Good Company in a Digital Age: Stewarding Student Development Through Technology

Alex Staup, Executive Director of Student Success, Bryan College

Educational leadership today is inseparable from technology – from platforms that shape course design to data informing strategy and AI tools designed to create efficiencies. In the midst of this lightspeed momentum, it may be helpful to revisit a foundational educational question: What kind of learners are we hoping to develop?

Marcia Baxter Magolda’s (2002) theory of Self Authorship offers a compelling framework that emphasizes our role as educators to be Good Company. Self-Authorship describes the developmental movement for students from relying primarily on external authorities for meaning toward fostering an internal voice – a way of building commitments that is internally grounded rather than externally defined. Students grow not simply in knowledge, but in their capacity to interpret experiences, navigate challenges, and act with increasing ownership. This kind of development cannot be automated and is nearly always inefficient. More information at students’ fingertips will ultimately only make the task more difficult as it adds complexity; true Self Authorship emerges through reflection on experiences and relationships.

As educational leaders, our role as Good Company is to be good partners as we offer challenge and support along the journey. Baxter Magolda likens this learning partnership to riding a tandem bicycle – in which we ride in the back seat, giving agency and authority to the student steering the bike, sharing encouragement and advice along the way, and contributing to the forward motion by taking part in the hard work of student development. Our efforts should create conditions where learners are invited to wrestle with complexity while having the trusted relationships to sustain and support them when the journey becomes too complex.

"Students grow not simply in knowledge, but in their capacity to interpret experiences, navigate challenges, and act with increasing ownership."

As we navigate rapid technological advancements, there is no shortage of complexities that our students face. While many of today’s students are considered digital natives, they are not always equipped with the skills and tools to scrutinize the impact of their screens, apps, algorithms, or AI chatbots. In fact, many – if not all – of these tools contribute to even more deafening external authorities, beguiling students to follow them for efficiency, ease, and comfort. It is part of our responsibility, as Good Company, to help them consider the ways such technologies shape their capacity to author their own lives.

It is important to note that technology is not inherently negative. These tools expand access, they do increase efficiency, and they open possibilities that educational leaders of previous times could not have imagined. But they do raise developmental questions. If Self Authorship is one of our aims, then part of our responsibility as Good Company is to help students consider how technology shapes not only what they know, but how they know, as well as who or what they are allowing to author their decisions.

This is when educational leadership becomes an exercise in stewardship rather than adoption alone. The question is not whether to integrate technology, but how to do so in ways that strengthen students’ capacity for discernment, reflection, and agency. Does a given tool create space for deeper inquiry, or does it merely accelerate completion? Does it invite students to articulate their reasoning, or simply generate answers? Does it free us as educators to invest more meaningfully in dialogue, mentorship, and feedback? And perhaps most importantly, what types of learners and leaders are such tools forming?

When technology is aligned with developmental aims, it can be a powerful partner. Educational leadership, then, is not simply about keeping pace with innovation or adopting the latest and greatest trends. It is about aligning innovation with formation. The tools we adopt should ultimately serve the deeper work of helping students build commitments that are thoughtful and examined – commitments which ground their sense of identity.

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