Future U is a multipart series on the university of the 21st century. We will be investigating the possible future of the textbook, the technological development of libraries, how tech may change the role of the professor, and the future role of technology in museums, research parks and university-allied institutions of all kinds.

A couple of decades ago the most advanced technology to appear in an average classroom was a mini-cassette recorder and a calculator. For most students, however, typical classroom technology ran the gamut from yellow legal pads to theme books, from pencils to ballpoints.

Computers were restricted to the computer lab. There, the green blinking DOS cursor would excite and intimidate. Most of the thrill of the computer lab, aside from a few basic computer games, came from the fact that you could type up a paper without using Wite-Out.

For those excited by the possibilities in the new medium, the hyperlink was king. The disappointment, of course, was centered on the fact that few professors outside of the Computer Science Department would consider taking a paper electronically.

Within a few years, the Mosaic browser would make the weird world of the Internet more accessible. As more information found its way into more hands on campus, as more students gained access to the early Apple computers and their competitors, access itself started to change the way students interacted with information, often in conflict with instructors who did not trust the easy barriers to entry.

As an indicator, the National Center for Education Statistics found that in 1994, only 35 percent of American public schools had computers. By 2002, that number had climbed to 99 percent.

Today's students, comfortable with the tools of their trade, might see the university classroom of 1991 as being not terribly different from the classroom of 1891.

Adjusting to new tools

Today, it is not unusual to see students armed to the teeth with laptops, web books, tablets and smart phones. Instead of merely recording the audio of a lecture, students can video it. They can also chat, read Pitchfork, post photos to Facebook and, time allowing, collaborate with their fellows on in-class projects in real-time.

Students today have access to as much data from their portable devices as was in existence for the students of the first universities.

"The students I'm teaching now," one professor of the European history of ideas told Ars, "can get infinitely more information so much quicker than earlier classes ever could. But they are capable of doing less with it. They seem stunned in the face of analytical demands." This intellectual alchemy is more difficult, he seemed to think, in an era with an emphasis on data and speed.

"I'm glad that it takes me about two split seconds to find an image on the Internet, a painting, say, and two more seconds to import it into a PowerPoint presentation for lecture," said University of Oregon comparative literature professor Ken Calhoon."But I don't much like it when students write papers this way. My biggest beef with tech in the classroom is the energy it costs me to compete with the iPhone or Facebook for my students' attention."

Andre Chinn, instructional technology coordinator for the university's School of Journalism and Communications, does not believe that data-over-knowledge imbalance is a continuing trend. He believes that we are starting to clear a kind of "wow hump" in technology. He is seeing an emphasis on teaching process, not tools.

"I get the distinct impression in the last two years," he said, "that the panic has washed away." Discussions of which program or tool to teach is less urgent these days. There are no definitive tools the students must learn.

"We want students to understand the grammar of technology. If you understand the concept of what you're doing in a video editing program, for instance, it's relatively easy for a student to switch to a different [editing] app because they're familiar with the concepts."

Professors do sometimes require a computer for a specific in-class project or event, but that is easy enough to arrange. Five years ago, University of Oregon's housing department completed a computer ownership survey. Even at that time 96 percent of students owned laptops; the figure is probably higher now.

Web space and hardware

Chinn's vision of the classroom at Future U is "pragmatic," as befits someone currently struggling with the renovation of the school's physical spaces.

"I would argue the classroom twenty years from now will be a space reconfigured and repurposed for different needs," he said. "No more 'tablet armchairs.' The classrooms may look more like living rooms. We're going to see classrooms moving away from lectures to a more collaborative environment, heavy on group projects. I could see a student's tools all contained on one device, sharing wirelessly on a common screen or with each other, device-to-device, and much more web-based."

The devices they use will also continue to shrink. Students are already showing a preference for tablets and web-books over laptops.

"The social web has enforced a powerful notion of collaborative knowledge creation," Jim Groom, instructional technology specialist and adjunct professor at Virginia's University of Mary William told Ars. "How can a classroom in this moment ignore the shape of the web?" he asked. His university is planning a pilot program to give 900 new students not just their own blogs, but a complete domain and space in which they will work, archive, sandbox, rant and play, and over which they have complete control.

"All students will have their own spaces, that they control and they produce and syndicate. One big question in higher ed is FERPA (the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act). If you give students keys to the spaces they build on, it defuses privacy fears." The blogs and domains are built with common tools like WordPress, so they cost less than the ubiquitous learning management systems (LMS).

Because of the interconnectivity and syndication, "the university starts to replicate the Web, open and transformative—transformative, in that you don't see the classroom as isolated space any more."

The elephant in the room when talk turns to technology in higher ed is the LMS, specifically like Blackboard (a kind of educational Sharepoint). Teachers can use it to manage teaching plans, lectures, grading, materials hand-offs and so on.

"The LMS is a great management tool, but we don't see it as a teaching and learning tool," said Groom. "Spaces determine how you think and learn. Blackboard as an example doesn't exist on the Web. You wind up accessing it through an abstract login. It's a kind of cockroach motel, locked into a space outside of time, outside of the Web. Divorce the learning and collaboration from the Web and you're separating it from where most people are doing their learning."

Brian Whitmer, co-founder of LMS company Instructure, has a variegated picture of what our Future U classroom will look like. In some cases, it will not be a classroom at all.

"Some people believe we'll be able to automate the whole process (of education)," he said. "That's scary to me. I don't believe the teacher is going anywhere. But I do see the teacher's role shifting somewhat. The teacher will become less of a drill instructor and more of a facilitator."

In a way, Whitmer's vision of the future classroom is modeled as much on the Web as Groom's or Chinn's. His, however, sees the institution itself as distributed.

"Do universities provide long-term value or do we distribute the process?" he asked. "Mini-certification might be the futuristic equivalent of a college degree. Institutions are looking ways to remain relevant already. Look at MIT's online course offerings, how Coursera is gathering together online classes. Look at Western Governors University—you don't have to even take classes. You can. But you can also just take the exams and, if you pass, receive the certification. This is degree-granting without physical presence."

Teaching the universities

The classroom of the future is less a matter of fancy gizmos and more of a transition into a more transparent, controllable, syndicated and shared space. Institutions, especially slow-moving behemoths like universities, always defend their status quo—sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, but always zealously. They value the slow move over the fast and the no move over the slow. So, adding or subtracting a doodad from a classroom is not really the point.

What is likely to make a difference is changing the institution's attitude toward those elements that underpin the technology. Teaching students to use technology as a whole, to understand and apply the processes behind the tools themselves so that they are not hamstrung by a change in brand or version is the key.

Tech-based changes may be more frequent and more threatening than some of the changes that have come before. And those changes aren't simply cosmetic. But technology itself must be neither dismissed nor fetishized.

Just as most of education lies ahead of us, so does most of the Future U series.

In the weeks and months to follow we will be covering the future of the textbook, the technological development of libraries, how tech will change the role of the professor, and the future role of technology in museums, research parks and university-allied institutions of all kinds.