A solid majority of faculty members (58 percent) described themselves as filled more with fear than with excitement ... . Meanwhile, academic technology administrators —defined as “individuals with responsibility for some aspect of academic technology at their institutions”—were overwhelmingly enthused; 80 percent said the online boom excited more than frightened them.

A new study—quite timely in light of the University of Virginia presidency situation and its relationship to online learning—shows faculty more fearful of online learning than tech administrators. Here’s an Inside Higher Ed article about it and here’s the PDF of the study. Inside Higher Ed is having a free webcast about this report on July 10.

Faculty and tech administrators also disagree on assessment of online instruction:

Meanwhile, online courses tend to generate more data from which instructors and their overseers can glean quantitative insights on student engagement and the degree to which a professor has succeeded in meeting specific learning objectives.

Administrators seemed more confident that their institutions were indeed supplying their online instructors with good quality-assessment tools; more than 50 percent of administrators believed their institutions had such tools in place, compared to 25 percent of faculty members.

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

My main point is that participatory teaching methods simply will not work if they do not begin with a deep bond between teacher and student. Importantly, this bond must be built through mutual respect, care, and an ongoing effort to know and understand one another. Somebody using traditional teaching methods (lecture) can foster these bonds and be as effective as somebody using more participatory methods. The participation and “active learning” that is necessary for true understanding and application may not happen in the classroom, but the lecture is just one piece of a much larger ecosystem of the college campus. An effective lecture can inspire deep late night conversations with peers, mad runs to the library for more information, and significant intellectual throwdowns in the minds of our students.

–Michael Wesch, Professor of Anthropology, Kansas State University, in an email message to The Chronicle editor Jeff Selingo, shared in Wesch’s blog, Digital Technology With Professor Wesch. Wesch was a hit the last time SCUP visited Chicago, at SCUP–42, when he closed “Shaping the Academic Landscape: Integrated Solutions, with a rousing presentation. 

People who plan need to find relevant and credible information streams. SCUP provides those streams. From @SCUPNews, the society's daily environmental scanning tweet stream and the weekly SCUP Email News • to publications like Planning for Higher Education and Trends to Watch In Higher Education • to networks on LinkedIn and Facebook • to the society's annual, international conference and idea marketplace (July 23-27, ~DC)

We've titled this post "Are Students Brains Changing Faster Than Higher Ed Can?" It's actually an untitled item from the Learning section of 2010's Trends to Watch and takes the form of an observation with related thoughts.

"Trends" is written by SCUP's director of education and planning, Phyllis T.H. Grummon, who will facilitate SCUP's Pacific Region's June 10 Trends in Higher Education Symposium the Claremont Colleges.

Learning

Observation

Changes in the learning environment, sometimes very subtle, can affect the performance of students in classrooms.

• Exposure to the letters “A” or “F” at the start of an examination seems to have an affect on how well students score. Subjects receiving an analogies test with the label “Test Bank ID: A” scored significantly better than students with “Test Bank: F”, with a “Test Bank ID: J” scoring in the middle.
• A study of high school students found that the gender of the images of scientists affected test scores for females. When all male examples were used, girls’ test scores were lower. They increased when textbook pictures were either all female or equally divided. 
• Recent research reports that a variety of skills are enhanced by playing action video games, including better visual selective attention and better focus.

Our Thoughts

Technology is also introducing changes in the environment. Our interaction with it appears to be influencing how our brains are wired. The power to increase learning comes with the reality of our evolving nervous system The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, (2010) Carr, N., W. W. Norton).

• Math software developed by the University of California-Irvine, based on neuroscience research, significantly increased the passing rate on a state examination in 64 of the lowest performing elementary schools in the state.
• Devices that track eye movements while reading on a screen can now be combined with software that infers a reader’s progress and provides help when eyes pause on words or names.
• Informal learning through television, video games, and the Internet has increased students’ abilities with visual-spatial reasoning.

Did you ever experience the crisis that hits when you near a deadline, working with others on a collaborative document, and you suddenly realize that no one knows which of 5–6 versions are "the latest"? At SCUP–46, you can learn about this free, easy to use, and powerful tool at a Skill Session; one of many. The program, below, will open to the Skill Sessions pages if you click on it.

Perhaps you thought, gee, if only we could all work in the same document at the same time, so it was always the "latest" version. And wouldn't it be cool if we could see the changes each collaborator is making, in real-time? How about, if we collaborating with a spreadsheet, if there was a real-time chat window to communicate through, as well? Oh, and how about being able to quickly make an online form that, when completed, automatically completes an online, collaborative spreadsheet?

