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Logan Holder
Jessie Richards
Writing 2010-005
March 28, 2016

Synthesis 2: Technologies Effect on Campus and Education

Technologies: Innovation of Technology
Technologies that were researched to improve campus life arent always cheap. As the
quality of the technology increases the more you will have to pay to get that technology. That is
one of the worst parts of innovation of technologies. The points that we look at in these articles
are how the technologies improve the quality of education and how they affect the cost of
education. The technologies will converge with each other, and all articles connect and agree
with one another. In reviewing the literature on campus technologies and education, I will show
that both ideas relate and come together to one idea that doesnt push against itself, and what is at
stake in this conversation is how to improve technologies to improve education. The terms we
will talk about are blended learning, technological determinism, and transition generation.
Blended learning is learning through two paths being put together. The advancement of
technology has allowed learning to happen at home on the computer. Blended learning is
learning at home and on the computer. Its a combination of physical contact and communication
through the computer. Technological determinism is defined as societys technology drives the
development of its culture and social structure. For an example, technological advancements for
the iPhone have caused less physical contact and more contact over the phone with apps such as
Facetime. The drive to make new technology has affected our cultures way of communication.
That is technological determinism in a short sentence. Transition generation currently is going on

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now. Its the transition from paper to electronic documents. An example would be moving from a
typewriter to a computer or from regular handwritten documents to printed documents.
Some of the highlights that these articles talk about are the types of technology that will
improve the campus life and the technologies that will improve the education on campus. The
technologies that want to be developed will improve the education on campus. That is how these
ideas connect and coordinate with each other. Technology on campus and how technology will
affect education are the topics and the main clusters. The sub-topics are the costs of putting these
technologies into the campus and the system. I will look at how it will affect the education and
whether or not it will improve the campus enough to be profitable.
These clusters do not push against each other. They all connect on how technologies will
make a campus and education better. They pull together to make one idea on how to improve
campus life and the education process. All of the ideas are different of course, however, in the
end, they will come together to make one big idea on how to improve education. One of the
biggest things about school is where you live. If you dont live in a pleasant environment, how
can you learn? That is why making a college campus better will improve the quality of the
learning environment which will promote the education of the student. Thats why nicer
institutions have better college graduates.
Campus Technologies
The technologies that will be discussed improve the environment of a college campus.
Brian Bozell and Ken Law wrote an article called, Building Control Technologies: Campus
BAS Upgrade. This article is about Building Automation System (BAS). BAS is an upgraded
network that he is planning to install. Phase 1 is to install the new first tier (Ethernet level)

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network components including application servers, network switches and network controllers.
Phase 2 is to replace the outdated second tier (field bus level) legacy controllers and install new
DDC controls on pneumatic and standalone equipment. Phase 3 is to incorporate dedicated
graphical user interface web pages and additional field devices to improve monitoring
capabilities and efficiencies for Business Unit (BU) systems. These systems will help improve
the efficiency on campus. Updating a 30-year-old, BAS infrastructure covering a 1.2 million-sqft campus brings with it some challenges, but also an opportunity for tremendous efficiency
gains (Bozell and Law, 7). This efficient system will help improve the quality of a college
campus and save money in the long run.
Keith Kirkpatrick has his ideas for improving a college campus. However, they arent the
same ideas but they all will try to improve a college campus which will help improve the
education process. The topics and ideas that Kirkpatrick talks about are mostly to improve the
education process by improving technologies that will check for plagiarism. Kirkpatrick
specializes in primary and secondary research. What this involves is researching data that has
never been accounted for. Primary research how he comes to find the answers for creating a
technology that can detect academic fraud or plagiarism. Plagiarism is crucial because
universities want to see students doing their work and not see them copy and paste an entire
essay because they dont want to do the assignment. With the innovation of technology, you have
to have systems that keep up with systems that are helping the cause of academic fraud. There
will always be someone out there who will try to make money by helping people cheat.
Kirkpatrick explains that you cannot stop a student from cheating, but you have to show
somehow an effort to help stop the cheating from happening. If a university doesnt show any
will to stop plagiarism, then what kind of university is that? Plagiarism is a very important topic

