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Out of context: Reply #1656

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  • kingsteven1

    Digital literacy experts. Been working in eLearning for years and abhor what it has become.

    Universities are using these fuckers as insurance because their qualifications mean shit unless they prepare people for ever more technical jobs... Things haven't moved on at all since I was at University - and that was so long ago our undergrad students next year weren't born when I started in 2000.

    If a student makes any effort to utilise technology while here (even automate part of their research via Excel macro) it won't count for shit. Yet these are exactly the skills that jobs require.

    Recently I've seen universities ditching their IT infrastructure to move to externally hosted services... and recruit these Digital Literacy idiots in droves for support. None of them are coders, very few of them understand any of the real advantages of technology. But my god can they rhyme of buzzwords... There is no effort to increase engagement or reward use of technology. And very few of them are smart enough to realise their jobs only exist to prove it's not the universities' fault that students aren't prepared for the real world.

    I went to a talk by a woman from Oxford who essentially gave a presentation that was filled with buzzwords, but effectively proved that her actions to engage students with technology over 7 years hadn't worked. There was no significant increase in use of technology... The things she had totally omitted from her surveys of students: scalability/ automation the idea that you can write a bit of code once and have it work for you... An 'expert' that missed the entire fucking point of using a computer... and her powerpoint looked like shit!

    Sure at least they let me automate my entire fucking job so I can spend precious time on eBay.

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