Profs: don’t sacrifice high-touch for high-tech

Memo to faculty: Your students want you to be tech-savvy, but don’t get carried away.

That’s the message of a survey (pdf) of 18,000-plus college students, conducted by the Educause Center for Applied Research. The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) reports:

College students want faculty members to use information technology, but students nevertheless hunger for the human touch in courses as well, according to a new survey of 18,039 freshmen and seniors at 63 institutions.

Forty-one percent of the students said they preferred their professors to make moderate use of information technology. By comparison, 26 percent said they preferred only limited use, while 27 percent sought extensive use.

“They really want to see it balanced,” said Robert B. Kvavik, an associate vice president of the University of Minnesota who worked on the survey. “They value the interaction among themselves and with faculty, and they don’t want technology to get in the way of that.”

“The students see technology right now as supplemental rather than transformative,” said Mr. Kvavik.

Students in the survey most commonly said that convenience was the primary benefit of the use of technology in courses. They cited “connectedness” second.

Full story (subscription required).

education, technology, Internet, web

‘WOW and COOL’ = LAME and USELESS

So says Josh Hallett of hyku blog, who reports:

I received a web brief for a project I have been asked to consult on. One line in particular sticks out (when discussing the attributes of the web site):

break through the clutter with a WOW and COOL web presence

That’s just the problem, WOW and COOL usually end up becoming Flash-based, lame and foster no long-term relationship with the user, just like every other ‘edgy’ site. Making your web site WOW and COOL means you are the clutter.

branding, design, Marketing, web, web design

In-state tuition for immigrants not a big draw

Offering in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants has gone over big in Texas, but that technique hasn’t been so successful in other states with similar laws on the books.

The Boston Globe reports “more modest increases in the majority of states providing such benefits.” Texas, with its 1.4 million undocumented immigrants, increased immigrant enrollment in its public universities from 1,500 in the fall of 2001 to roughly 8,000 last year.

Meanwhile, in California, where there are roughly 2.4 million undocumented immigrants, the University of California system saw an increase of only 357 illegal immigrant students.

education, higher education, immigrants, immigration

Blogs don’t help your marketing

At least that’s the take of copywriter and consultant Bob Bly, who claims that business blogs are little more than rambling, self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness flotsam that yield no return on investment. He writes, in part:

Blogs are, by virtue of being a form of online diary, like diaries: rambling, incoherent, and more suited for private thoughts than public consumption.

If you have something of value to share, there are many better formats for doing it online than by blogging, including white papers, e-zines, and Web sites. …

[M]ost blogs seem to be the private idiosyncratic musings of an individual, without censure or editing of any kind. And the result is like porridge: a gloppy mess, tasteless, and not very satisfying.

Until that changes, I can’t see starting and maintaining a blog of your own, unless you are bored and looking for something to do, or require an outlet for self-expression. And if the latter is the case, well … why not just buy and keep a diary instead?

So, blogs have no value.

Thomas Paine‘s pamphlets didn’t bring him much money, either. But they helped to stoke the embers of the American Revolution.

Needless to say, Bob doesn’t blog.

Link via Jim Symcox, who suggests we read Tinu Abayomi-Paul’s ebook (pdf) about why blogging can be worthwhile and profitable.

blogging, marketing

Zen and the art of presentation

Ever gone to a conference all enthused about a speaker who is supposedly tops in his or her field, only to be let down when he or she clicks on the big-screen presentation?

Me too.

Regardless of your business, Really Bad PowerPoint (pdf) can disillusion even the heartiest conference-goer. And when administrators and other talkers use PowerPoint slides as oversized cue cards, it makes those of us in the business of marketing and communications writhe in agony.

Which is why I would love for academic administrators to read the worthwhile advice Garr Reynolds offers on his blog, Presentation Zen. His post on the contrasting presentation styles of two lords of the computing industry, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, should be required reading for anyone who wields a laptop and LCD projector.

Take a look at the examples below. Forget for a minute about who is presenting. Focus on the presentation. Beginner’s mind, people.

So, which of these presentations would you rather sit in on?

This one?

Steve Jobs presenting

Or this one?

Bill Gates presenting

OK, so we all know that Steve Jobs is orders of magnitude cooler than Bill Gates, and that Jobs’s Apple represents the aesthetic side of computing, while Gates’s Microsoft represents all things corporate. But for the most part, Gates owns presentations. Microsoft’s PowerPoint is all-pervasive in the world of presentations. It’s used in board meetings, conferences, classrooms, to push product and even to entertain. It’s the 800-pound gorilla of presentationdom.

But PowerPoint doesn’t have to be bad. (Read Seth Godin‘s little ebook (pdf) to learn ways to make your presentations more meaningful, or at least a little less dull. And read what Reynolds has to say about zen and the art of presentation. If you get nothing else, get this:

A key tenet of the Zen aesthetic is kanso or simplicity. In the kanso concept beauty, grace, and visual elegance are achieved by elimination and omission. Says artist, designer and architect, Dr. Koichi Kawana, “Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.” When you examine your visuals, then, can you say that you are getting the maximum impact with a minimum of graphic elements, for example? When you take a look at Jobs’ slides and Gates’ slides, how do they compare for kanso?

Hat tip to Seth Godin for the link.

Communications, marketing, PowerPoint, presentations