Sean Taberman's Articles: Commentary

Commentary: Student Reliance On Technology At Champlain

As part of the up and coming age of technology in America, Champlain College, in recent years, has strived to integrate technology into virtually every aspect of their students lives. This stems from the school’s philosophy that the more students learn how to use up to date technology while they are still in college, the more prepared they will be for the technology thrown at them in the business world. This has driven Champlain to spend considerable amounts of money on the latest high tech equipment and Web-based software platforms, such as Angel, E-port and the mymail portal. This pressure from the school to have a solid understanding of a wide variety of technologies has in a way forced the students to become reliant on technology, instead of efficient users of it.

The mymail portal is where Champlain students access their e-mail accounts, which basically give them information on anything happening on and sometimes off campus. Students who come to Champlain with lacking e-mail skills soon find that they must change this to stay on top of their student e-mails. Students receive e-mails of all sorts, from teachers commenting on work to campus-wide bulletins on H1N1 updates. Students who don’t keep up with this soon come to find that valuable and sometimes-crucial information passes them by without knowing it. This is also the main way for students to communicate with their professors outside the classroom, and commonly serves as a medium for excuses for late work and missed classes.

Other Web-based software platforms used by the school include Angel and E-port. Angel is a site where students can access the lessons and homework assignments for all their classes. Designed as Champlain’s backup plan incase of school closure from a pending swine flu epidemic or other crisis, students can also turn in their finished assignments on Angel for teachers to evaluate, then send back to them through their e-mails. This relieves students of the responsibility of actually printing a hard copy of their paper or assignment and bringing it to the professor, and tends to make deadlines less set in stone. E-port, another web-based platform, is a site which every Champlain student, excluding peer tutors, must pay $100 to obtain a license for. It is used as an electronic portfolio, where students can archive their work for future use or reference. Champlain saw this software as a chance for students to build and add to their resumes, which through this electronic portfolio, can be viewed by potential employers, which shows them that Champlain students are well equipped with web-based technology. To promote use of this license, students are required to turn in one assignment for each of their Core classes each semester.

Another facet of Champlain’s technology, which causes students to become reliant is the library website. The site features multiple databases of scholarly articles, which are often required as at least one source for student research papers. The library site also has a librarian on call, that students can instant message with from their personal computers if they have a problem or question. This completely removes the need for any student to actually go to the library to look for a source or ask the librarian a question in person.

With the recent success of businesses through the use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs and twitter, Champlain has placed considerable value on student’s abilities to create their own blogs, making that knowledge part of many classes. Some teachers have even resorted to moving course material onto facebook, with the mentality that the majority of students use facebook, and this will make them more likely to attend to their schoolwork in between checking their friends profiles and statuses. This gives students even more leeway to surf facebook and other social networking sites during class, which is distraction to not only them, but also the students seated around them.

Though this shift in technological advancement proves Champlain to be an up and coming school in the age of technologies, it seems it also continues to reduce the overall responsibility of students. With more and more opportunities for students to achieve online what they used to in person, students are finding ways to get their work done without even stepping foot on campus or going to class for that matter. Today when a student wants to find an answer to a question, they don’t seek someone knowledgeable on the topic or research it for themselves. Instead they Google it and find what they wanted know in seconds rather than taking minutes or even hours to find the information themselves. This growing reliance on technology, though prominent in the business world right now, can have drastic effects on the work ethic and effort that students put into their course work.