How do we more aggressively use blending across our different programs and services? How do we use more mobile technology, in particular, not just wireless, but all the devices that we have? They are getting into conversations about gaming, about social networking, about real, high-impact presentation technologies, even holographics, and then really looking at the analytic side of it, and the whole time thinking about how they maintain the human touch. …
So things that used to happen almost in boot-camp fashion — the students come in; they all take the same courses; they march through a four- or five-year program together — forget about that. So whether it is new distribution models online, online models, outsourcing, increasingly commoditized skilled courses — those are all new business models that I think are going to be supported by technology.
IT-staff members with teaching experience and an understanding of the mission of liberal-arts education need a place in which to demonstrate the latest technologies. And they need both space and time to help professors develop new types of lessons, assignments, and grading methods that can fundamentally change how teaching and learning happen.
But that is how IT-staff members must help in the development of teaching methods for the wired world. They are the ones who should try out the newest technologies, winnow out the fads or the tools that can't be adapted for use by thousands or millions of students, and figure out how to align the best tools with the best teaching methods. Without that experimentation, the instruction we offer will never be truly innovative.
infusing technology into subjects like math and science makes it easier for students—both college students training to become teachers, and children in K-12 schools—to absorb and retain what they have learned, as in the egg-in-the-bottle experiment.