Educators are bombarded with solicitations and promotions for technological solutions to the very human challenges surrounding higher education. Bots, adaptive learning software, virtual reality, gamification, and other high-tech means are marketed as the solutions to everything from student learning and advising, to managing employees and more efficiently apportioning precious resources. Some of this technology is indeed helpful. And as one of my favorite techno-skeptics, the late Neil Postman observed in his classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death, the student who used the light from his television screen to read demonstrated the utility of that technology as a literary device.
Dr. Larry Galizio
As the majority of community colleges continue to experience declining enrollments and student retention challenges both pre-pandemic and within what some are referring to as “the new abnormal,” technology-based solutions are highlighted as a primary means to recruit new students and to maintain those who may have reduced their course load, stopped out, or are simply questioning whether or not they can continue pursuing higher education.
Without question, reliable broadband, Zoom, and a personal computer have become essential equipment for college-going in 2021. And some new technologies provide significant opportunities to benefit the community college mission.
Yet, I would urge administrators, policymakers, and all of us who are passionate about higher education and especially the community college mission not to neglect research demonstrating the power of human connection and face-to-face relationships and experience in engaging students pursuing higher learning. Indeed, the public health crisis will continue to create significant obstacles to in-person relationships and experiences at our institutions, however, the anomie so many are experiencing especially over the past two years arguably increases the need and even urgency for greater human connection and contact.
Although both studies I cite here are decidedly pre-pandemic, pre-Black Lives Matter, pre-January 6th, 2021, and pre-date the host of exogenous events and conditions that have roiled our political economy and culture, they reinforce fundamental elements of human nature that endure despite most external events and circumstances.
Although in different ways and with distinct research populations, both How College Works, a 2014 book by Daniel F. Chambliss and Christopher G. Takacs, and An Exploration of Tinto’s Integration Framework For Community College Students, a 2010 article by Karp, Hughes, and O’ Gara, conclude that, to quote from Chambliss and Takacs, “human contact, especially face to face, seems to have an unusual influence on what students choose to do, on the directions their careers take, and on their experience of college"; and that people matter more than programs, and relationships are central to a successful college experience.
