Teachers and Technology

I feel comfortable saying that I am quite competent in using a computer and know that I am fully prepared to step into the work force with the skills I have, but I believe if a future employer sat in on one of my courses they would question my ability to use a program as simple as Microsoft Word.

As a Marketing Communications major, it is essential that my professors incorporate technology and social media into our lessons. There's one issue with this requirement... professors don't seem to know how to use technology and social media. It is painful to watch a professor struggle through the simplest of task on a browser and it's been a reoccurring issue each semester of college.

It all started in my Computer Science and Information Systems course. Yep, you read the title right. A course about the science of computers and their systems of information, yet I still spent 10 minutes each class period watching my professor try to open an internet browser.

I'm sure we've all experienced a professor attempting to play a 1 minute youtube video, but spending 40 seconds finding the volume button on their podium even though the podium has never moved, nor the button ever changed from being simply on or off. They mumble to themselves about how it was just working and of course the computer is the problem, while we're all well aware it's an operator failure.

Two things triggered this blog.

1. Learning Dreamweaver CS5 in my Senior Seminar course
   I'm convinced my professor was learning Dreamweaver as he was teaching it. It took us hours to do the simplest of tasks, while my teacher was blaming Adobe for each problem he encountered. We were also encouraged to make neon green backgrounds, use animated clip art from Microsoft Word, and have text scrolling across our page. All of this was to build our e-portfolio and claim we were capable of using Dreamweaver. If I created my page the way my professor instructed me to, I would be embarrassed to show it to anyone.
2. Watching my classmates present their Senior Seminar PortfoliosOne portfolio after the next I watched my fellow classmates discuss all of the programs they are 'fluent' in. I'm not going to blame my classmates, because our departments tells us we should know the ins and outs of these programs. But the problem is that are classes haven't taught us these programs well enough. Three weeks on photoshop can hardly cover layers. Two weeks on Illustrator only touches your typeface options. Without my two jobs on campus I would not know much about Adobe at all, yet the MarComm Department says we know it simply from academics.

I'm not surprised that companies aren't hiring creatives anymore. Because they've probably hired one too many from Universities that insist their graduates know it, but they don't. And we won't learn it until our teachers are using it in the workplace rather than re-creating online tutorials as class lessons.

I love my major, but I'm starting to think the topics it covers provides the graduates with quantity, not quality. I can say I understand media planning, advertising campaigns, Adobe Design Premium CS5, the ethics of marketing, event planning, promotional strategies, public relations and more. But most of us can't say that we know them so well that when we enter the workforce of May 15 we won't need a lot of guidance in our position. I've had to take it upon myself to develop my techniques in the specific topics that interest me in hopes I can get a job in that field.

My thoughts are, don't put something on your resume unless you're comfortable performing that task right there on the spot, and don't teach students programs you don't understand yourself. Graduates are the ones who will get screwed over in the end.