By Laura Huenneke, Provost and Vice President
for Academic Affairs
The university is a large, complex community, so communication is key to its success.
Not just one-way communication: tools for online engagement and discussion abound, providing opportunities beyond informal and organized meetings in person.
In a world of constant competition for our attention, all of us work hard to stay informed—whether it’s news of commencement schedule changes due to snow or up-to-date information on how state budget realities affect us. NAU News, social media, the university’s website and President Haeger’s community forums represent some of the tools that have evolved and adapted to improve the flow of information.
No single channel works for everyone, of course. Some people detest blanket email messages, while others insist that information be pushed directly to them (and their mobile device). Some relish the opportunity to read, explore and respond from their own computer; for instance, on the website set up to generate campus discussion of our ongoing revisions to the university strategic plan. Others hope for the chance to sit down personally and engage in conversation—the original Socratic model of education.
What works best for you? I’ve been using these weekly posts to comment upon changes I see coming for us, and events both on and off campus that have the potential to shape the work we all do. Yet after the first few weeks, relatively few people have provided any feedback or response. I’m interested in knowing whether this effort is useful or could be improved.
I’d also appreciate suggestions for other strategies we might use to communicate about academic affairs on campus. Brown bag lunches at the University Union or du Bois Center? Visits to your department or college meetings? I welcome your ideas.
In the meantime, to all our talented, dedicated colleagues: have a safe, relaxing and happy holiday break!
Laura,
One thought (maybe three or four) regarding your receiving responses from too few people:
Those that are working hard are very busy–often too busy to do something else unless the issue directly impacts them. Those that are not putting forth as much effort attempt to hide and hope that nothing impacts them. The thought is that to get through to those that are willing to listen, we need to discuss concepts as the President’s technology and pedagogy forum, but also find ways of acting with more speed and greater impact. The higher education environment has been so static that we’ve become complacent–some more than others. As was expressed in the popular book, I think we need to move some cheese. The great thing about higher ed is that since we’re not leaving our traditional classroom behind, the risk is relatively low. In a word, change is not easy and even though we’re on the right path, I would like to be moving a little more cheese. I hope I don’t bug you too much with my ideas. Allen
I’m never “bugged” by ideas or suggestions! And of course I understand fully about busy people and the difficulty of setting aside time for responding. I hope we are able to create more opportunities for “natural” feedback and interaction, without it seeming like additional work. I’m grateful for the reminder of how the higher education community can truly be a locus for creative thought.
Laura,
I see the most important and challenging changes occurring after a new device is launched. The new device I am talking about is the iBoard, an innovative alternative to the Blackboard or Whiteboard. No change to the traditional class will occur unless this new iBoard gets invented. It was not invented yet but we (NAU) can initiate this innovation.
Thanks, Peter, for this challenge! You are certainly right — the physical classroom environment has not yet evolved to fully support the kind of high-quality, information-enriched, technology-enabled interactions between students and faculty (or among students themselves) that we can envision as education of the future. Cline Library is in the process of building out an “experimental classroom” and as we plan the university’s next potential academic building, we are trying to think about the classroom of the future. A vision or a blueprint, anyone?
I think it is very true that you said “The university is a large, complex community, so communication is key to its success”. We must learn from university rather than our subject. We must learn beyond the subject matter. Then our knowledge will be in extremism level.We all think that knowledge gaining is equal to getting some information.But the real knowledge lie under our experiences.