In a lecture on educational technology, which concluded Purdue University’s “Cybersecurity Awareness Month,” Gerry McCartney, Purdue’s vice president for information technology, asserted that higher education isn’t likely to get as high-tech as many people think.

“There’s going to be technology in the classrooms,” McCartney said. “But I see a high priority to being in a room with other people.” Rather than replace classroom meetings, McCartney believes technology will be used to help students out of the classroom to do things that today require human interaction.

John McEldorf, service delivery manager for Information Technology at Purdue, suggests the key to the future of educational technology will be finding a handheld device that combines all current devices that students can use in any way they like to advance their educations, such as Apple’s iPhone. Because “nobody learns the same way,” McEldorf says students could use converged mobile devices to be as high-tech as they want.

Purdue students generally welcome the technology, as long as their professors know how to use it well. A student interviewed by the school newspaper said he’s been in classes where professors thought they knew more than they did and it made learning more difficult. “A lot of it depends on how instructors coordinate it,” exclaimed the student. “There wasn’t enough planning.”

Addam Schroll, an information technology security analyst at Purdue, said he sees that getting better, though, as people who fill the jobs and who become Purdue students have been introduced to technology at younger ages. “They’re socialized more to it,” Schroll said. “It might make relating it to younger students easier.”

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