Unlock the Power of Data Conversion Lead for Higher Education

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I've always been fascinated by technology both the evolution of it as well as how humans have used it in their daily lives growing up I can tell you for sure that films such as the matrix such as Star Trek and Back to the Future captured my imagination more than many other films out there because of the way they portrayed technology growing up for those of you who know me know that I was an early adopter with technology often the first person who grabbed the newest gadget that was available taking apart computers and rebuilding them I was a person who wanted to understand how to utilize this technology for the greater good and so tonight when I talk about digital engagement I'm hoping the folks both here and online who are listening can really get behind the idea of digital engagement as a way to make higher education a better use of our students time as well as those who work and teach at those institutions let me introduce you to a guy I know this is me back in 1996 circa 1996 as a senior at Stone Hill College right down the road I had a little more hair back then I did have hair back then and certainly when I look back in 1996 it was one of those dates and one of those years in my life that I'll always remember because of the it was the first year that I had an email address up until that point the biggest technology I ever got my hands on was a brother word processor to write my papers right some of you are laughing cuz you know I'm talking about okay a brother word processor and a copy machine which was used to make my flyers as an RA at Stone Hill I would take those big clipart books some of you might remember them cut out clipart paste them onto a piece of paper and write down what the event was for in photocopier that was the extent of some of the technology technology we were using now certainly there was a computer hall on campus where some of us would go and check it out and see what these computers could do but for the most part electronic mail was something that changed the way we spoke with one another and talked to each other a lot of us didn't even enjoy the thought of it because we thought we could just pick up phone with a big cord and call someone if we need to get in touch with them or we can walk down the hall at our residence hall or walk across campus why would we need this other form of communication and so as I look back on that time I know that fast-forward almost 20 years later the influence of digital technology has permeated our lives think of it in the mid 90s AOL was still it was starting to come about chat rooms and that's what really people start exploring themselves online and as we fast-forward to today I want to share just some quick data to help sort of frame my talk cisco put pointed out in 220 in 2014 the mobile web data use was 30 times more than the data use for internet use for computers for desktop computing so we've already gone 30 times more just on mobile devices couple that with the fact that 497 million that's a half a billion new devices were added to the worldwide Internet just last year and when you consider the use of connected tablet that tablet technology that's been added which is a which accounts for around 10 million connected devices they use two and a half times more mobile data than your average smartphone where this is all leading us and why is is all important for higher education is very important because we are moving into and even at the next foreseeable future the next four five years the Internet of Things will continue to take shape consider the number of things that are internet enabled that wasn't just a few years ago some of you might have a car this Internet enabled some of you have washing machines or even your coffee maker some are starting to experiment with refrigerators okay and as we think about how those things play into higher education it's important to note that as the mobile web continues to grow cisco forecasts that by 2019 three-quarters of mobile data will be video based think about that for a minute it makes sense when you look at the rise in Netflix and the and people cutting the cord and using their smartphones and their smart devices in order to access the things that used to do on television or other means so why is this important for us consider how smaller the world is now this is an image from showed in John Mather Lee who is an internet cartographer him and his staff at showed in decided to ping all available Internet enabled devices throughout the world you can see what came back and as you can see here there's a heat map sort of aware that biggest concentrations are but as educators and this by the way reflects 7.5 billion devices in the world just enough for each one of the human beings on this planet to have and they're forecasting that by 2019 there'll be 1.5 devices per human on this planet close to 11 and a half a billion devices so in higher education we know this has been coming we understand it because as a profession educators administrators understand the power of this technology but still having hardest the ways in engaging students online and when you consider the cost of higher education today the rising cost of it the amount of debt that our students are going into to get that education but different types of education they can get from a two and four-year school or a competency-based type of degree there are many ways to get a higher education today and it's only going to continue to grow so as you look and think about the ways you might have gotten your higher education in the future in the very near future it's not going to look like that at all I'm calling on those who work in higher education tonight to level up their skill base and their knowledge base around digital technology and I have three specific messages for three distinct groups the first is for my faculty colleagues and friends in the audience I know that given the pedagogy that you believe is best for your students there is a way to include more digital technology to engage that student either online or in the classroom or both back in 2009 Henry Jenkins from MIT and his in a group wrote a report funded by the MacArthur Foundation about confronting the challenges of participatory culture in one of the 21st century skills he talked about in that report was transmedia navigation the ability to follow information flow across multiple modalities so not just be able to write a paper on a topic but how do you remix that into a video or write for web-based content how do you graphically represent that as we all know this is how some of our student current students think and consume media how do we get them to do that and who is teaching our students right now about digital technology its pitfalls its potential no one formally in a liberal arts education instead of finding a way to just add a class to teach digital technology skills why can't we start weaving this into the pedagogy of our faculty I ask that you consider that as a question for those who are administrators in the audience tonight I asked you think about the current infrastructure on your campuses that support digital technology and ask yourselves a simple question does the infrastructure you have we have now adequate to not only serve the current students of today but those that are coming to our campus in the future years campuses like Texas A&M at Galveston are starting to employ other ways to build up their infrastructure by charging students fees for premium Internet service so as you know those of you work in residence halls know that when you on move-in day you see students bringing in one two three four maybe five internet enabled devices from smart TVs to gaming systems and so on and so forth our current infrastructure wasn't built to support that many devices being connected so how do we do that if a student wants to watch Netflix on a snowy day they should be able to do that but maybe at a different cost because it's taxing on the system that is really meant for academic construction okay the second thing to think about is says for all 20% ing to the latest US census data 20% of Americans still don't have access to broadband internet yes they might have a smartphone with internet capability but let's be honest how much how many of our learning management systems are actually mobile friendly and can do the things our students want to do on a smartphone but can't our low income students are the biggest are those biggest affected so I'd hope that if your matriculated at a university or college across the United States that you get a MiFi hotspot if you are low income how that's defined as up to the institution but we make sure that every student especially our low income and commuter students have access to high-speed Internet especially if we're expecting them to be on learning management systems every day and finally I want I want the administrators out there to think about how many times have we gone to our events and our even our buildings and thought about what is in there for infrastructure for for technology whether it's smart smart TVs that you can touch and get much like at a much like at a hotel think about what is on the campus now for infrastructure it's important to do so and for the students in the room I really want you to consider how your student voice could change the way higher education is delivered most of the students that I know learned about digital technology on their own and through a social construct my hope is that you'll consider to start using digital technology in an educational and a professional one only then if you use your student voice and decide to engage outside of a social contract but in educational professional ones that you might find out interests in things that you didn't realize you had and the ability to connect with faculty staff and other students in a different way student the student voice is a powerful one and one that often doesn't get maximized access and use of digital technology can do that when I think about the future in 25 years from now Bridgewater State University much like other institutions of theirs water sighs we'll have a choice to make do we continue to offer the same type of education in his current form or do we unbundle it in order to make sure that people can get access to what they need the digital technology revolution will continue to speed up as more people go online as and as devices become more smart and so we need to think about how does how do we digitally engage students now and how can we weave that into the things that we're planning for the future so I hope that I've given you some digital bytes to think about I hope that those of you in the faculty can start asking yourselves how do I use digital technology in the classroom I hope administrators can think about the infrastructure that currently exists on their campus and I hope that students can really consider using their voice more loudly using digital technology I want to end with a with a quote from one of my doctoral student colleagues DT Henry in our first year together he talked about how every wireless connection ties back to a wire and so when you think about digital technology it's not meant to replace the face-to-face it's meant to be a bridge to bring people together and do it in a way that's meaningful and adds value to the education I hope that you'll join me in finding ways to digitally engage our students to make sure that their education is worth it thank you very much