Digital Frontiers

Hey Everyone! My name is Adam D’Augelli and I am one of the two instructor’s for Digital Frontiers this semester.

Starting in June, I will be working with True Ventures, an early-stage technology venture fund with offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Northern Virgina.  Until then, in addition to working with the wonderful students in this course, I will be completing my graduate degree in Finance at the University of Florida, working with my social business in India and enjoying the life of a student.

Throughout the semester, I figured I would blog along with the students – to give a different perspective – as well as keep notes on some of the interesting lessons and trends that emerge.  If you have any comments on the course or have any thoughts on how we can improve things – please reach out to me here.

Lesson 1: Teacher’s can see all the work you’re not doing

One thing I never appreciated as a student was how much teachers can see from the front of the classroom.  You really can see everything and its surprisingly distracting if someone is working on a crossword or clearly not listening. This has helped me in my other classes as I’ve now started paying attention and my professors’ seem far happier.

(As an aside, any students who read this will now have a leg-up on the rest of the class)

Lesson 2: Not every college student is tech saavy

Industry blogs and the news make it seem as though tomorrow’s students will take over the world purely on their superior knowledge of technology, especially when compared to the current generation in power.  Strangely, my initial experience with this class has indicated quite the contrary.

In this course of 24 students**:

- 1 Student had a Twitter Account
- 3 Students had built a Website
- 1 Student had built a Facebook App
- 0 Students have a linkedin account

Which shows a surprising low adoption rate of new web platform technologies.

I will say most surprising – 1 student in class didn’t even have a Facebook account.  (Please note: She now does.)

On the flip side, a surprising number of students had taken the initiative to start their own business (online or otherwise.)  This work ethic and innate belief that anything can be accomplished – I think – will be more important than their current technology skill set.

Unlike previous generations, they don’t need formal education.  Rather, they will be able to use their critical thinking skills and leverage the internet to learn quickly through practical work. (This theory is being tested through our course project.)

** This course was advertised as a course which tackled disruptive innovation and social media.  With that in mind, I would say this group would be an example of more heavy tech users than the mean University of Florida student. **

Lesson 3: College is slow to evolve on the whole but you can find pockets of innovation everywhere

When Nikolai and I started designing this course – the first thing we did was search the marketplace (UF) for competitors (similar courses) to both borrow ideas and find our niche. Unfortunately, we found little that addressed these topics at UF.

To start, last week, our business school newspaper – the Warrington Times - ran an article which discussed social media as a marketing platform, which included comments from the Head of the Marketing Department in the Warrington College of Business.  His comments and the article were surprisingly dismissive of this shift in how businesses communicate with consumers.

However, outside the college of business, certain colleges have embraced these changes – and are not only teaching these new tools but also using them to push their students’ experiences to the next level.

My Growing List of Examples at UF (If you know of more, please let me know!)

• EME 4406: Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum
• ISM 3004: Computing in the Business Environment (More Technical)
• UF in Second Life: Law and Engineering
• JOU 4930: Multimedia reporting
• MMC 3260: An Introduction to Online Reporting

It’s not huge – but the classes do exist – and many are doing awesome things.  Hopefully we will see the use of technology continue to grow across campus (and throughout the educational system.)

That’s it for this week.  This should be updated weekly on Sunday nights with thoughts for the weeks moving forward.  Most importantly, if you have any ideas on how we can improve or want to get involved – please leave a comment or get in touch here

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