From Computer Labs to Coffee Shops - About Time!
I recently walked through a number of buildings on various campuses and looked
into quite a few computer "labs" that were mostly empty. One thing
I didn't do then, and could kick myself now for failing to do, was walk in and
ask some of the students who were in the labs why they were there. That would
be a pretty good idea, actually, asking them instead of their IT staff. Is anyone
doing that? Or are IT staff asking each other whether or not student computer
labs need to continue their existence?
That begs the question of why we even call them "labs" anymore, of
course, and my primary observation was that there weren't very many students
in there anyway, whatever their reasons were for being there.
Various recent surveys have brought to light statistics on how many students
do or don't own their own computers. More and more of those surveys try to account
for how many are laptops and how many are desktops. It's pretty clear that a
middle-class student whose parents live together and who is primarily of European
descent is going to have a computer.
Maybe a desktop, but in the last year, it has become more likely that they
own a laptop. It's pretty clear that a student from a recently immigrated family
in an impoverished area may not have a computer, or one raised by a single parent
in a poor, urban area may not have a computer. (Although less likely than before.)
From those studies and from practical experience, IT managers have their own
opinions about whether or not generalized computer labs are for many campuses
a thing of the past.
It's especially tough for me to imagine students without computers, partly because
I am at the University of Michigan. Here, it's not a question of whether a student
has a computer or not, it's a question of how many, how new, how powerful, or
whether they also have a PDA?or some more expensive converged device. (Like
my Treo 600)
And, of course, schools which serve financially challenged students and who
know they have a low-rate of computer ownership are also in a different situation.
I don't want to second-guess the folks who are there in the trenches, serving
the students and running those labs. But even in those cases, there may be some
thinking to go through about whether to provide labs or to undertake programs
to enable the students to own their own machines rather than create and operate
"labs."
Why is that? Well, there is so much to learn about using a computer and getting
familiar with its capabilities that students who have only the option of occasional
and limited time in a computer lab probably don't even develop decent typing
skills, much less rid themselves of fear of the machine. And basic computer
skills?knowing how to turn it on and off, load and uninstall software, dial-up,
make a wireless or wired connection, navigate the Web, and so forth?may not
be *required* in the specific technical field a particular student is pursuing
studies in, but you can be assured that the student will have to have those
skills at some point in their working life. And if they're missing them after
they graduate from your school, your school has not done its job.
Right at this point in time it might be difficult to see why someone studying
mortuary science or dental hygiene needs to work with a laptop computer or a
PDA. But if you take a serious look 5 years down the road it's hard to imagine
a future where they *won't* need those skills. Having "labs" perpetuates
the notion that having a computer is somehow extraordinary, which it should
not be.
Specialized labs are a different situation, especially where for curricular
purposes students need to be working with specialized, expensive, or hard to
install software. Just like expensive textbooks, students aren't going to shell
out huge bucks for a piece of software they're likely to use for only one class.
You will find even the more affluent students who own PDAs and laptops both
in those computer labs. These types of labs should be funded by pertinent student
fees.
Included in specialized labs would be the kinds of resources like high-speed
or top-notch color printers, scanning devices, and the like. These "technology
centers" are general in the sense of academic relationships but specific
in providing resources that students might want but for which they don't want
to invest for the hardware and supplies. Those types of "computer labs"
should be profit centers.
An entirely different situation is the need for socializing space. Big media
centers and student unions, the kind of *huge* computer areas that seat 200-300
students, serve some of that student need to see and be seen. And now, maybe
the generalized computer lab on at least some affluent classes is morphing into
coffee cafes? That's why what appears to be a growing trend for coffee shops
in libraries piqued my interest. A quick search finds dozens of news releases
and articles about coffee "pubs" and coffee "bars" in such
places as North Carolina State University, the University of Colorado Law School,
and the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor in Ontario. After all, in
many of our libraries, all we're missing is the coffee.
This may strike some as more coddling of students, or more pandering to their
"wants" instead of the "needs," but I think that the knowledge
age worker of the future is going to work in an environment that is far more
reminiscent of a coffee shop than it is of a 70s-era computer lab.
