This is not your mom and dad’s university. It’s probably not even your college or university.

A woman graduated from Texas State Technical College without ever stepping foot on the school’s campus, though she could see her teacher.

Researchers or just regular music buffs interested in historic black gospel music can download songs for free, thanks to Baylor University.

Baylor basketball fans who missed a game can see the highlights without owning a TV.

Students can listen to a lecture on campus they missed without owning a radio.

Such is the nature of today’s higher education because of rapidly evolving and emerging technology.

The large majority of today’s college students have been e-mailing since they were young. They’ve been exposed to the Internet for as long as they can remember.

Now some colleges and universities are taking advantage of available technologies and Web sites, such as Apple’s iTunes U, Twitter and Second Life.

Combined with their students’ familiarity with these tools, colleges and universities such as TSTC and Baylor are finding new ways to enhance their students’ educations.

Staying iTuned

Baylor is using iTunes U to spread the word about associate journalism professor Robert Darden’s Black Gospel Music Restoration project.

Full songs from the 1940s to the 1980s are available to be downloaded for free onto an iPod, as are song samples from each of those decades. Also available on Baylor’s iTunes U page are lectures, basketball highlights and a business review journal.

The downloads are available free of charge, and Colin Witt, Baylor’s director of electronic communications, said Apple allows universities to post material for free as long as they have proprietary rights to it.

Gardner Campbell, associate professor of literature, media and learning in Baylor’s Honors Program, worked with Darden to make the gospel songs available.

Since coming to Baylor in 2008, Campbell has led the charge to put the school on the leading edge of using emerging media and technologies in higher education, something he says many institutions are slow to pick up on.

But he says top universities and colleges recognize the need to adapt to their students’ worlds.

“The leading universities in the United States have very strong presences on iTunes U,” Campbell said. “The leaders in this kind of thing are thought to be Berkeley, Stanford and MIT.”

Some resistance

Campbell said some Baylor faculty are using other newly evolved tools such as blogging, online discussion forums and Second Life, which is an online virtual world where students and professors can design their own characters and interact much as they would in a classroom setting.

Others have yet to catch on.

“It varies widely,” Campbell said. “Some faculty are, understandably, skeptical or resistant. This is new technology, but I try to remind them that print was a new technology at one point and was very disruptive.

“So, there’s some skepticism. But there’s also a great deal of interest.”

In an attempt to enlighten members of the local higher education community, Campbell said Baylor will host an “Educational Technology Showcase” on April 7-8. It will give faculty, students and administrators a chance to demonstrate ways to use new technologies in learning.

Campbell said he hopes the showcase turns the skeptics at Baylor, McLennan Community College and TSTC into believers.

“We have to confront the fact that change is accelerating. . . . Change does happen and, unfortunately, history teaches us that change happens right under the noses of those who should know better, and they end up surprised,” he said.

At TSTC, Second Life courses have been offered since 2008. In fact, TSTC became the first college in the nation to offer a complete degree through Second Life, with students never having to step foot on campus. The school now offers two full associate’s degree programs and two certificate programs through Second Life.

Bob Simonette, TSTC’s department chairman of Web design and development, said the offerings are more of a necessity at this point than a luxury.

“Distance learning, of one type or another, is growing, where students coming out of high school have been connected (online) for quite a while,” Simonette said. “So, they’re used to that, and that’s what they want.

“There are still those who need and want that face-to-face interaction with an instructor, but more and more we’re seeing people, because of their circumstances, they want that flexibility to be able to access that course 24/7.”

Simonette “attended” the school’s first Second Life degree graduation ceremony, which was held in a Second Life virtual world. The graduate? A woman from Chicago who had never been to TSTC.

Simonette, himself, said he is taking advanced degree courses online through the University of Texas at Brownsville. Unlike the Second Life student from Chicago, though, when Simonette graduates, there will be no virtual cap and gown.

“I’ve never even been there, but I have a feeling my wife is going to make me go and walk the stage, when all is said and done,” he said.

twoods@wacotrib.com

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