Learning & Technology LO18536

Bryce Kampjes (bryce@gridpoint.cytal.co.nz)
Tue, 30 Jun 1998 11:12:52 -0500 (CDT)

Replying to LO18514 --

Hello, I've been lurking for a few months now. As this is my first post
I'll introduce myself I'm currently finishing a degree in computer science
that I put on hold for a few years. I put it on hold so that I could
pursue an entrepreneurial software idea. That endeavour made me aware of
the amount that I didn't know so I spent as much time learning and reading
as actually doing directly working towards the goal. During the reading I
ran into LO's , BPR and Drucker.

The view on technology marketing I'm trying to express is heavily based on
Geoffory A. Moore's work.

On Fri, 26 Jun 1998, Dr. Steve Eskow wrote:

> Scott Simmerman describes the resistance of the traditional professoriate
> to internet-mediated teaching and learning.

...snip...

> This is an understandable, and quite typical, analysis of the behavior of
> the professoriate.
> They are Luddites who resist technology and any sort of change,
> pseudoexperts guarding medieval turf, using an long discredited
> communication technology--the lecture. They fear being displaced by a
> superior form of instruction--the Internet--and that is why they resist,
> and walk out of presentations.
>
> I'm sure Scott wasn't this blunt, but Scott's position is the quite
> standard set of beliefs of those proposing to substitute the new
> communication technologies for the ancient methods of oral instruction and
> face-to-face dialog.

Another factor could be that universities include a very large
percentage of early adoptors and technology innovators. The people who
adopt a technology before it is mature enough for mainstream use, when it
still requires far too much tinkering to get working.

Early adopters and technology enthusiasts do tend to get over optimistic
on what any technology can do, trying to imagion what it will be able to
do real soon now.... (Going from my experiance, being one)

So people in universities are likely to have had almost any technology
over hyped early in it's development when it couldn't deliver.

If this is right it might help find ways to introduce new idea's into
academia. I do find it strange how a group of people who are so often at
the cutting edge somewhere can seem so conservative so often.

An idea from Inside The Tornado by Moore:

Find a group at the university that is using the internet successfully and
help it work very well. Then use that group's success to sell the internet
to those around it. Moore calls this a bowling pin strategy, you use the
first pin to help knock down the rest.

I would be a little surprised if there was n't one group trying to use the
internet on any campus.

-- 
Bryce Kampjes
bryce@gp.cytal.co.nz

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