Use of technology in the classroom is on the rise, and if it’s up to UNM’s Chief Information Officer, chalkboards will soon become obsolete.

Chief Information Officer Gilbert Gonzales said his office administers student and faculty surveys each year to track and respond to technology trends on campus, and has been systematically renovating UNM classroom technology since 2008.

“If technology doesn’t work in a classroom, that is a high priority, not a, ‘Get back to you next week’ thing,” Moira Gerety, deputy CIO, said. “Technology must work. We’re committed to it working, and we’re going to give support.”

Gerety said the CIO office is also creating campus-wide guidelines that will set the minimum standards for technology in classrooms.
But according to the most recent surveys, only eight percent of UNM faculty use blogs as part of their curriculum and just 11 percent want to use blogs in the future.

One-fifth of UNM faculty is interested in making their lectures available in a podcast form, according to survey results.

Gonzales said updating classroom technology and helping professors use the technology has been a challenge.

“There were wired networks present before 2008, but they were placed more randomly in the room,” he said. “Faculty members would trip or not have a cable. A port is only useful if the instructor doesn’t trip.”

But many UNM professors said the recent technological developments have improved the classroom experience.

Professor Vera Norwood said the Internet has created “an exciting portal” for her classes.

“A student or an instructor can go to the website and link to the reading or activity; post a blog in response …link to web resources to dig deeper into the topic; and review notes from previous classes — all in one place,” she said. “We continue to work as a learning community outside the class meeting times.”  

Librarian Christy Crowley said the “Drupal” open-source content-management system she uses allows students to distribute their research worldwide.

“It furthers the notion of ‘open science,’ which lets researchers explore and repurpose data from other researchers,” she said. “We will make our data open to the world as we search for other data out there that will inform our projects.”

Laura Crossey, who has been a professor at UNM for 27 years, said she doesn’t think the developments in technology are more trouble than they’re worth.

“Xeroxes can break down, too, so there aren’t any more critical disappointments or surprises with this kind of technology than with going into the classroom and having the chalk be gone,” Crossey said. “Mishaps can happen with any technology.”