Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Opinion
The Educational Software Paradox: Can We Learn To Unlearn?
6/25/2008
|
|
The Paradox
True technology change is and should be disruptive of the core beliefs, assumptions, practices, and the knowledge-generation processes of higher education institutions and, indeed, of the whole culture of higher education. But, in any human population, only a small minority is comfortable with change and willing to take the risks that allow real changes to happen. Therefore, if applications are broadly accepted, they will almost certainly be of the kind that reinforces current higher education culture, and they will cause the least disruption possible.
We thought, for example (though it still could be true) that open source -- applications arising from inventive developers freer from economic constraints than those employed by more traditional companies -- would break the mold and present us with forward-looking educational software. Yet, we've seen that for open source applications beyond the gadget category to stay current and add features, some type of organization -- a company or a foundation, for example -- must become involved. And then many of the same dynamics as in traditional companies (with proprietary agendas) apply.
Numbers of users, in the end, becomes especially important. Who can justify a large effort aimed at 10 percent of the higher education population? The numbers (and economics) are just too small-scale. So, inevitably, the application will be aimed at the 90 percent mainstream, that very population which is risk-averse and largely committed to the status quo. Thus, we end up with the paradox that most educational software and applications do not serve the ends of education in the way we had hoped or imagined.
Is There a Way Out of the Paradox?
The most exciting and vibrant development surrounding educational applications is Web 2.0. In this broader market, ventures can aim at 10 percent of the market and still have a viable business plan. This is where higher education has to turn for the vital changes we've been expecting from information technology.
But, to do so means going against a very strong bias -- the ivory tower bias -- that learning must be controlled, monitored, and can't be fun. If we continue in the sway of this bias, we'll miss an obvious opportunity.
Recommended Reading
- Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Dartmouth Beefs Up Cell Coverage, Cuts Costs
Problems with cell phone coverage aren't uncommon on college campuses. There are two main reasons: The beefy structure of historic buildings can block cellular reception within walls, and, on more remote campuses outside cities, signal coverage can be light.
- Thompson Rivers U Deploys Unified Digital Campus for ERP
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems.
- DV Kitchen Web Video Publishing System Released
DVcreators.net has released DV Kitchen, a new video encoding and publishing application for Mac OS X designed specifically for creating materials to be posted on the Web.
- NEC Debuts 4 Education Projectors
NEC this week debuted four new projectors targeted toward education applications, along with a new MultiSync LCD display. The new NP-series projectors are entry-level models started at $899 but are designed to provide high light output, support for closed captioning, and built-in networking capabilities.
- Security Researchers Uncover Spring Framework Vulnerability
Software frameworks are enjoying enormous popularity these days among a range of developers. It's popularity well earned; frameworks provide powerful tools for building more flexible and less error-prone applications. They generally enhance developer productivity with out-of-the-box functionality. And they can free developers to focus on features instead of common coding tasks.
- 3PAR Server Arrays Integrate Fat-to-Thin Processing
Utility storage provider 3PAR has announced the release of the 3PAR InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers. The new hardware is built on the company's third-generation InSpire architecture, featuring the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with integrated fat-to-thin processing.
