How Technological Upgrades and Advances Have
Impacted Various Levels in Higher Education

A proposal was presented to the Faculty Executive Committee (FEC), a committee that appraises or judges proposals, issues or dilemmas that arise at the college level, to discuss about technology at the college level. At the meeting a representative from Technology and Instructional Resources Committee was invited to deliver ideas about technology that the committee held in the hope to get the support from FEC. The meeting time was mostly dedicated to the presentation and discussion that centered on technology facility and vision for the college for next year and years to come.

The discussion revealed that instructional tech has been appraised by levels. At the first level, classrooms are equipped with computers and smart boards. At the second level, you find smart facility, including computers and interactive instructional devices. It is still hard for faculty to precisely define what the third level is, as it can swiftly change in the world of high tech. However, one could easily imagine that it is not surprising one day to hear that classrooms will be equipped with entire sets of sound and visual facility, internet, and interactive instructional boards, and that all things are controlled by a set of remote controls.

At the department level in the Early Childhood Teacher Education Program, we have been pushing courses to be taught on-line. To a certain extent, technology represents instructional upgrades and a source of departmental income that can be used in multiple purposes, including funding for research, travel, and technology upgrading. On-line courses seem to be enthusiastically welcome in the part of administration because of several reasons. First, it decreases the demand of classrooms resulting in saving a tremendous amount of revenue. Second, it makes big money. For example, courses for the Franchise program, an on-line master’s degree consortium of three universities in Georgia, of which GSU is one, cost more than twice the price of a regular course offered in the university. Third, on-line enrollment sizes can easily be enlarged.

At the individual course level, sizes of on-line courses are growing. I have been teaching a master’s course that is popular among in-service teachers which used to accommodate 15-20 students on-line because the nature of this course requires a tremendous amount of written reflections, postings and projects. This year we opened one course for summer and the enrollment was full quickly. With the push to expand the course size from the administration, currently there have been 27 students enrolled in this course. Nonetheless, a further message from the top was that no additional session is being considered for additional students so far.

Advancement of technology has been promoted and influenced higher education tremendously due to the considerations of current issues that universities are facing. Nonetheless, ripple effects generated from the advancement have been inevitably expanding and might result in an unavoidable movement in larger learning communities of higher education that are distinct from the past. The initial stride of technological advancement seems to have placed us in a situation that we need to clearly redefine and restructure higher education in this new century.