First of all, let me whole-heartedly agree with your final statement! I work in K12 education. Teaching students how to be good researchers is one of the most important skills students can acquire and – in my opinion – more important than any single course’s breadth of content. We have to teach that skill and need to do a better job than we currently do.

Second, I’d caution about painting with too broad a brush when saying library stuff is accurate and Internet stuff is iffy. I won’t elaborate other than to provide this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a which does the elaboration for me.

I saw a post recently from a younger student that said something like this:

“Yo, mad respect to all you college graduates who went through school without Google.”

I laughed, and then I really thought about it. Wow, Google, as well as the ability to search online, has absolutely revolutionized education. You can get information in a matter of seconds. What is different, though, is the validity of such information. The general rule of thumb is that the library has good stuff, right? That same rule cannot be applied to the internet.

I think it is imperative that educators in this new realm teach research tactics in the 21st century. Learning how to decipher the good from the bad is something that all students need help with, especially if they are new to research.

Ben,
Those are great points you make about the cost versus our perception of the necessity. I would look at it from a cost-benefit standpoint. If a school like Virginia Tech didn’t deliver Internet service that meets the expectations of students how would that impact the perception of school’s quality? I think the benefits have to go beyond just the cost but also to how the infrastructure supports the foundational work of the school. I think it would be an interesting research topic for someone in that field.

You raised an issue here that I haven’t seen yet elsewhere. What is the impact of required fiber and bandwidth to an institution’s bottom line? It would be fascinating to see the relative cost of technology adoption, maintenance, and upgrades as a part of the university budget over time. Is technology today more expensive, and how does that impact student fees, research overhead, and capital projects? Strong wifi is basically viewed as a right, but there are real costs in keeping up with ever-increasing demand.

Thanks for your thoughts. In response to your K12 question, many schools – including the one I work in – provides laptops, Chromebooks, or tablets to students for use every day in class. Students are asked to be responsible for bringing their charged device with them to school every day. I believe there is an online college that runs a TV commercial saying that part of your tuition covers the cost of a laptop and/or tablet.

As you said, the expectation has changed in a pretty sudden way, but not explicitly in a top-down approach (at least in the majority of higher education). It will be interesting to see if the explicit expectation catches up with the reality seen in most classrooms and if that is an appropriate expectation placed on students by college policy.

Thank you for your insightful thoughts. To your point, the culture around technology in the classroom shifted very quickly without much explicit discussion. For example, when I was in undergrad (’12-’16), it was not required or expected that you bring a laptop to class. And most of the time, I did not. I had one course that was marked “BYOC” bring your own computer. But that was it. Now, it is expected and almost required that you bring an internet connected device to class for in class activities, assignments, or other aspects. When did this shift exactly occur? And how did it occur without being explicitly named?

While I am speaking about the undergraduate level, what are the expectations or requirements of K-12 students to have or bring an internet connected device in the classroom? How is pedagogy going to change to adapt to this new trend?

Change does take more time for some people and institutions. I’m curious to know which fields are lagging behind and what you see that leads you to that conclusion? One example I can think of in my department is the residence requirement. When you had to have access to the university library that made a lot of sense. You don’t really need that now. Even meeting with your advisor and committee can be done really well through Zoom or another video conferencing tool. I think it’s a bit of an outdated idea we could do away with – at least in my discipline.

Thank you for your insightful post. I am just at the cusp of remembering being taught how to do research in a library but never remember actually having to do it. I believe the reach and openness to education and knowledge that the internet acheives is truly something no one could have foreseen 20 years ago but I also really think a lot of fields are lagging behind in how to embrace classroom online instructional tools.