Let’s Build More “Learning” into Even Basic IT Tools

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Let’s Build More “Learning” into Even Basic IT Tools

6/2/2004

By Terry Calhoun

So, why not put our own public service advertising messages on the Web interface and inside each message? Messages like: “Have you updated your anti-virus software recently?” Some people would object, of course, but the fact is that such messages carry both educational content that is good for the users and learners, and operational content that is good for the institution. And, after all, the IT folk create and operate those IT tools. We ought to have some pretty significant say about building into them things that make our jobs easier and might save our colleges and universities money.

Plus, some tools already do have such things built into them—system-wide user alerts, for example. I manage more than 50 e-mail discussion lists, and regularly use the feature that Lyris builds into its software that lets the list administrator insert header and footer information. On some lists, I even already do what are in fact advertisements for my employer-association’s conferences and publications. What I am proposing is not a much larger step in that direction than the currently-often-included how to subscribe and unsubscribe information that is already in every message handled by most sophisticated e-mail servers.

Where could such advertisements go? Well:

· As part of the log-on to wired and wireless networks, every time a user logs in;
· Every time a user accesses the ERP to pay a bill or check on your account status;
· Every time a student or instructor signs into the main courseware system to check class assignments or to make them;
· Every time a staffer checks the latest job postings;
· Such messages could even be inserted as headers and/or footers in every single message transmitted by the institution’s e-mail server.

Is it worth the aggravation? Well, I wrote last week about the junior computer science major at the University of Michigan who found a breach in Wolverine Access, with which students access their personal data, and who because he was experienced, knew that the right thing to do was to tell no one anything about it after first notifying the proper campus officials. What if he had been an English major who had a lot of online friends, and he had told a bunch of them by e-mail instead of doing the right thing? Wouldn’t it be nice that every time English majors use a campus-wide system they get a pop-up message that says: “If you think you detect a security or privacy breach in University of XYZ online data, notify security@syz.edu, and do not tell anyone else.”

When I suggested last week that students should be required to take a basic course on information technology use, I also recognized that the intra-institutional hurdles to such a required course would be huge. I think it would be a lot easier to start using what we already have control over but currently underutilize to accomplish that educational purpose.

After all, we build these tools, we maintain them, and in many instances we have a “customer” base that is essentially captive. Some people will complain, but it may well be the same people who tolerate ads to use some of their alternative and “free” e-mail identities. And, you may know the story of how to boil a frog . . . slowly. We should think about taking what we already do and incrementally building into it the messages we need our users to internalize, as a part of the evolution of the IT tools themselves. If we do it slowly, then, like the frog that d'esn’t jump out of the pot, our users won’t notice that we’re training them to be responsible users. But we will.

About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.

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Terry Calhoun, "Let’s Build More “Learning” into Even Basic IT Tools," Campus Technology, 6/2/2004, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=39821

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