As the world becomes more digital, colleges must wrestle with what that means for their students. The rise of data analytics, the digital transformation of the workplace, online options to reduce students’ textbook costs — all provide opportunities for college leaders but must be navigated with intelligence and foresight.
Students Under Surveillance?
California State University at Sacramento plans to join 14 other colleges to track where some students spend time and for how long: the student union, the library, the dorm — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It isn’t hard to imagine the insights that might arise from such data, which could then help students succeed. Nor is it hard to imagine that such tracking might make some people nervous — even if students don’t care.“
The technology moves quicker than the legislation or the policy side that is always playing catch-up,” says Brian Kelly, director of cybersecurity for Educause. Understand the new phase that data tracking has entered, and learn three essential elements you need to use it wisely.
Helping Students Gain Digital Skills
Vinny Ong, a Bryn Mawr College sophomore who plans to major in linguistics, wasn’t looking for digital skills when she signed up for an internship at the library. She ended up developing them along the way.
Ong and other traditional-age students are digital natives. But there’s a difference between familiarity and understanding. Quickly finding information online doesn’t mean you know how to evaluate its trustworthiness. Growing up using apps doesn’t mean you know how to build one. How can a college ensure that all of its students graduate with the digital skills they will need to thrive in their careers and beyond?
Professors at Bryn Mawr have wrestled with that question for years. Learn how the college defined a series of digital competencies and embedded them in the undergraduate experience.
Choosing Textbooks Has Gotten a Lot More Complicated
If students are increasingly confused about textbook options, so, too, are colleges. They are wrestling with a host of issues as they seek to lower costs and widen access, allow professors to choose their own classroom materials, and maintain quality.
Meanwhile, the traditional textbook market is shifting under their feet. Digital-first approaches and open-educational resources are gaining traction. And newer players are changing the market through the textbook-rental business.
Some of those changes are shifting decision-making authority from individual professors up the chain to administrators. How that all plays out varies by institution. Learn how one college is wrestling with those challenges on its campus. And discover the world of “Pirate Libraries,” where students can find caches of free online books, some collected illegally.
Opinion: We Must Prepare Today’s Students for an AI Future
Today’s students, and the generations that follow, will work in a world profoundly transformed by artificial intelligence. AI will enable improved crop yields, safer roads, more-effective medicines, streamlined transportation systems, and much, much more.
But AI also brings risks. As just one example, think of the “deepfake” videos aimed at influencing an election. And what about AI algorithms that evolve in ways their human designers didn’t anticipate?
Colleges need to train the philosophers, lawyers, ethicists, political scientists, urban planners, public-policy experts, and scientists who can maximize the benefits and reduce the risks of AI. Here’s how.
And beyond AI, learn how a coalition of nearly two dozen colleges has started to build capacity to teach and study the ethical and societal dimensions of technology.
Three More Expert Views:
1. How Blockchain Technology Will Disrupt Higher Education
2. Few College Employees Can Use Data Effectively. Train Them.
3. Before Adopting Classroom Technology, Figure Out Your Goals
