardly in a depression right now. Is using correct economic jargon too much to ask for in The Chronicle of Higher Education?
10. mucwp602 - November 18, 2009 at 09:00 am
"Too few of them, however, were monitoring costs. And why bother? Professors told them that clickers, social networks, and virtual worlds were "free" (at least initially). Then purchasing departments started receiving invoices for site licenses, application updates, bandwidth expansion, state-of-the-art multimedia labs, and upkeep and replacement of equipment."
This only speaks to lack of knowledge. If your campus spends its money on Blackboard or other expesnsive products that no one will use when they leave the university, make a claim for the endless amount of free software out there that students will likely engage with when they graduate (in some form or another). And it speaks to faculty's lack of knowledge or willingness to learn when we speak of technology and pedagogy. The faculty member who embraces the expensive Blackboard system does so because it makes "teaching" easier, not because it contributes to student learning.
Enough with the head in the sands Chronicle approaches to technology. They make little sense in a world where you cannot communicate without technology (or what we call technology today).
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