With technology being so crucial for everyone in the modern age, The Equinox editors wonder if the professors and students at Keene State College rely too much on it. Especially in light of the Wi-Fi on Oct. 2.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic schools have been looking to the internet for work that needs to be done. Programs like Canvas, Zoom and Google Classroom have been the new normal instead of returning to handing in physical papers.
Before the pandemic online classes were the fail-safe when it came to snow days and other unexpected predicaments.
Instead of this being just a fail-safe, it has been how all classes have been handled at Keene State College. The Equinox editors question how the college can handle a fail-safe when this technology fails on the students and professors.
The network outage that the Keene State community experienced caused some classes to be canceled. Despite the outage only lasting for around four to five hours, people’s schedules had to be changed due to it. If this outage lasted a few days it could have been catastrophic and led to many more classes being canceled.
We believe there should be fail-safes in place for when something like this inevitably happens again, technology is prone to breaking. Everyone is very fortunate that this outage did not last any longer, but there should have been something in place as an alternative.
We recognize that programs like Canvas are not going anywhere and everyone has to deal with it. It is hard to work around a problem when we have grown accustomed to a new solution. We also see that many majors benefit from having an abundance of technology. Majors like graphic design would be virtually impossible without this sort of technology available.
While we do know the benefits that this technology brings, we also see that there are downsides to it as well. Not having a proper plan for when technology fails is one thing, but we also believe that it might be hindering students’ learning and professors’ teaching abilities.
With programs like Canvas being the new normal it can become too easy for lazy students to prosper without putting in much effort. It has become too simple to work around boundaries surrounding cheating and not paying attention in class. We cannot even blame students for not paying much attention when powerpoint notes have become a more popular approach to teaching material.
We think that professors have been relying too heavily on constantly teaching through slideshows that can be easily made available on Canvas. Some students don’t even show up to class because they don’t bother to sit through the lectures. How we see it, professors should be more engaged with their students and take a more hands-on approach. Lectures should still definitely happen, but we believe that professors should rely more on the whiteboards Keene State College invested in as opposed to only using slideshows that can also be found online. Technology should be used to supplement teaching, not dominate it.
Technology has brought major advancements to colleges that would make it impossible to ever go back. With all that being said, The Equinox editors believe that we are relying too heavily on it and need more fail-safes for the inevitable disruptions that will occur.
