Shlok Vaidya

Colleges + Strategic Technology

At most colleges, the head technology guy is treated as a high level technical support guy. Some are gaining traction (evidenced by a surge in online courses, etc) but can, in a lot of ways, only accentuate and slowly shape the college. This is why you will always “see” the technology as opposed to it being deeply ingrained, like plumbing. If MIT reached that level of technological penetration, it would look surprisingly like this.

Sadly most, suffer from a lack of the ability to think about technology strategically. Here’s a test to see how innovative your college is (useful for administrators, students, and even forward thinking professors):

IDEA:

• Most colleges and professors take feedback forms at the end of the year – on paper. Instead,  create an indexed and searchable database where this data is input -save some part of a tree and that extra short class period and skip the paper process altogether.

• Allow for manipulation based on year, professor, and the various other criteria reflected on the course review form. Make this database accessible by the community (including prospectives and alumni).

IMPACT:

• Doing so would create a marketplace for its courses which creates incentive for professors to innovate and simultaneously allows students to gain the most bang for their buck. Alumni could reinforce the most innovative classes by earning advanced degrees and paying higher fees etc.

BENEFITS:

• Professors will have to constantly innovate with new knowledge, new multimedia and new course material.

• Students will not choose their classes without knowledge or based on hearsay, instead relying upon a large peer generated dataset, and by doing so they are able to ensure that their money is best spent.

• Also, as a result of peer generation students will know their input has impact and will have a community imperative to put their best thinking into the course review.

// I sent some of this as a report to a few college administrators at a few top schools when I was involved in student government a couple years ago. Unfortunately, none took this simple, cheap revolutionary project to heart.

//Now, sadly, their endowments are suffering, and they’re struggling as to how to proceed. All are overly dependent on donations. I’d love to help out, but the barriers to changing college administration are about as high as barriers to helping government think.

-Shlok
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25. January 2009 by Shlok Vaidya
Categories: Review | 3 comments