Monday, Lindsey Sudbury, a member of Academic Technology Services here at Northeastern University, and I did a 90-minute interactive presentation to our English department at their End of Term Retreat. It was a 30,000 f00t fly-over of a variety of digital tools that might add engagement in writing classes, including social media tools. Our slides are below:
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I was struck by how things had (and had not) changed in the past six years. In 2009, I did a similar workshop at the Innovations Conference. My slides then:
In those six years, Diigo has replaced Delicious, and Feedly has replaced Google Reader. But the concept remains on target.
One other change … more faculty are receptive to the idea!
I guess it might be helpful to think that the timeline for adoption is about a decade…yes? It would appear that change in higher education is both cyclical and incremental…despite efforts over three decades to push “innovation” driven by digital technologies. The “bleeding edge” continues to be just that…reserved for a few who are – perhaps quite literally – willing to bleed. It is a scarce few who keep stepping up for that…for the remainder it is more akin to slow food. How do we adjust to that?
How do we adjust to that?
Great question!
What incentivizes me is seeing the new people applying for academic jobs for whom the bleeding edge has moved forward. But I would agree with you that many of our colleagues … particularly with tenure … see little incentive to try out bleeding edge ideas.