As higher education increasingly relies on the Internet, members of the Cornell community want to be plugged in to their academic lives wherever they are. Many departments are developing their own smartphone and iPad apps; there is already one for the University Library that allows users to reserve books, check account information, and renew books from their phones. An upgrade to Blackboard.com scheduled for later this year will include mobile options that allow students to view course materials on the go, says CIT assistant director of academic technologies Clare Van Den Blink. "Mobile technology and smartphones are definitely the next wave," she says. "As content gets portable for students, we are taking things beyond podcasts. Now you can even use smartphones instead of iClickers."
To those who graduated from college long before the Internet, envisioning an undergrad experience where so much can be accomplished online and on-the-go may seem ideal—but in reality, there is a tradeoff. Students are spending so much time online that it's interfering with important aspects of their daily routine, like sleeping and studying, says sleep expert Maas. "Technology allows us to do a lot more in a shorter period of time, but I do think that it has put more distance between people," he says. "I don't think students are used to carrying on long in-person conversations. I look out the window, and two, maybe three out of four students are on their cell phones. Often they're walking with people, but they're not talking to them."
Greg Eells, too, worries about the prevalence of the Internet in students' social and academic lives. The director of counseling and psychological services at Gannett Health Services, Eells wonders how always being plugged in impacts mental health, both short- and long-term. "There are assumptions inherent in most technologies—often, that faster is better," Eells says. "But we've got thousands of years of spiritual tradition that says that slowing things down is often better in terms of learning to manage your internal landscape." Because students are so used to constantly doing something, be it listening to music or texting a friend, they report feeling uncomfortable concentrating on just one experience at a time, says Eells. "For people who have never known the world without cell phones or text messages, to whom e-mail seems like ancient technology, slowing things down and sitting with their internal experiences is fairly new—and it's a hard thing to do."
Many students reserve phone calls for family, preferring e-mail, instant messaging, texting, or Facebook as their primary means of maintaining most other relationships. That can mean that although they're able to have many more friendships than in the past, those relationships are less substantive. Earle notes that today, many student experiences that were once necessarily shared can be had individually. He remembers, for example, that when he started teaching in the Seventies, students would gather in Willard Straight to watch afternoon soap operas. "The main floor, where the television was, would be jammed because you didn't have media in your dorm room," Earle recalls.
Technology has also replaced some of the face-to-face interaction between students and faculty; when students can ask questions via e-mail, they may not bother trekking to campus for office hours. Many faculty members report seeing fewer students in their offices and spending more time answering questions via e-mail—Maas receives more than 100 per night. Jokes genetics professor Tom Fox '71: "Sometimes I feel like professors now get paid, to a large extent, to answer e-mails."
Some, like Earle, see the proliferation of e-mail as a boon to the student-professor relationship. "When I started teaching, the only times that students really communicated with you was before and after class, through an appointment, or during office hours," he recalls. "That generally meant that you got to know a small group of students pretty well, and the rest were more anonymous. With e-mail, I've gotten to know more students." But others worry that it makes students less vigilant about the tone they take with professors. "It's easier now, through e-mail, for a student to voice an opinion—good, bad, or indifferent— because it's impersonal," says marketing professor Debra Perosio '79, PhD '95. "While an e-mail is quick and efficient, it also provides an easy out. Students say things online that they would never say in person."