Impact of eLearning on Education

Stephen Landry, Chief Information Officer and Paul Fisher, Associate Chief Information Officer,Seton Hall University

Stephen Landry, Chief Information Officer and Paul Fisher, Associate Chief Information Officer,Seton Hall University

Dr. Stephen G. Landry has been CIO at Seton Hall University for twenty years. He has worked with Seton Hall University’s leadership on a number of important initiatives, including moving Seton Hall’s data center to the cloud, implementing analytics to support strategic decision making, developing a student laptop program, and supporting faculty in creating fully online graduate programs. Prior to becoming CIO, Dr. Landry was a faculty member in Seton Hall University’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) in 1989.

Paul E. Fisher Jr. is the Associate Chief Information Officer and Director of the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center at Seton Hall University. In these roles Fisher is responsible for supporting faculty in the thoughtful use and integration of technology into the curriculum. Fisher serves on the TLT Roundtable Advisory Committee, the University Strategic Planning Committee, and the President's Internationalization Initiative and the President's Sustainability Initiative. He has held adjunct faculty positions at Seton Hall University's College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education and Human Services, where he has taught courses on multimedia development and project management.

What are some of the major pain points prevailing in the market place today?

A few years ago, faculty members firmly believed that students wouldn't pay attention or learn if they weren't physically present, and as a result, they disliked online learning.However now people feel very differently about it. With the rising need for remote learning due to the pandemic, people today are very committed to ensuring that all of our students were able to meet all of the learning objectives in all of those classes that transitioned from traditional in-person to online classes that everyone signed up. Requiring students to be more self-motivated, self-supervised, and independent in getting into the session and doing the work without the physical presence of the instructor.And now that we have all proved that it is possible and that there is value in going remote, a great deal more faculty want to adopt hybrid education. However, now our current challenge is determining how a faculty member in our teaching learning technology center can come up with the appropriate method to perform in person vs online learning.

What are some of the project initiatives you have recently worked on?

The past two and a half years have awakened higher education and made people understand how important it is to teach students to not only be literate in digital technologies, but also how to choose the best tool for the job. As students having proper knowledge about digital technology mighthave had less trouble to use it when they were forced to adopt online education. For instance, because students are exceedingly tech-savvy and are considered digital natives, we have a strong notion that they are tech-savvy which according to me they are not. The only thing that sets them apart is that they are "digital natives," which simply means that technology existed when they were born. They are quite proficient with Snapchat and Instagram because they have been using them their entire lives as social media platforms. This became apparent when they were asked to use Teams platform it was found more than half of the students were confused how to use it efficiently.

"Our current challenge is determining how a faculty member in our teaching learning technology centre can come up with the appropriate method to perform in person vs online learning."

Since we live in a place with very harsh winters, we missed a lot of school. So a year ago we decided to move some classes online. This is what led us to develop a course on Teams which were tested out with a few faculty members who were interested. So, by March 2020, due to pandemic when we were forced to adopt online learning, we were ready and only had to train the people who would be working.

Recently in the spring of 2022, the institution has also started working with Adobe and is recognized as the first Adobe creative campus in both New York and New Jersey. This will help us to make sure that students have the tools they need to help run their Greek organizations, clubs, or professional organizations, where they may be leaders. As with technology students learn better because it helps them how to think on their own.

Our goal here is to try to get the students to think of themselves less as consumers and more as producers. This is very important because it gives them the skills they'll need to do well in the new economy when they leave school.

What is your piece of advice for budding professionals in the feild?

We must ensure that we communicate with people we serve ad understand them. As doing so will help in increase engagement within the organization.In IT or higher education one should take the initiative to facilitate talks between teachers and students about the appropriate use of technology in their respective disciplines and classrooms. This will help in increase in productivity.