Martin just wanted to teach, not to mess around with technology. He missed the days when he could just show up to class and talk, assign and collect a couple of papers during the term, and whisk out an arduous final exam at term’s end. Now, though, the school wanted Martin to use its online learning management system. He had to upload syllabi, assignments, models, and rubrics. The school’s curriculum committee wanted him to create online practice tests with automatic scoring, answers, and explanations. And his department chair wanted Martin to record and edit video lectures to post online so that he could use class time for paired and group exercises. What did the school think he was, a tech wizard and coder?!
Change
Schools are definitely different today than they were decades ago. And technology has been the primary driver of school change. Yes, instructional methods have changed due to education research and rigorous assessment standards. Those changes are significant. But technology has both supported and spurred changes in instructional methods. Technology has also facilitated changes in instructional delivery. Schools are still wrestling with those changes, when the pace of technological change doesn’t appear to be slowing but instead to be increasing. Technologies with applications in education are growing exponentially more powerful, swift, sure, and effective. They are also growing less expensive in some areas and for some applications. Accreditation standards are requiring schools to address technology use, just as competitive pressures are requiring schools to incorporate technology or fall behind. Technology is a huge issue in education.
Response
How your school responds to the availability and widespread use of new technologies may have a great deal to do with whether your school remains effective, relevant, and successful, indeed even whether it survives. Schools can respond to technology advances along a spectrum. Some schools actively resist it, banishing computers from the classroom, while allowing or even encouraging instructors to stick to the old paper-and-ink, blackboard or whiteboard ways. Other schools accommodate new technologies only as instructors, students, and accreditors demand, neither actively resisting nor promoting its use, and instead just riding the wave. Other schools see technology as a potential boon to instruction and other school operations, and so look for ways to incorporate it to supplement the old ways. A few schools, though, see technology as transforming education in its every aspect, indeed in its very object. To those schools, their mission is no longer to inform and shape graduates of sound knowledge, strong skills, and good character but instead to help graduates survive and thrive in a new technological age. Examine carefully how your school perceives technology. Its future may depend on a sound view.
Surveillance
Surveillance is a good place to introduce the growing impact of technology on school communities. Schools once policed their campuses with security officials walking and riding around to observe individuals and conditions firsthand. Surveillance cameras at key intersections and common areas soon enabled campus security officials to monitor a bank of video feeds, relieving officers of most foot patrols. As cameras grew less expensive and wifi signals replaced cables, surveillance cameras multiplied both outdoors and indoors to cover nearly every square foot of campus. Monitoring all those video feeds proved problematic until artificial intelligence applications became sophisticated enough to replace human monitors. Security officers and other campus officials now devote their time to responding to AI alerts from surveillance cameras and communications systems. AI-powered surveillance systems have even replaced exam proctors to monitor student eye, head, and hand movements, in the classroom and online. Schools that are not using surveillance technologies may be leaving their schools insecure and costing themselves substantial expenditures for replaceable labor.
Operations
Technology has also greatly impacted other school operations, beyond security. Accounting, payroll, purchasing, and other school finance and business functions of course depend on online applications and services. Invoicing, payments, payroll deposits, and other financial functions are generally all or mostly online. But online services and applications also control building access and security, fire alerts and suppression, lights, heating and cooling, and utilities, and track maintenance and repair functions. Online services and applications also monitor and manage student recruiting, applications, admissions, enrollment, registration, and financial aid. Online services and applications also manage donor relations and fundraising. If schools are not using technology effectively in their operations, they are missing a big opportunity to improve functions.
Communications
Technology has also saturated school communication functions. Email, text, and other electronic messaging services may be the primary means of school communication not just for administrators but also for instructors, students, parents, staff members, suppliers, contractors, services, and volunteers. School advertising and marketing, once dependent on mail, telephone, and in-person appearances at recruiting fairs, is also primarily online. Schools give substantial attention to websites and social media campaigns and influencers. School newsletters and alumni magazines are increasingly in digital rather than print formats. The mail room, mail folders, postal services, and courier services, once critical to school communications, look increasingly anachronistic.
Conferencing
Technology has also changed how administrators and faculty and staff members communicate in meetings, learn in seminars, and grow through conferences. Administrators once held frequent on-site meetings, moving from office to office and conference room to conference room to gather, discuss, and decide school business. Absences to attend to other business, for travel, and due to other causes were frequent. Today, though, videoconferencing and teleconferences make attendance vastly more efficient. Administrators can drop in for important meetings while on vacation or when traveling, from halfway around the world. Faculty and staff members can gather in videoconference meetings without leaving their offices or homes. And faculty members can pursue their professional development through videoconferences and online seminars without the time, trouble, and expense of travel. Conferencing technologies have vastly improved school communication and accelerated professional development.
