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This is the personal site/blog/experiment of Chris Harrison, a web designer living, working and playing in Augusta, GA.

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06.27.2006

New Media and Higher Ed

As a geek, I take for granted the tech­nol­ogy that I use on a daily basis. I read RSS feeds through Feed­De­mon sev­eral times dur­ing the day. I blog occa­sion­ally. I visit Wikipedia sev­eral times a week either to look up infor­ma­tion or to make sure spam­mers aren’t screw­ing arti­cles of inter­est to me. I also lis­ten to a num­ber of pod­casts, such as Desir­ing God Radio and Lost­Casts. I use these tech­nolo­gies to stay abreast of the lat­est news, trends and tech­nol­ogy out there that is impor­tant to me. Blogs, Pod­casts, Wikis: these are all “tools” that would be extremely ben­e­fi­cial for use in Higher Education.

In prepar­ing for my speech I learned a lot about new media tech­nolo­gies and their use in higher edu­ca­tion and, frankly, I was sur­prised by what I learned.

Of the 35 col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in the Uni­ver­sity Sys­tem of Geor­gia, only three had a pub­licly avail­able (i.e. on the home­page, news or admis­sions page) RSS feed — Arm­strong Atlantic Uni­ver­sity, Uni­ver­sity of West Geor­gia, and Dar­ton Col­lege. Only two of the 35 schools had pod­casts — Arm­strong Atlantic Uni­ver­sity and Geor­gia Col­lege and State Uni­ver­sity.

Why aren’t schools tak­ing advan­tage of these new tech­nolo­gies? Based on the feed­back I received from work­shop atten­dees it comes down to:

The good news is — many are in the process of imple­ment­ing some or all of these tools into pub­lic and pri­vate por­tions of their web­site. This is good news for stu­dents, fac­ulty and alumni alike.

By uti­liz­ing tech­nol­ogy that is out there, and gain­ing in pop­u­lar­ity, they can avoid hav­ing to play catch up once the gen­eral pub­lic “adopts” them.

This item was posted by Chris Harrison.

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8 comments on “New Media and Higher Ed”

  1. Posted by Jeff Mastromonico on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006.

    Hey Chris,
    Funny you should be talk­ing about this as I was look­ing at your site for blog ideas. We are look­ing at Move­able Type to do stu­dent blogs. Any suggestions?

    I am try­ing to push pod­cast­ing right now as well. I think in higher ed, the pro­belm is that fac­ulty are a lit­tle uncom­fort­able with new tech­nolo­gies or feel that they are over­bur­dened as it is and can’t learn any thing new.

  2. Posted by Chris Harrison on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006.

    Pac­er­World Diaries @ USC Aiken… and I think that’s a fan­tas­tic start! I wish more schools were doing this sort of thing.

    Mov­able­Type is a great pack­age to con­sider. They’ve got some edu­ca­tional pric­ing pack­ages that are pretty afford­able. I pre­fer Word­Press myself, but MT was one of the blog­ging apps I was con­sid­er­ing as I con­tem­plated a move away from a home-brewed news sys­tem I devel­oped and Blogger.

    I def­i­nitely agree that the main hur­dle in higher edu­ca­tion is staff (admin­is­tra­tion faculty).It’s the same way in the busi­ness world as well. Peo­ple sim­ply don’t have time to ded­i­cate to blogs or wikis or pod­casts, so they don’t do it. Or, they’re techno­pho­bic and refuse to do it.

  3. Posted by Jeff Mastromonico on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006.

    Hey Chris,
    Funny you should be talk­ing about this as I was look­ing at your site for blog ideas. We are look­ing at Move­able Type to do stu­dent blogs. Any suggestions?

    I am try­ing to push pod­cast­ing right now as well. I think in higher ed, the pro­belm is that fac­ulty are a lit­tle uncom­fort­able with new tech­nolo­gies or feel that they are over­bur­dened as it is and can’t learn any thing new.

  4. Posted by Chris Harrison on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006.

    Hey Jeff, good to hear from you again. It’s been a while. It’s funny to hear from you, because your name came up in a con­ver­sa­tion I had with a co-worker (a USCA grad). He showed me the Pac­er­World Diaries @ USC Aiken… and I think that’s a fan­tas­tic start! I wish more schools were doing this sort of thing.

    Mov­able­Type is a great pack­age to con­sider. They’ve got some edu­ca­tional pric­ing pack­ages that are pretty afford­able. I pre­fer Word­Press myself, but MT was one of the blog­ging apps I was con­sid­er­ing as I con­tem­plated a move away from a home-brewed news sys­tem I devel­oped and Blogger.

    I def­i­nitely agree that the main hur­dle in higher edu­ca­tion is staff (admin­is­tra­tion & faculty).It’s the same way in the busi­ness world as well. Peo­ple sim­ply don’t have time to ded­i­cate to blogs or wikis or pod­casts, so they don’t do it. Or, they’re techno­pho­bic and refuse to do it.

  5. Posted by Jeff Mastromonico on Friday, June 30th, 2006.

    Hey Chris,
    Looked for your email and couldn’t find it, so sorry to “clog up your blog” with a per­sonal mes­sage like this. Who is your co worker, I would be inter­ested in his and your hon­est feed­back on usca.edu, etc. It is really hard to get hon­est feed­back here and to get some from an alum would be great.

    Thanks,
    Jeff

  6. Posted by Chris Harrison on Friday, June 30th, 2006.

    Hey, it’s no prob­lem. It’s not like I get over­whelmed with com­ments or any­thing ;) For future ref­er­ence, my email address is chris AT pow­erserve DOT net or chris AT cdhar­ri­son DOT com.

    I’d be happy to do a mini-audit of the site, and let you know where you might be able to improve. I’ll men­tion it to Patrick Rodgers as well. (He’s the alum I mentioned.)

  7. Posted by Jeff Mastromonico on Friday, June 30th, 2006.

    Hey Chris,
    Looked for your email and couldn’t find it, so sorry to “clog up your blog” with a per­sonal mes­sage like this. Who is your co worker, I would be inter­ested in his and your hon­est feed­back on usca.edu, etc. It is really hard to get hon­est feed­back here and to get some from an alum would be great.

    Thanks,
    Jeff

  8. Posted by Chris Harrison on Friday, June 30th, 2006.

    Hey, it’s no prob­lem. It’s not like I get over­whelmed with com­ments or any­thing ;) For future ref­er­ence, my email address is chris AT pow­erserve DOT net or chris AT cdhar­ri­son DOT com.

    I’d be happy to do a mini-audit of the site, and let you know where you might be able to improve. I’ll men­tion it to Patrick Rodgers as well. (He’s the alum I mentioned.)