HIG, R U n2 CP? : The Technology Is the Easy Part

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HIG, R U n2 CP? : The Technology Is the Easy Part

6/17/2003

By Terry Calhoun

People who work with me know that "The technology is the easy part" is perhaps my favorite saying. And I believe that is true. (When you can afford the technology, that is.) What's tough is changing people's behavior, especially your own, or that of your staff. For-profit businesses talk about "customer service" and "giving the customer what they want," and an awful lot of that is modifying back-end processes. Higher education has been slow to come around, but we're getting there, although maybe doing a better job in student services than in teaching and learning.

Our guest opinion piece this week is by biology professor David Starrett of Southeast Missouri State University. He's also director of that institution's Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning and, thus, focused on the instructional technology appropriate for enhancing students' learning. He sees his students taking the technology for granted and is questioning how much we can expect them to change, and how much we have to accept them, and change what we do to meet their expectations.

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HIG, R U n2 CP? Me either. In case that's Greek to you, it translates into "How's it going, are you into chat-posting?" I pride myself on staying "hip," a tact taken out of necessity with a 10- and 12-year-old in the house. I know that "groovy" and "hip" became "awesome" and "rad" and are now "tight" and "sweet." My 12-year-old e-mailed me at work the other day. I think he sent it out through a vowel filter, there were none left when it got to me. I thought I was on top of how our kids are speaking these days. This of course is important for us in higher education, where our job duty is basically communicating with 18- to 22-year-olds.

A female student e-mailed me and signed the note LOL. I panicked knowing that translated to Lots of Love … or was it Lots of Luck? My son translated for me—it is now Laughing out Loud. I can't keep up. No one told me they changed the rules. My son took me to some online chat dictionaries. Wow! (I am sure that's an acronym for something). There is a whole new language out there in cyberspace. I now know that if I am doing some serious LOL, I am LOLROTFTRDMC (laughing out loud rolling on the floor tears running down my cheek).

It isn't just the net lingo that takes getting used to. All of us who have become accustomed to e-mail know that there are rules of netiquette. Words written in CAPITALS are shouting. Sentences no longer need to be complete, or as grammatically correct. Humor takes more effort. Emotions take emoticons. Who would have thought one could convey emotions with grammatical symbols. Oh, I know, Yosemite Sam could let out a stream of %$!*@&!^. But emoticons really can convey emotions, and they have become accepted enough to have standard meanings; there are numerous online emoticon dictionaries (how do they alphabetize those?).

What do net lingo, emoticons, and netiquette mean to us in higher education? Do we accept being old fogies and refuse to try to understand? Do we hold our ground and try to teach the younger generation how to write correctly? Do we try to learn the language and be hip in communicating with our students? Are we communicating effectively with our students?