Innovative Ways Technology is Changing the College Experience
There’s a lot going on in college campuses today that is changing the student experience and modifying the way students learn from the traditional lecture and study from a book method to bringing far off people and lands so close you can almost touch them. Classroom tools and instruction are also changing to meet the demands of a generation of technologically savvy learners.
Students Can Travel Without Leaving Their Seats
Right from the get go, when students are researching colleges, determining where they’d like to go, VR is making an impact. You Visit offers VR tours of over 600 college campuses nationwide allowing students to visit as many campuses as they like right from the comfort of their living room.
VR is also useful in virtually taking students to far off places such as the Taj Mahal or the Galapagos Islands to witness new and exotic locations without a very long and expensive flight. VR gives students the ability to gain invaluable field trip level experience that wouldn’t be attainable otherwise.
Classroom Communities Extend Beyond Campus Boundaries
Many accredited institutions are now choosing to offer both on-campus and online courses. Members of a classroom can be anywhere in the world with the collaboration and teleconferencing systems of today. PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras can be used to capture video of a lecture while content displayed on projectors or interactive whiteboards can also be visible to remote participants. Students won’t miss a beat and, in many cases, can even share their own content with the class.
Homework at School and Lecture at Home
Lecture Capture also enables instructors to flip their classroom by recording lectures beforehand which students then watch at home. The lecture material they view prepares them for activities in class on the following day. According to a 2016 survey by Campus Technology, the majority of higher education faculty are flipping their courses or plan to in the near future. This instructional strategy provides students with help from the instructor and collaboration from peers that is not provided when working at home and provides instructors with a method of accommodating more learning styles.
Chalkboards are a Thing of the Past
Dusty chalkboards all but disappeared with the advent of whiteboards in the 1980’s, but since then, their technological counterparts—interactive whiteboards and interactive projectors—have taken their place in many institutions. The ability to not only write on them just as you would a whiteboard, but to also display content that can be annotated, saved and displayed at a later time are invaluable aids for instructors. Additionally, content from smart devices can also be displayed in many cases, allowing for collaboration that previously wasn’t attainable with a static board.
These are just a few of the ways technology is changing colleges today and you can be sure it won’t stop here. With continued advancements, traditional learning methods will morph and be forever altered to adapt to the current state of technology—keeping students engaged and institutions at the top of their game.
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