Technology is changing the way faculty members teach and students learn.

What is it about?

New technology-enabled learning provides higher education with new opportunities as well as new threats. Universities that are able to adopt and successfully utilize new approaches to teaching and learning improve their chances for success. Schools that are unable to participate in this technology-based revolution are very likely to fail. Due to Covid-19 all universities face unprecedented threats to their survival. Can technology help? Most universities in the United States as sell as K-12 schools have moved to online instruction for at least the fall semester of 2020. Faculty who have not used technology-enabled approaches to instruction are scrambling to put their courses online. Will this massive effort be of sufficient quality to stimulate more online teaching, or will students and faculty associate online education with a disastrous pandemic? Faculty and students must strive for the highest possible quality in online courses so they will be as effective as possible. It is likely that the future holds more online teaching as it is not clear when students will be able to return to campuses and how many will want to do so. For the fall of 2020 it is likely that few, if any, foreign students will be able to come to the United States to study. Public universities that depend on the higher tuition pad by out-of-state students will also suffer. Online classes offer one way to reach students who are unable to be physically present on campus. Technology for synchronous and asynchronous online courses may help save universities. The cost for course production and faculty efforts to convert courses to an online format and to create new courses will be high. In this article and the book Technology and the Disruption of Higher Education (World Scientific, 2016) on which it is based I predicted that some universities and colleges would fail because they were unable or unwilling to adopt the technology. The current pandemic is unfortunately going to increase the number of higher education institutions that go out of business.

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Photo by Todd Turner on Unsplash

Photo by Todd Turner on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Education is one of the most important activities in the world. Education is responsible for the advances civilization has made. Increasingly a college degree is necessary in the U.S. for a good job. Education is clearly important for a democracy to prepare citizens who can understand current issues and vote intelligently. Our universities and colleges not only educate students for their future and the future of the country, they play an increasingly important role in undertaking fundamental research to improve society. Technology-enhanced teaching and learning offers higher education institutions the opportunity to expand their reach and influence. However, these institutions and their faculty have to make a commitment to change and invest time and money to be successful. Some schools will succeed; they will use the pandemic as a step function to dramatically increase their technology efforts. Unfortunately, some universities and colleges will fall by the wayside.

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