Technology diffusion in higher education music

Technology Diffusion in Higher Education Music Programs: A Pilot Study Barbara Payne McLain, University of Hawaii-Manoa In his introductory essay on the College Music Society (CMS) website, Douglass Seaton, former CMS president, provided a strong warning about the increasing rate of societal changes and their potential impact on higher education music programs. 1 His predictions that “our environment would become increasingly electronic, knowledge would continue to explode, cultural diversity will increase, and change itself will continue to accelerate,” provide an incentive for higher education music programs to proactively examine their status and begin planning for a technologically advanced future. 2 Technology is re-shaping our society on a daily basis. The accelerating pace of societal changes as a result of technological advances is staggering. As Moore’s Law predicted in 1965, computer capabilities are doubling and their costs halved every eighteen months. 3 Handwritten letters are a thing of the past. Electronic mail has replaced the personal phone call. Digital recordings and the internet now allow musicians and audiences virtually unlimited access to recorded and printed music. The numbers of institutions providing undergraduate or graduate instruction in music via the internet continue to grow annually. College students are equipped with any number of electronic devices to facilitate communication and access to information. USA Today recently reported that college students or their parents plan to spend $8. 2 billion on electronics in 2005, almost $700 million more than last year. 4 Are college music programs unique among disciplines in embracing or rejecting new technologies? In this report, I provide some pilot data concerning the use of technology by college music faculty, and discuss possible solutions to several barriers impacting the diffusion of technology in higher education music classrooms. Technology In Higher Education Technological advances may be categorized as “products” or “ideas. ”5 Product technologies include tools such as computers, digital conversion software, multi-media mechanisms, cellular phones, etc. . Idea technologies, on the other hand, focus on innovations in the teaching-learning process that utilize product technologies, thus expanding their original capability. An example of this would be the use of handheld computers to “beam” digital music files presented in a music history course. The handheld computer and wireless technology was not originally designed to facilitate music history instruction. It’s use in this context becomes an “idea” technology. Higher education, although touting itself as the bastion of new knowledge, appears to be reluctant in general, to embrace any technology beyond basic student and faculty services. As Edward Ayers, a Dean at the University of Virginia, stated: “While advances in information technology seemed to have transformed every other part of life, the core of academe is essentially unchanged. … Despite the tremendous investment that all institutions of higher education 1 Seaton, Douglass. (1998). Music and American higher education. [Online] http://www. music. org/InfoEdMusic/HigherEd/SumTable. html [accessed March 28, 2005] Missoula, MT: College Music Society. 2 Ibid. p. 3 3 Moore, G. (1965). Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics, 38, 8. 4 Grant, L. (2005). College students expected to load up on gadgets. USA Today, August 16, 2005. 5 Surry, D. & Land, S. (2000). Strategies for motivating higher education faculty to use technology. Innovations in Education & Training International, 37, 2, 145-154.