I had an interesting conversation
with a well-known learning & teaching professional from a national higher
education organization this week. The
individual made a statement that caused me pause, he stated that the learning
and teaching focus at universities had changed more in the last three years
than it had in his entire career spanning three decades. My initial reaction suggested this was an exaggeration
and he was trying to make a point that pedagogy was important to the success of
universities relevance. As the discussion
progressed I realized he was correct for a number of reasons. The first point was the problem related to
the cost of higher education and student debt.
The second point was the introduction of MOOC’s, MOOC’s are requiring universities
to evaluate their responsibility to educating student’s worldwide, not just
nationally. The final point was the
support structure universities have in place to support student success, questioning
if what has worked for centuries will work in a world that is connected and that
has technology available to the masses.
The
conversation caused me to evaluate how I believe universities are doing today
in supporting students. I decided to
develop a checklist of how relevant we are to students today. I have listed five areas that you should
review to determine how well your university is doing meeting your student’s
requirements.
1. Does
your university have a senior level academic administrator that coordinates student
support services across all disciplines? Has your university developed a holistic
approach to meeting the academic support requirements of students? Does your undergraduate studies department
meet monthly with the library and technology staff to understand the support structure
needed to meet the rigorous academic requirements of the classroom? I have discussed this with many universities
and I have found very few have student support departments working together,
often universities are funding a number of students support services but the
individual departments do not work together.
The result is students being frustrated when trying to complete their
coursework. I don’t believe
universities have a problem with funding student success but I do believe that
a lack of communications across department’s limit the success of what could be
accomplished.
2. What
hours are your student support services are staffed? An insightful comment was made by a senior
level administrator at our university. His
comment was the university is a nine-to-two organization, it’s just the wrong
nine-to-two. Many students begin their
academic work after 7:00 PM, how many libraries are staffed at that time, how
many academic student services are open after 5:00 PM and how many student
technology labs have individuals that can assist in subject matter questions in
the evening. Is it possible the student
support structure that was established a century ago is no longer relevant to
today’s student?
3. Is
your universities wireless networking infrastructure robust? It is not uncommon for a student to have two
or more wireless devices. Today the
cost of a laptop, tablet or smartphone is less than five hundred dollars and
most students have two devices. The
wireless network must be robust, networks established five years ago will not
meet the needs of today’s student. Libraries,
study areas and classrooms must be able to support 50 or more students concurrently accessing information in the
classroom, faculty use of video to support instruction is growing, faculty and
students are going to expect the technology infrastructure to work. A good rule of thumb is your technology
infrastructure must be as easy to use as their home networks. Our university has over 6000 wireless access
points and I would predict that we will need over 12,000 in the next five years.
4. Is
your university mobile friendly? A good
place to evaluate is the applications students are expected to use, the
learning management system, the library system, your student registration
system. Many universities have
retrofitted their applications to work on mobile devices but far fewer have
spent the time to architect a user interface that works well on a mobile
device. A mobile friendly system must
have the middle-ware changed to meet the expectations of students. It is good to remember that we are not being evaluated
against other university’s applications but against the student experience from
Google, Apple or Facebook.
5. Are
you investing in student analytics to support student success? Has your academic departments invested in faculty
development to ensure information is available to assist in understanding the
students being successful and the students having difficulty. Is your Information Technology organization
providing the departments with real time information to allow faculty to advise
the student in a timely manner? Student analytics must encompass the entire
teaching learning ecosystem and includes information from outside resources
such as textbook publishers to provide faculty with a comprehensive view of the
student’s efforts.
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