The Seven Deadly Sins of
Technology in Higher
Education: Exposing Our
Crimes Against the Future
Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins
EC Moore Symposium
March 2009

Technology did NOT create
these problems
Technology merely brings
them to light

exerting control to comfort
oneself rather than sharing
power

Administrators
“Kent banning athlete
Web profiles”
Administrator:\"We're really concerned
about the safety of our student-athletes
and some of the personal information
some of them have on there.“
Columbus Dispatch
Thursday, June 22, 2006

Faculty
“Law professor bans
laptops in class, over
student protest”
University of Memphis
USA Today 3/21/08

Students
“How much is it worth?”
“How long does the paper have to
be?”
“How much do really need to learn?”
“I don’t want to accidentally learn
more than I have to.”

positioning oneself as an expert
who cannot learn

Administrators
After being asked about
student/faculty pilot studies for a
new LMS:
“We know what they need better than
they do.”
Administrator interview
Oct. 2008

Faculty
“I’m not paid to know how to use
Oncourse. I’m paid to be an
expert in my field.”
Instructor interview
Feb. 2009

Students
“I know I’m not going to have
to know this for the job I want so
Why should I bother?”
student interview
Feb 2009

distrusting new methods of
acquiring knowledge

Administrators
Wikipedia is blocked on all
computers in the Warren Hills
Regional School District.
Seattle Times November 21, 2007

Cathy Davidson, Duke University (2008):
the media and academia distrust Wikipedia
because they have not yet figured out how to
use the Internet to their advantage.
American Journalism Review
Faculty

Students
“I hate working in groups. I always end up doing
the work and profs never care that other
people are being lazy.”
Student interview
Jan 2009

making decisions for students/faculty
rather than allowing students to
decide for themselves

Administrators
“Ohio University officials say [they’ve
banned all P2P networking] because
P2P traffic can consume so much
bandwidth -- not because the RIAA
sent more copyright infringement
notices to Ohio than any other
American university.”
Wired
April 2007

Faculty
“If they’re not disciplined enough to not
pay attention, let ‘em fail. These are
college students.
(I graduated in 2005) I found that writing
notes made for better retention, due to
the fact I could draw diagrams and such.”
Wired Campus – Chronicle Forum comment
Feb 2009

Students
“He [the professor] doesn’t
understand how to use PowerPoint.
Why should I care what he has to say
about Wikipedia?”
Student interview
Oct 2008

not wondering what's new or
embracing change, lack of
intellectual curiosity

“The price of textbooks might be out of the
average college student's control, but
where you choose to spend your
textbook dollars is not. It goes back to
the law of supply and demand: if enough
college students find \"creative\" ways to
buy texts for less money, perhaps the
publishers and those who make the
buying decisions will get the message.”
Peninsula College Paper
1/31/07
Administration

“Today’s senior faculty members look
at blogs the way a previous
generation of academics looked at
television — as a guilty, tawdry
pleasure that should not be talked
about in respectable circles.”
Drezner 2005
Faculty

“I do enough to get by. Most of my profs don’t
really care one way or another.”
Student interview
Dec 2008
Students

assuming that the old ways, or the
ways that we were taught are
somehow superior

When asked about the quality of classroom
experience:
“Our faculty are world-class researchers.”
Administrator interview
Aug 2008
Administration

Faculty
“It’s not my job to make learning fun.
Edutainment is just another ‘dumbing down’
of higher education. If they [students] want
entertainment they can go watch SpongeBob.”
Faculty interview
October 2008

Students
“I got really mad one time when I got a C on a
paper in class. I always got As on papers in
high school.”
Student interview
October 2008

inability to change, lack of
willingness to embrace the new

Administration
“Zhejiang University, Nanjing University and
Shanghai Jiaotong University launched a
rule during the new term that freshmen
are not allowed to buy computers.
University authorities asserted that this
could prevent freshmen from indulging
themselves in electronic games.”
China.org
Oct 2007

Faculty
\"The concept is interesting and
well-formed, but in order to
earn better than a ''C,'' the idea
must be feasible.\"
--A Yale University management
professor in response to Fred
Smith''s paper proposing
reliable overnight delivery
service. (Smith went on to
found Federal Express Corp.)

Students
“I tell my classes that if they
just do what they are
supposed to do and meet
the standard requirements,
that they will earn a C,” he
said. “That is the default
grade. They see the default
grade as an A.”
Marshall Grossman
New York Times
Feb. 17, 2009

Are our approaches
-to learning
-to technology
-to change
“sinful”?

Let’s talk!
SL: Intellagirl Tully
Email: intellagirl@gmail.com
Web: intellagirl.com
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