I had the chance to speak at a local university on Tuesday, talking to a class on cloud computing about the impact of technology (especially, of course, the cloud) on higher education. The class was great and was, itself, focused on team-based learning and simulations using a variety of cloud and web-based tools. What was even better, though, was the Q&A session with the students and my follow-up conversations with faculty and staff.
Let me start with something that ZDNet’s digital video and photo blogger, Janice Chen, wrote in an unrelated discussion we were having about ZDNet’s upcoming 20th anniversary:
I went to Cornell University in upstate NY (close enough to 1991 anyway) and was back up there semi-recently for a wedding. There’s a big undergrad library there that EVERYONE went to for “studying” and what we called facetime back in the day…As I walked into Uris Library over the recent wedding weekend, I realized there was hardly anyone in there. No one sitting in the rows and rows of
study carrels where we used to park ourselves with our open text books and pretend to read, while constantly looking up and scanning for familiar faces walking by. For a second I thought maybe we happened to be there over a school break, but then I realized that everyone studies in their rooms now with their own computers and the internet. Considering how hooked I am on electronics and technology, I’m sure I’d be just the same given half a chance. But still, I felt a bit sad for them–facetime at the library was such a big part of college life in those days…
It’s one thing to be in a dorm room working and studying. At least in that setting, students most likely have roommates and neighbors, shared areas, “the Quad” or whatever constitutes a given school’s hang-out-and-play-frisbee-and-breathe-air space, and even physical classrooms for face-to-face interactions.
It’s quite another to have a computer with school-related social interactions conducted exclusively through email, voice and video chat, instant messaging, and other electronic means of communication. What gets lost if students don’t have a Quad or Janice’s Uris Library at all?
Janice obviously wasn’t talking about virtual education, exactly, but the hint of pushback against increasing isolation and a fundamental change in the college experience, even while still within the confines of ivy-covered halls is only the tip of the iceberg as students as young as Kindergarten and 1st grade begin looking at fully online institutions as they select their schools.
Perhaps, as one individual I spoke with after my talk on Tuesday suggested, even more important than the loss of some of college’s more important social components was our potential loss of humanity and ethical fortitude as online education and technically-oriented schools made it easy for students to simply acquire skills. Those skills, though utterly necessary to be competitive in the job market, don’t necessarily address the critical thinking, moral fiber, or truly human portions of an education that shapes good citizens as well as top-notch engineers (or mathematicians, or doctors, or whatever).
I, however, am the vice president of marketing for a company that provides a virtual learning platform. Virtual classrooms, a marketplace to connect learners with independent educators, the whole nine yards. I wouldn’t be making a career of convincing people that this is a good idea if I didn’t believe that it had an incredible amount of value.
This isn’t to say that I think we should just put our elementary students in their rooms with a computer, enroll them in a virtual academy, give them a Club Penguin account for socialization, and hope for the best. Fully virtual learning environments are not for everyone and even the students they suit well need to find their own sources of socialization. It needn’t be one or the other though, and we also must recognize that part of the “differentiated instruction” we hear so much about needs to include providing an environment that best supports an individual student’s learning.
Next: So who can really benefit from virtual learning environments? »
