Page 39 - Campus Technology, August/September 2017

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C-Level View
Campbell: There are some enormous obstacles, including the movement toward what I view as excessively rigid or over-prescribed so-called “pathways” through the curriculum. There are increasing pressures
to declare your major when you matriculate. And then there are a few seemingly small or apparently superficial things that are so entrenched that you just can’t move past them. It breaks my heart to be in a meeting as I was just last week, where new course titles were being proposed as ways of generating interest and conversation as students think about what courses to take. And the discussion finally boiled down to, “Well, the titles can be no more than 30 characters anyway, if they are going to work in Banner.” That’s not a digital opportunity; that’s a digital catastrophe.
This is the crossroads where operational and managerial concerns within higher learning collide directly with mission and values. For me, mission and values must take precedence. To make any kind of progress in these important conversations, we have to think about the digital world in a different way, one that is not driven by vendors who are simply trying to solve all of our operational problems — the only problems they are aware of.
So, the 30-character issue is just one example of how solutions proposed from that type of perspective can cause greater, intractable problems. This is what has resulted when we haven’t thought carefully about our digital opportunities early on — there are plenty of other examples.
CT: What have you tried to explore digital opportunities in your own practice?4
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | August/September 2017