A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives, a curated forum for enterprise technology leaders, nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the CIOApplications Editorial Board.

Seton Hall University

Rethinking Education with Digitalization

Paul E. Fisher Jr. has served at Seton Hall University in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center since 1997, became the director in 2005, and was named the Associate Chief Information Officer in 2010. Paul is in charge of assisting Seton Hall in making thoughtful use of and integrating technology into the curriculum and across functional business units. He directs the instructional design, digital media services, classroom and event support, user support, web development, technology strategy, evaluation, and communication.
Paul has led many mission-critical initiatives at Seton Hall, including the implementation of the University's learning management system Blackboard, the migration to the Microsoft 365 suite, and the award-winning mobile computing program. He and the rest of the IT team were instrumental in the Interprofessional Health Sciences campus's technology implementation, including the design of its state-of-the-art medical simulation center.
In an interview with CIO Applications, Paul Fisher discusses challenges students and faculty face in the Ed Tech industry using the latest web technology and academic technology tools to support new teaching models in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What do you think are some of the challenges that exist in this marketplace today?
Higher education is being confronted with a number of challenges, leading to widespread skepticism about its value. As most of my expertise is in the field of education, I believe that understanding the entire operation of the University is critical in order to overcome the challenges. I spend a lot of time with my colleagues in other divisions—whether it's in student services, academic affairs, or development—learning about their businesses and how we can use technology to help them achieve University goals.
Moreover, one of the most difficult challenges in higher education right now is changing culture.
It's critical to acknowledge that today's students are not the same as those of a decade ago. On-demand services are second nature to the new generation of students, who have never lived without access to a computer. Although every one of them claims to be a technology expert, they still require a great deal of assistance in comprehending how technology actually works. The main difference is that they are not afraid to start using it, even if they know about it on a very basic level.

Rather than being entirely asynchronous in the future, more online courses will include synchronous components, allowing students to work at their own pace, but faculty to engage them in a live setting


How would you describe the impact of Covid-19 on the education space?
The most significant issue was that most students and staff were unprepared for remote teaching and learning processes. In this regard, we were fortunate to have been able to provide our students with quick access to the required hardware than most institutions across the country.
Our campus operates a one-to-one computing program; we provide laptops to our undergraduate students to use throughout their academic careers. As a result, hardware was not an issue for us. Despite having access to hardware, our students' biggest challenge was dealing with poor or overburdened internet connections at home. To address this, we provided loaner hot spots to our students so that they would have a dedicated internet service, to stop them from competing for bandwidth with their parents who are working from home, siblings or roommates who learning from home or to provide the most basic service to those who couldn’t afford internet access at home at all.

In addition, one of the most significant challenges for teachers across the country was their lack of technological skills for remote synchronous (live) teaching. However, at Seton Hall University, we've been using educational technology for a long time, and our learning management system is used by 90% of our faculty. The challenge was that, while they were all very knowledgeable about the tools we provide at the University to enhance their traditional course, many were not as knowledgeable about the technology that would allow for live distance instruction. We trained 400 professors in three days and were able to successfully complete the spring 2020 semester with our students. So, from the time the faculty and students were sent home in March until now, every faculty member across the country has been forced to embrace technology in order to continue to teach. The long-term benefit, more online courses will include synchronous components in the future, allowing students and faculty to engage in real-time while students also complete most of their work at their own pace.
What advice would you give to upcoming professionals in this field?
It is critical to keep lines of communication open with your faculty 110 percent of the time and to truly collaborate with them. This will aid in determining what works and what doesn't work for any given technology at any given time. Maintain that feedback loop, so you know who you're serving and engage in meaningful communication with the academy. This is at the core of our operating principle at Seton Hall.

The articles from these contributors are based on their personal expertise and viewpoints, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers or affiliated organizations.