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Has the Internet Changed College?
gosand asks: "When I began college in 1988, it was the first time I was able to interact with a large group of very different people. This helped me to see the world in different aspects, and helped to make me who I am today. During my college days I formed/reformed many of my opinions on things, although refining them has been a continual process. I often wonder how my experience might have been different if the internet, as it exists today, would have been around then. Sure, there was gopher, ftp, and BBSs, but only a relatively few people knew about them and used them. There wasn't online gaming to lure you away from your studies for hours at a time. If you wanted music, you went to the used CD store or joined Columbia House and BMG 5 times under different names. You had to actually communicate with people in person instead of email, and you had to go to the library and do your research from books. You only had a computer if you were in CS, and sometimes not even CS students had them. I am not suggesting that one way is better than the other, just noting the differences. Have computers and the internet made college life any easier in some respects? Have they made it harder? How has the internet affected your opinions on things during these formative years? These may seem like easy questions, but I have a feeling that there are a wide range of opinions out there."
Yes it did.
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Has it gotten easier? In some respects maybe. Has it gotten more effective? Very likely in that more people who go to school to learn something like programming have access to actual computers to work out their problems on and aren't forced to work purely in theory.
A couple years ago as an undergrad I was a lowsy programmer. I was on an all PC campus and had my powermac with me, so I couldn't do any of the programming assignments without heading over to one of the labs. Now, as a grad student we're programming in Java, and I can do my development on my latest Mac, so I can do coding into the wee hours on my own machine. That ability to experiment with the language on my own time has made learning new things much easier.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
It doesn't matter what people's opinions are on this subject. The people that didn't have the Internet in college can't offer any insight in to whether or not its any easier, or even any different because they only experienced it one way. Same thing with the people that did have the Internet available.
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Just look at your own life and see how the Internet has changed things in your daily routines and there's the effect it has kids going to college right now.
All you're really going to get is people talking about piracy and porn when it comes to this topic on
Working at a University, one change seems to be the position of the school in its role of protecting the academic freedom of students. Traditionally, schools would handle discipline problems internally, often protecting students from law enforcement for minor infractions. That protective layer, acting formally or informally "in loco parentis" let students stretch their wings a little, with a corresponding benefit to academics and research. The Internet has brought the world into the campus. For example, schools now struggle to protect their students from the RIAA, while balancing political necessity. Many schools now actually act, to some degree, as enforcers on behalf of copyright owners. That shift puts the school and the students into more adversarial positions than may have existed before the Internet was big. In the past, schools could "look the other way" or just issue "warnings" while students pushed the envelope of what was and was not allowed, now security concerns and the concerns of private industry have made campuses much less safe places for students to test the waters and try things out.
Many University administrators see that problem very clearly, and try to strike a politically surviveable balance to keep academic freedom alive.
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
This is a very interesting question, because you're sort of asking how the Internet has altered a particular group.
It's interesting to me that my son has never known what vinyl LP's look like, has never known of a day without cell phones, and doesn't understand how the Internet revolutionized the way information is spread about. He uses it to play, to listen to music, to research homework, and communicate (not necessarily in that order).
There's a ton more information available now than in my college days. Sure, one can go to the library and get reams of information, but it's not sorted, as if I had typed in a search request to a popular search engine. So the amount of time I spent slogging over to the library and looking up the one book that might have a shred of information is instead used to put the finishing touches on the project. I'm not sure whether or not the colleges have risen to the challenge that the high availability of information has posed.
Thanks for a thought provoking question!
We all get along together like tornadoes and trailer parks.
Technologies like IM, virtual whiteboards & collaboration software has made group projects, lab work & research easier. Data, facts & knowledge used to be centrally located in the university library. Low cost PCs & internet connectivity have usurped the "central knowledge source" attribute of the library. I have heard non-CS/IT students (photo & fine art majors) say, "Just look it up on the web." when just a few years ago they would have to consult a journal or book for their art class. It is this decentralized way to get information that IMO has changed academia.
My education all the way through high school always taught & reinforced that the library is "where its at." Seven years later, we now know that google.com is where its at. I see similarities between the widespread use of the internet & search engines and post-Gutenberg books & publications.
The faculty, in some cases, aren't evolving with it. I've had some faculty members that welcomed laptops in the classroom, for example. We have a wireless network, whihch makes it incredibly to take notes, and actually pay attention in class, rather than scribble furiously and pray that you can understand it later.
Some, on the other hand (primarily faculty in the Liberal Arts fields, from my experience), don't want anything to do with the net. We have a couple of online course management solutions that let students track grades, turn in assignents, etc. online. I've had classes where the professor use it to distribute 1 thing: the syllabus.
At OU, we've got a fairly progressive faculty (at least in the College of Engineering), I just feel sorry for those stuck in a place where everything's done by the book. literally.
Michael C. Hollinger