A different University Recruitment ad - Web 2.0-influenced
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Stumble ThisTV ad from Kaplan University. It is the first university ad I have seen that directly responds to Michael Wesch’s incredible A Vision of Students Today video (@ http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o). Judging from the YouTube comments, most people seem to agree. Now my question is, does Kaplan practice what it preaches? If it doesn’t, this ad will likely see a tremendous backlash, if it does (preliminary feedback from students indicates this is the case), then this may go down as the turning point in university recruitment messaging.
He bought the university when he retired from the bench.
1. Universities are, to varying extents, embracing technology. It's why I can download podcasts on tons of engineering and science topics. It's why my students use smartphones to give me feedback in the middle of my lectures (they love the little interactive quizzes to find out if I got my point across and continually ask for more of them). It's why we have televised lectures and tele-driven instruction. That isn't available only at some place like Kaplan.
2. At some point, there is no substitute for human contact. As we get better at Telepresense, more of the human contact may be online, but in my classes I use texts, online fora, video, interactive tablets, and my own voice to interact with students. I am forever amazed how many times students have clear descriptions of subject matter, and yet they just can't get it until they are interacting with me. There is something about human-to-human contact that has to be live--not canned.
And it's not just contact with instructors I'm talking about: students mostly need each other. The critical mass effect from having other interested and motivated students in your vicinity is crucial. Working side by side with people in a lab, in the field, or just at the blackboard is powerful, and while we are heading for a time when that sort of "side-by-side" effect can come online, we aren't quite there yet.
3. There are a lot of kinds of education, and no one I know has ever been in favor of "one size fits all." One of my professors at Stanford had no Bachelors Degree: he was just brilliant and self-taught and highly published. Some people thrive that way, but most do not. Universities provide structure, but these days, the structure is flexible, and in many senses, the structure is self-defined. If Kaplan does a good job at that, that will be great, but they won't be alone.
I suspect this comment is too long and no one will read it, but it's a topic I feel strongly about, so I invested the time to try to say what I meant.