{"id":54,"date":"2005-06-14T17:40:21","date_gmt":"2005-06-14T22:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/?p=54"},"modified":"2005-06-14T19:01:56","modified_gmt":"2005-06-15T00:01:56","slug":"ut2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/ut2020\/","title":{"rendered":"UT@2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What will the university experience be like in the year 2020? How might technology change learning, teaching and research? Will we have electronic mentors and custom fit courses? Will backpacks become a thing of the past as we turn to e-books and digital ink? Will virtual classes replace physical classrooms? <\/p>\n

To be effective, universities must research these questions right now (no, make that yesterday)! Put the latest technology in the hands of talented students, faculty and staff and challenge them to see how then can not only enhance the university experience, but transform it.<\/p>\n

In the Spring of 2001, I was handed a fantastic opportunity to help create a vision of the year 2015 for campus leaders at the Chancellor’s Council annual meeting. Rather than just talk about what it might be like, VP Dan Updegrove proposed that we let them experience the vision by placing 200 handheld wireless computers filled with delicious content that would illustrate our vision.<\/p>\n

In a period of 2 months, we acquired 200 wireless iPAQ 3670’s (yes, it was better than Christmas), designed a Pocket IE version of the conference packet, created a list of PPC friendly websites for wireless browsing and loaded the devices with pictures, five UT songs, four videos and 10 full e-books and a dictionary. City maps for Austin, Houston and Dallas were created for Pocket Streets. We even made mobile versions of the academic calendar, campus maps, football schedule, and personalized student schedule and assignments.<\/p>\n

The most exciting moment of the preparations (at least for me) was the wireless test. We hauled all the units down to the main conference room and slammed the access points with 200 simultaneous requests. While each access point could technically support 1024 clients, a limit of 70 clients provided reasonable response time. <\/p>\n

But the real test was when we handed the devices to the conference participants. Every one received an iPAQ (for the weekend) and was given a short tutorial (or written instructions) on how to use the device. Some novices were hesitant. All save one warmed to their iPAQ. <\/p>\n

The iPAQ experience was judged highly successful by the conference organizers. The attendees were impressed with how quickly they learned to use the device. They were dazzled with the e-books and the fact that so many could fit on one device. They played the videos and the music over and over again. Most importantly, the council members saw the power of wireless computing and learned that with just a simple tap on the screen, they really could surf the wireless internet. The iPAQs became the stars of the show by putting each attendee in the driver’s seat. Council members became participants, not passive listeners. They engaged, they learned, they experienced the UT@2015 vision first hand.<\/p>\n

After the event, the 200 devices were seeded around campus, so students, faculty and staff could experiment with how this technology could transform the college experience. I’ll share the findings of this research in future posts. <\/p>\n

But for now, I want to stop and ponder what the university will be like in 2020. How will technology enhance or transform the university experience? What concerns do you have relating to the virtual university? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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What will the university experience be like in the year 2020? How might technology change learning, teaching and research? Will we have electronic mentors and custom fit courses? Will backpacks become a thing of the past as we turn to e-books and digitial ink? Will virtual classes replace physical classrooms? <\/p>\n

To be effective, universities must research these questions right now (no, make that yesterday)! Put the latest technology in the hands of talented students, faculty and staff and challenge them to see how then can not only enhance the university experience, but transform it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}