Monday, April 21, 2014

Will it play in Emporia?

Will it play in Emporia?

An interesting piece and title in Slate (especially interesting to those at Emporia State University) by Paula Krebs, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Bridgewater State University.

She makes some valid points about the importance of small regional universities to our society and how regional universities will need to embrace new technologies (and most importantly methodologies) to survive. 

The problem, according to Krebs -

"While so many of us have been defending the value of a liberal arts education against the desire for us to deliver “skills,” we’ve too often been holding out against change in general—and technology in particular."

The forecast -

"The schools that don’t figure out what technology can do for their institutions and their students, who relay on their current methods of instruction and assessment, will be left behind over the next decades."

The outlook for instructional technologists/designers working in higher education is bright -

"....the kind of instruction we need will depend on faculty development, on faculty members being trained by their institutions to teach differently with tech."

Thoughts?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Post your comments below.



2 comments:

Chuck said...

The problem on my campus is that the "instructional designers" have at best been trained in general instructional technology skillls and they have never taught a college class. The faculty point out this lack of practical experience all,the time. At least on my campus there is a need for people of have been trained specifically in instructional design and some type of teaching experience would increase their credibility.

Marcus D. Childress said...

That's a great point, Chuck. All of the instructional design training in the world doesn't replace good ol' teaching experience (F2F and online). That's why it's important to give our program students some experiences as a teacher/trainer/facilitator; not always an easy task.