Academics
Technology, though, has also reached and invaded the academic program. Beyond registration functions, schools increasingly rely on comprehensive online learning-management systems to organize and distribute course materials, host student practice, provide feedback on formative assessments, administer and score exams, and provide score and grade results with appropriate feedback. Instructors also increasingly use classroom and online technology for slide presentations, video presentations, recorded lectures, and other video, audio, and textual materials supporting instruction. Instructors also use technology tools for back-channel inquiries, instant responses, and instant polling and surveys during classroom lectures and discussion. Classrooms entertain new modular designs for multiple student projections of group work at once, for class sharing and instructor comment. Courses also use video and other electronic simulations for skills practice. Technology has vastly expanded instructional tools, methods, and resources.
Delivery
Technology is also deeply affecting instructional delivery. The traditional model of exclusively on-site, all-classroom instruction has largely passed. Schools now routinely accommodate online synchronous and asynchronous instruction for students temporarily unable to attend class because of illness, disability, military training, dependent care, business travel, and other excuses. Schools also now offer remote synchronous instruction across campuses and to other sites. Schools also offer distance education where students receive part, most, or all of their instruction online, either synchronously in videoconferenced classes or asynchronously in recorded self-paced instruction. Online and distance-education programs have changed the cost structure and student calculus for non-traditional access to education, to improve jobs, careers, and lives.
Resources
Technology is also offering students abundant additional study resources, outside of what the school and its instructors offer. Students are able to find online outlines, practice exams, readings, flashcards, and other resources on virtually any relatively common school subject. The quality of these resources may vary widely, complicating and in some instances undermining instruction. Online services also offer tutorials and assistance with papers, problems, studies, and exams. Those services can entice students to substitute others’ work for their own and to use unauthorized devices and assistance on exams. Schools use their own exam software and other technology to detect and prove cheating, making exams, assignment submissions, and evaluations another technology-laden arena.
Intelligence
Schools are also increasingly using artificial-intelligence applications not only in their surveillance systems but also in marketing, advertising, graphic design, instructional design, operations, financial management, and other areas. Instructors are using artificial-intelligence tools to draft syllabi, exams and problem sets, outlines, and other course resources and materials. Instructors are also using artificial intelligence to score exams. Students, too, are increasingly using artificial intelligence to suggest, complete, review, edit, and improve their assignments, whether instructors permit or prohibit it. Instructors must increasingly use AI-detection tools to investigate and detect unauthorized AI use in student work and submissions. It is not too much to say that AI is causing a revolution in student work and assessment, for better or worse. While schools may have a responsibility and opportunity to teach students how to use AI, a school’s mission is not to fit students to technologies. A school’s mission is to educate students in the values, skills, commitments, and character on which strong families and vital societies depend.
Students
Technology is also changing students, a change for which schools must account. Screens, social media, and the attraction of cell phones and their stream of images have shortened student attention spans, weakened their concentration, undermined their logical and conceptual thinking, depressed their emotions and spirits, and isolated them from the positive influence of peers, parents, and instructors. Schools are increasingly dealing with an anxious, mentally and emotionally disabled, isolated, depressed, and disinterested student population largely because of technology effects. Schools are responding to this challenge with a variety of measures described in a later chapter.
Reflection
How have technology advances changed your school from when you first attended it until now? In what areas does your school resist, accommodate, or embrace technology? How is your school using technology to keep the campus safe and secure? How is your school using technology to observe, monitor, and discipline students? Are your school’s operations using technology tools effectively? Which functions could your school improve with greater use of technology? Is your school administering the academic program with appropriate technology tools? How are instructors using technology in the classroom? How are instructors using technology to manage learning? How are students using technology to learn? How are students using artificial intelligence to augment their studies? How are students using artificial intelligence to cheat and undermine their studies? Have your instructors clearly articulated AI-use policies for their courses and assignments?
Key Points
Technology is causing increasingly rapid school change.
Schools respond on a spectrum from rejection to embrace.
Schools use indoor and outdoor surveillance tools across campus.
Schools use technology throughout operations and administration.
Administrators, faculty, and staff constantly deploy conferencing tools.
Technology use is ubiquitous in the academic program.
Schools are using technology to change instructional delivery.
Students have access to abundant technology resources for studies.
Students are using artificial intelligence on exams and assignments.
Technology has changed student attention, relations, and emotions.