Marshall McLuhan vs. the faculty

admin April 23, 2008 academic computing 4 Comments

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Today I met with a faculty member who is angry that he has to learn new tools to disseminate his knowledge. As he put it, “I’m the content expert, not the IT expert. Can’t someone else translate my content into whatever crappy format you IT people are demanding at any given time?” I guess somewhere along the wordstar –> wordperfect –> MS word –> powerpoint or the html –> dreamweaver –> CMS/CSS/etc he just got sick of it all. Now he wants an IT professional to publish all his content for him.

I understand his frustration, but I’m not sure this is a wise direction for academic IT support, even if I could hire a 100 new staff to constantly reformat each faculty’s output. The medium is the message, right? He may be frustrated, but do you really want to delegate the communication of your work? Why not just have the IT staff teach your classes for you, while we’re at it? I mean, they’re the ones who made your powerpoint, recorded your podcast, edited your website, etc?

I know all the change is very frustrating. But I think we each need to learn how to navigate this change on our own terms, controlling it rather than being a victim. Sometimes this means you’re an early adopter, sometimes a latecomer, and sometimes you’re just a no show. Everything will be all right….

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4 Responses to “Marshall McLuhan vs. the faculty”

  1. kdghty said:

    Apr 24, 08 at 6:57 am

    It’s called a TA, right?

  2. kc said:

    Apr 24, 08 at 8:28 am

    dude…

    This is the story of my life. You’d think people would be concerned about the technology that their livelihood depends upon, right? Change has always been a constant…the difference now is that the rate of change has accelerated. Or perhaps we’re just more aware of the changes?

  3. admin said:

    Apr 24, 08 at 8:06 pm

    I think the rate has changed exponentially and it’s freakin’ folks out. Rather than letting it flow, riding the wave, etc. they’re trying to stop the tsunami, or, actually, to delegate it.

  4. G-lo said:

    Apr 25, 08 at 10:16 am

    Assuming they had an interest in understanding how the content is distributed (or even better: experienced), what sort of time are they allowed/encouraged to experiment and understand relevant technologies? What from does that experimentation take? Who determines which technologies/distribution channels are relevant? How is this communicated to your faculty customers? Is this decision informed by your student customers?

    Perhaps a paired-professing model could be adopted ala kdghty’s suggestion above, but the relationship would be more level than professor/TA relationship. Your distribution specialist (a designer/technologist of some sort I suppose) would receive the same social/economic benefits of the “content creator.”

    Good luck change agent.

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