All that, and more, is in Google Documents, and it is free. Organizations can pay a fee and have greater control and security over a Google Apps domain. A lot of institutions are licensing it now, and Google Apps has a lot more than just email. Google Docs is one part a planner could well put to use. 

Here's a tour of Google Docs. 

So, what do you think. Will we look back in 40 years and see nothing but the memories or bones of academic libraries? Or, will there still be units performing related duties that we still label, or at least think of occasionally, as libraries?

This blog post links to three, related commentaries. What do you think from the unique perspective of a SCUPer? Reply in the comments below, or go to SCUP's LinkedIn group and engage with the discussion there. Be sure to share not only your thoughts, but links to related resources. Thanks!

Early in 2011, before most of academia was even out of winter holiday hibernation, Brian T. Sullivan of Alfred University wrote a letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is written from the perspective of a 2040 autopsy on the body of the dead academic library. His autopsy concluded that the death of the library could have been avoided by more realistic planning now.

In summary, it is entirely possible that the life of the academic library could have been spared if the last generation of librarians had spent more time plotting a realistic path to the future and less time chasing outdated trends while mindlessly spouting mantras like "There will always be books and libraries" and "People will always need librarians to show them how to use information." We'll never know now what kind of treatments might have worked. Librarians planted the seeds of their own destruction and are responsible for their own downfall.

As you might expect, there was a lot of buzz in the comments.

Nearly three weeks later, The Chronicle published another opinion, by Patricia A. Tully of Wesleyan University, who writes (labeling Sullivan as a Cassandra) that the end of the library is a long ways off:

Mr. Sullivan ends his article by stating that librarians "planted the seeds of their own destruction and are responsible for their own downfall," and he implies that this was in part by participating in the digitization of print materials and the development of a variety of online, unmediated services. But librarians should not be resisting these efforts to increase and enhance access to content—a central value of our profession is to make content as discoverable and accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

And in leading these efforts, we are not making our professional obsolete. Librarians in 2050 will be doing the same thing we are doing now—making content accessible to our users. We will be doing this very differently, of course, just as we are doing things very differently now than we did in 1960. The library will look and operate differently, and perhaps provide a different kind of experience for students and faculty. But the library's end is a long way off.

 Then, last week, James C. Pakala of Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis), asserts that Sullivan's autopsy report "Overlooks Libraries' Other Roles," saying that libraries do more than serve undergraduates, and also that faculty and staff require a great deal of information searching and analyzing assistance.

And as to IT taking over libraries, the opposite tends to predominate, owing to such factors as librarians' faculty ties, organizational ability, relational skills, etc. Ironically, the last Educause Review issue of 2010 even warns that campus IT operations could fade as technology becomes ubiquitous and consortia or other competitors beckon.

So, what do you think. Will we look back in 40 years and see nothing but the memories or bones of academic libraries? Or, will there still be units performing related duties that we still label, or at least think of occasionally, as libraries?

This blog post linked to three, related commentaries. What do you think from the unique perspective of a SCUPer? Reply in the comments below, or go to SCUP's LinkedIn group and engage with the discussion there. Be sure to share not only your thoughts, but links to related resources. Thanks!

Current Cites, is one of the most consistently high-quality email newsletters SCUP scans for you. First published in 1990, it is nearly as old as SCUP Email News. 

A team of librarians scans the literature for information technology resources and studies that inform academic library leaders. They select and annotate the best 8-12 each month, and send those annotations as an email newsletter. The same content is available on the Current Cites website and as an RSS feed.

The January 2011 issue covers topics that include: 

• How a library system changes its networking and reduced networking costs (but probably increased management costs);
• A study on how library patrons search for articles which has implications for how many article databases libraries need to subscribe to;
• The creation of regional repositories of legacy print collections;
• How students and scholars from different disciplines use digitized and virtual materials differently in their work; 
• A Cornell University internal study about how its print collections are utilized or circulated (or not);
• And more.

Diane Auer Jones is a former Bush administration department of education official who is now employed in for-profit education world. In this aggressive post to The Chronicle's blog, Brainstorm, she takes on some regulatory changes by the Obama administration and posits them as mostly about hindering the uses of information technology. The entire piece includes no mention of her employment or of the fact that the new regulations are intended to cope with quality control issues by some major for-profit competitors.

It will not be long before students in brick-and-mortar classrooms will be required to have clickers in their hands so that they can press the button every 15 minutes to prove they are awake and in the room, and so that a computer can record each time they raise their electronic hand to ask or answer a question. Faculty members will need to preserve thousands of e-mails to show that they interacted with a student, even if he or she missed class on a given day. I guess faculty will be required to keep electronic logs of who visited during office hours, too. ...

