Those of you who have been with me since my .Mac days should be somewhat aware that I have a very deep interest in the field of instructional technology. For the past three-plus years, I have worked for the Educational Technology Center at Missouri State University, and in that time I have become acutely aware that the institutional technology/technology support policy at the University is severely lacking. First, it fails to consider and take advantage of recent trends in technology, such as ubiquitous ownership of computing by students. Second, it seriously cripples those students by providing a large system of open access computer labs that serve as a crutch, abrogating the need for them to learn to perform basic maintenance on their own computers, something they will most definitely have to do when they leave school. Of course, if every student had a Mac, then this wouldn't bee as big a deal, but I'm not about to push that issue. All I want is for students to have free choice in the platform they choose to use, whether it's Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows. The only problem is that right now, Missouri State is just beginning to truly support a multi-platform environment, and only halfheartedly at that.
Well, this week, I took steps to, hopefully, remedy the above problems by, for lack of a better phrase, giving the administration a kick in the pants. At this week's SGA meeting, I introduced a resolution entitled the Student and University Technology Improvement Initiative. It calls for the university to begin implementing a 1:1 computing plan within three years, and to develop the appropriate institutional environment to support such a plan, including a redefinition and restructuring of Central User Support to be more academic centered. First order of business will have to be placing responsibility for developing and implementing institutional technology policy under the office of the provost. This will help to ensure the preeminence of academic (read students and faculty) interests in that process. Right now, administrative interests clearly dominate. I'm not trying to say that there aren't certain areas that belong under administration, MIS for instance, since they handle the records side of things, but there clearly needs to be a shift, and a big one. We have to shake them out of their apathy, and that's what my resolution aims to do. If you'd like to take a look at it, and feel free to comment on it either here or via e-mail, you can find a PDF copy here. We'll be discussing and possibly debating the issue further at next Tuesday's meeting, so if you're a student at Missouri State and you're interested in this topic and care about the future of the University, then please come to the meeting. We need all the support we can get.
Labels: missouri-state, msu, sga, technology
Posted by Brooks Travis | 
