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Teaching & Learning in the Neomillennium

From robotics to mobile wireless devices to digital artifacts, new technologies are changing the way colleges and universities educate students.

The age of one-size-fits-all courses of fixed length, content, and pedagogy is over. With it, claim educators, arrive courses that better engage students and place them at the center of learning. This is due in large part to interactive technology and its ability to access information, resources, and people distributed across distance and time. The success of any technology, however, lies ultimately on how well it is put to use by teachers and students.
The challenges for higher education in a rapidly changing digital arena are many. Finding and implementing software compatible to a particular college platform is both difficult and costly. Universities often try hundreds of methods to facilitate “blended” courses—courses that use combinations of virtual and physical resources. Even technologies that have been around awhile, such as adaptive learning techniques (ALT), take commitment and know-how in order to develop meaningful course materials that make use of them.
For Professor Allen Burdowski of St. Francis College, “the technology is meaningless unless you really make the decision to jump in feet first and take advantage of all the possibilities.” The result is well worth it. Students gain tremendously, for example, from the individualized learning that ALT offers by matching learning activities to learning styles. Interactive tools in the classroom, such as blogs and wikis, deepen and expand learning opportunities for students.
To help faculty think through the deeper educational impact of the revolutionary communications technologies, Hofstra University developed a week-long boot camp. Manhattan College uses Jasper Educational Technology, a training and support resource, to provide one-on-one support to faculty...