You are absolutely correct, Mr. President, that the world has changed. So maybe it is time for your Department of Education to realize that the students of tomorrow will not be educated with chalkboards and overheads, no matter how much those of us who are over 40 wish to relish the glory days of our own college past. I challenge anyone who questions the quality of online education to sign up for an online course to see first hand just what it is like. Go ahead. Do it. Come back and tell us how it was. But for those who have never experienced online learning or teaching first hand, perhaps it is time to stop parroting hearsay and start making some evidence-based observations of their own.

Thank you, Mr. President, for recognizing that technology has changed our world. It is now time to allow technology to change higher education.

Yes, more than half of us (personal prediction) will be using tablet computers in two years. The best known tablet computer is the iPad. University Business magazine's Tim Goral reviews tablets: What they are, where they are, and so forth, in an article that you should read if you want to be sure that you fully understand the phenomenon:

What makes it different? First, it isn’t a computer in the traditional sense. That is, it’s not like a laptop with command-line capabilities that can be tweaked and modified to your liking. The iPad’s closed environment device doesn’t invite tinkering. It uses a flash drive, rather than a conventional hard drive; combined with new, lighter battery technology, that brings the weight down to about 1.5 pounds. A touch-screen interface eliminates the need for a stylus, and if you need a keyboard, a near full-sized virtual keyboard appears at the touch of an icon. And at just a half-inch thick, it is easy to carry anywhere.

“Our office of information technology surveys students regularly and has found that while 90 percent of students own laptops, they don’t often bring them to class,” says Ernst. “They generally don’t want to lug them around. The iPads seem to fit a whole different niche. There are huge advantages in weight, ease of use, and instant access. Just push the home button and it’s instantly on.”

When Colorado State University planned the new building for its school of business, opened in April 2010, the process faced many obstacles that could have distracted from the foal of a technology-dense facility. This article is brief, but provides an outline for the process that resulted in the most advanced technology solution in the region.

“We were very lucky,” said Jon Schroth, director of Information Technology for the College. “Things could have blown up in a lot of ways,” he said, referring to the challenges of protecting the vision for a progressive technology plan for the building. “Because the technology is the last thing to go in, a lot of things can happen to the budget. Like if a water main breaks, it can cost $20,000… or if someone decides they want slate instead of tile.”

“There was a lot of resistance along the way, and a lot of things that could have killed it budgetarily,” he said. In spite of Schroth losing a lot of sleep over the whole process, CSU College of Business Dean Ajay Menon and Associate Dean John Hoxmeier championed the new technology plan. “That’s why it worked.”

For the past several months, SCUPer Donald M. Norris has been interviewing leaders in the field of analytics, with regard to higher education. He has summarized best practices and vision in the white paper this post is titled after is also subtitled: "Insights on the Leading Edge From Interviews With Vendors, Practitioners, and Thought Leaders." It can be downloaded at the Public Forum on Action Analytics. 

The following quotation is from page 7,  "Five Insights From the Vendors":

• First, greater affordability and substantial pressure for continuing cost reductions was a pervasive theme. Institutions are demanding this and the vendors are responding. Vendors expressed the desire to provide analytics solutions for any type of institution, and touted examples of community colleges, small professional schools, and mid-sized universities that had deployed affordable analytics applications. The financial crisis will accelerate the affordability imperative.

• Second, the need is widely recognized for analytics that are designed and delivered for the masses and are user friendly and widely available. While some power-user-based reports will continue to be “pushed” out to users, over time analytics increasingly will be “pulled” by ever more sophisticated end users using applications crafted for the masses.

• Third, multi-vendor analytics environments on many campuses will continue to be the norm. Many leading-edge institutions are hedging their bets against a single vendor solution. Indeed, no single vendor solution exists for the multitude of analytics needs and opportunities necessary to achieve the ultimate solution – Action Analytics.

• Fourth, the conversation about new analytics capabilities is closely linked to the emergence of the enterprise technology that will succeed LMS 1.0. On the exhibit floor and in the hallways at EDUCAUSE 2010, a favorite topic of conversation centered on “What is your next LMS decision going to be?” Institutional leaders are exploring many options, including no formal LMS at all. These conversations inevitably included enhancing the analytics that existing LMSs have been unable to provide or support adequately.

• Fifth, there is greater sophistication in talking about the future uses of affordable analytics among vendors and campus executives: presidents, provosts, CFOs, CIOs, and campus planners. Over the past several years, the ERP, LMS, and Analytics vendors have been educating the marketplace – and one another – on how to move beyond the limitations of the existing ERP and LMS stacks. What new analytics needs will be required to deal with emerging institutional needs. Likewise, campus leaders have been facing greater pressure to provide accountability statistics and to improve performance, which requires embedded, formative analytics.