The Technology Take-Over and Why It Will Never Happen

What happens if computers become the teachers for future college students?

Or, what happens if professors disappear from the college setting altogether?

With technology creeping steadily into college classrooms across the globe, there are moments where I feel like its dominating education. Let’s face it; it’s a rare occasion for a college student to be spotted without a device attached to their fingers for social media or to annotate notes during a lesson. I feel like it only makes sense for technology to sprout legs, come to class with an apple and recite a lecture on ancient Mayan empires.

Though the idea of robots teaching college classes is an entertaining prospect, I don’t think that technology will ever take over classrooms entirely.

College classrooms would be lacking something without a little human touch.

A prime example of this was seen mid-July, while I attended my final graduate residency at Pine Manor College. I took a class taught by Von Thompson, a fellow graduating student. Her class focused on her experience as a hybrid-online teacher (since she had to teach a class to complete the Pedagogy Track of her master’s program). The structure of her hybrid-online class went like this: her students met once a week face to face to discuss poetry crafting techniques, and then went home to write their own poetry. Her students then emailed their own poetry to each other, followed by emailed critiques on that work.

Von found that her students were more excited to talk about their poetry when they were face to face, rather than when they sent email critiques to each other. Plus, her class was a “community class,” which means her class was taken by people who were interested in writing poetry for fun instead of for grades.