Now in its third year, the CDW-G 21st-Century Campus Report examines the role of technology in higher education. CDW-G surveyed more than 1,000 college students, faculty and IT staff to understand their perceptions of campus technology.

While the 2008 report provided a baseline for campus technology use, and the 2009 study examined how student needs are changing, the 2010 report focuses on what colleges are getting right, and how they are incorporating new tools into interactive learning experiences.

CDW-G also compares these findings to the results of the recent CDW-G 21st-Century Classroom Report, to determine how the expectations of today’s high school students will further advance the 21st-century campus.

Click to Tweet: Next-Generation College Students’ Technology Expectations Surpass Students’ Today, Annual #CDW-G Survey Finds http://bit.ly/azqbOF

To view an in-depth analysis of the CDW-G 21st-Century Campus Report, please complete the information form at the link below.

• Higher education faculty and IT staff value technology as an essential tool for student success
• Institutions are incorporating newer technology tools that are connecting and resonating with students, who grew up using technology. This technology empowers students and faculty to personalize and expand the learning experience
• Institutions say that defining – and supporting – the new learning environment is a challenge. Many IT professionals report that their IT infrastructure needs to be updated to ensure future success
• Incoming college students have even higher expectations for technology than today’s college students

Campuses are Focused on Technology

• College students, faculty and IT staff place a high value on technology as a learning tool

85%	of college students say technology is important in their ability to study for their major/chosen field
88%	of faculty say technology is essential or useful as a learning tool

Different Views on Essential Technology

• More than 3/4 of faculty say it is important that they teach in a 21st-century classroom
• But when it comes to the essential technology – and new technology – for the classroom, IT staff have an expanded view of what is possible

IT Infrastructure Needs Support

• Forty-four percent of campus IT professionals believe their infrastructure needs to be, or could be refreshed
• To provide stakeholders with reliable, “always on” access to 21st-century technology, IT professionals highlight storage and security as their biggest needs

How would you rate your campus’ IT infrastructure?

Colleges are Expected to Deliver

• Institutions offer the core technologies that tomorrow’s college students expect
• But, IT needs to consider how it will meet students’ demand for newer technologies as a learning tool

Calls to Action

• Understand that technology means different things to different people and different generations: Move beyond just having technology to understanding how technology can change the learning process
• Survey students, faculty and IT staff to understand their expectations for technology use: The 21st-Century Campus Report Assessment Tool provides a starting point for institutions to evaluate the community’s needs and disaggregate data to develop a path forward
• Consider demonstration labs to give faculty and IT staff hands-on experience with newer technologies: Watch Millennials’ tech habits; consider how institutions can support and integrate their tools into the learning process

The periodical shelves at Stanford University’s Engineering Library are nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years, most engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print versions pretty obsolete — and books aren’t doing much better.

According to Josephine, students can now browse those periodicals from their laptops or mobile devices.

For years, students have had to search through volume after volume of books before finding the right formula — but no more. Josephine says that “with books being digitized and available through full text search capabilities, they can find that formula quite easily.”

In 2005, when the university realized it was running out space for its growing collection of 80,000 engineering books, administrators decided to build a new library. But instead of creating more space for books, they chose to create less.

The new library is set to open in August with 10,000 engineering books on the shelves — a decrease of more than 85 percent from the old library. Stanford library director Michael Keller says the librarians determined which books to keep on the shelf by looking at how frequently a book was checked out. They found that the vast majority of the collection hadn’t been taken off the shelf in five years.

Keller expects that, eventually, there won’t be any books on the shelves at all.

“As the world turns more and more, the items that appeared in physical form in previous decades and centuries are appearing in digital form,” he says.

Given the nature of engineering, that actually comes in handy. Engineering uses some basic formulas but is generally a rapidly changing field — particularly in specialties such as software and bioengineering. Traditional textbooks have rarely been able to keep up.

Jim Plummer, dean of Stanford’s School of Engineering, says that’s why his faculty is increasingly using e-books.

“It allows our faculty to change examples,” he says,” to put in new homework problems … and lectures and things like that in almost a real-time way.”

A New Trend In Libraries?

For the moment, the Engineering Library is the only Stanford library that’s cutting back on books. But Keller says he can see what’s coming down the road by simply looking at the current crop of Stanford students.

“They write their papers online, and they read articles online, and many, many, many of them read chapters and books online,” he says. “I can see in this population of students behaviors that clearly indicate where this is all going.”

And while it’s still rare among American libraries to get rid of such a large amount of books, it’s clear that many are starting to lay the groundwork for a different future. According to a survey by the Association of Research Libraries, American libraries are spending more of their money on electronic resources and less on books.

Cornell University’s Engineering Library recently announced an initiative similar to Stanford’s — but the move to electronic books is also meeting some resistance. An effort by Arizona State University to use Amazon’s Kindle to distribute electronic textbooks was met with a lawsuit because the device wasn’t fully accessible to the visually impaired.

Meanwhile, back at Stanford’s new Engineering Library, librarians are looking forward to spending less time with books and more time with people.

“That’s what we’re so [excited about],” Josephine says, “the idea of actually offering more services, offering more workshops, offering more one-on-one time with students.”

But some Stanford students express mixed feelings about the shift. Engineering student Sam Tsai is checking out some old-fashioned paper books.

“To read a book on the screen is kind of tiring for me,” Tsai says, “so I sometimes like [the] paper form. But if I can access books online, it’s much more convenient for me, so I would actually prefer that as well.”

For now, at least, Tsai can have the option of both.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128361395