Acadia still offers tech-rich education

To the Editor:

Wendy Elliott’s Jan. 29 opinion piece based on an editorial that appeared recently in Acadia’s student newspaper, The Athenaeum, cannot stand unchallenged. Most importantly, there is a fundamental error that must be corrected.

In September 2008, Acadia students will all be required to have a laptop computer, and the same, if not more, technology-rich education will be delivered by Acadia’s outstanding faculty. If Ms. Elliott is invited into a post-September 2008 classroom, it will still look pretty much the same as the one she described in her column.

The main exception will be that the laptops the students will have on their desks will be ones they own rather than lease from Acadia, and they will have chosen them on the basis of their own individual preferences rather than be handed the same make and model as every one of their classmates.

This is the new world. Students want more choice and more control and because of Acadia’s groundbreaking use of classroom technology, they can find laptop-based programs in many of Canada’s leading post-secondary institutions. Rather than conclude the award-winning, highly acclaimed Acadia Advantage program, as Ms. Elliott asserts, Acadia will be enhancing it to improve its response to those students who are the main reasons why technology is as pervasive as it is.

Today’s university students, including Ms Elliott’s MSNing youngest, are what social commentators call “digital natives.” They do not know a world without the Internet, text-messaging and on-demand entertainment.

Indeed, even The Athenaeum, with its blogs and podcasts and The Advertiser with its novanewsnow.com affiliation, acknowledge things are different. Neither of these exciting and engaging platforms were available 30 years ago when student apathy was apparently overcome by an abundance of clubs and activities.

Today’s clubs often exist in virtual spaces and their members include not just others on our own campus, but student peers at other campuses quite literally around the world. This is something that simply was not possible before innovators such as Acadia and its faculty challenged students to take what they learned while at university and apply it in whatever career they chose to pursue.

Linking quality education with a career beyond university has nothing to do with business unless this is the field students choose to pursue. It has everything to do with ensuring students understand that although they are reminded at every turn – most often by members of the media – that Acadia’s tuition ranks among the highest in the country, there is significant value in the unique environment they experience in Wolfville.

As for school spirit – a countermeasure for apathy – our surveys tell us that incoming students believe Acadia’s is among the highest in the country. I’ll bet they learned that through MSNing with their friends.

Scott Roberts

Executive Director

Communications and Marketing

Acadia University