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of our day and age. If everybody copies off of each other, then how are we going to get different
ideas or thoughts? For example, if a popular writer puts their criticisms out in an essay about a
political figure in a presidential race and everybody just plagiarized on that specific writers
material, how is anybody going to have different views when all people will hear are the same
views? That is a big issue when it comes to voting already these days. People will just believe in
what other people believe, especially if they keep hearing the same ideas going around, even if
they are wrong. Software-based systems will not stop a truly determined character, but
demonstrate a schools commitment to reducing academic fraud. (Kirkpatrick, 18).
Technological determinism will always keep changing these programs.
Marcia Layton Turner talks about changes that can occur to college campuses around. An
example of significant change is the change from big lecture rooms to small original classrooms.
Instead of having a major lecture classroom that takes up large space. You can cut it into several
original classrooms that will help with learning. In lecture classrooms, you have students that
have a hard time learning in that kind of environment. Original classrooms have more one on one
contact with the professor, which encourages a better learning experience. This creates better
group work with more interaction creating communication skills. These new ideas do not just
effect the classroom setting; it also effects the housing situation. They will look at different
designs, renovate buildings that will bring together students with similar majors or specific
majors. This will put students in an environment with people who are similar to them. All these
similarities make students feel comfortable in their learning environment. Some campuses are
creating Makerspaces, or hands-on innovation labs, where students can attack a problem, work
cross-functionally with other departments, and create something physical or digital. (Turner,
59). With the housing in question, what Turner is saying is how different groups of housing can

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work together to make something better than one group could make. These labs would make the
different housings work together intergrading the segregation of majors. It would be more
organized and thorough. A problem with this idea is the separation of majors could also be called
race segregation. Whether you like it or not, different races are applied to different majors. So if
we separate them, people could lose their minds on the idea of racism. That is just a possible
problem that could occur in this situation.
Technological Ideas Coming Together
These ideas come together to make the campus a better place to learn while advancing
the technology and the education combining them into one cluster. This is one major idea that
they keep innovating on. Innovation is key when it comes to technology. Just to have one
generation of technology would be boring and old. The transition generation always wants
something new and said to be a better product than the first. That is why its innovation that plays
a significant role on products around the world. The booming masses of businesses in the early
1900s relied on mass production to get the product out there. Without innovation, the mass
production would stop because everybody would already have their product, so there would be
no need to keep mass producing the same thing that everybody has. It would kill the economy.
Brian Bozell and Ken Law, Keith Kirkpatrick, and Marcia Layton Turner all have similar ideas
that agree with each other. However, they all have different ideas on how to improve the quality
of education and campuses. Keith Kirkpatrick focuses on technologies that help improve
education while Marcia Layton Turner, Brian Bozell, and Ken Law agree that changing campus
technology would help improve education. They are all different; they just come together to
support the same idea.

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Counter Ideas
All ideas are significant; you just have to look at the factors that counter them to see how
valid they really could be. First, people look at how much it will cost exactly because with most
universities, this will be the biggest factor. Another counter would be whether or not the people
would support the project of getting new classrooms, faster system, or a new system that checks
their work for plagiarizing that nobody can get around. No matter what people do, they will
offend someone and they wont like it, making the job that much harder. That is one thing that
everybody will have to look at when presenting an idea to help improve a campus. The presenter
will have to sway the minds of people who want to keep the system the way it is. They could ask
the question, If there is nothing wrong with the system, why to change it? If we dont look at
the possibilities for the future problems, then how can we look towards the future for success?
Its the same idea; the world is not perfect. People will have to look at problems eventually when
they come up. So why not be prepared for what is to come?
Conclusion: Campus Technologies
In conclusion, I looked at how these articles came together to make one idea of how to
improve the college campus and education system. Keith Kirkpatrick believed that improving
systems that check academic fraud (plagiarism) was the best way to improve education on a
college campus. Ken Law, Brian Bozell, and Marcia Layton Turner believe that improving the
quality of the campus would help improve education. Even those two articles have different ideas
on how to change to improve the quality of students education at major universities. However,
when we look at the innovation of technology or technological determinism, we can see that
there will always be a challenge to keep up with technology. It will always be on the rise because
people make products now so that can innovate and build better products. The issue is the cost

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and the problems that change will cost. How are they looking at how these changes will impact
the future of cost to students? How will the universities look at the costs and see if its worth it to
innovate and replace the technologies? These questions will require more research because the
sources I have collected dont answer these questions. John S. Daniel wrote an article called,
"Mega-universities and Knowledge Media." This article supports significant moves on the point
of more research because it defines what mega-universities are. Daniel says, "The megauniversities are large business enterprises. As well as selling a wide variety of products to a large
consumer population distributed all over their country and beyond, they also have to organize an
elaborate 'after-sales service' which involves multiple transactions with each customer." (Daniel,
133). Daniel's article shows how universities are built on money. That is why it is useful to
understand what mega-universities are.

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Work Cited
Daniel, John S. "Mega-universities and Knowledge Media." Google Books. Technology
Strategies for Higher Education, 1996. Web. 02 Mar. 2016.
Bozell, Brian, and Ken Law. "Building Control Technologies: Campus BAS Upgrade."
ASHRAE Transactions 120.1 (2014): 1-7. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Mar. 2016
Kirkpatrick, Keith. "Technology Brings Online Education in Line with Campus Programs."
Communications of The ACM 58.12 (2015): 17-19. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1
Mar. 2016
Turner, Marcia Layton. "New Visions for Campus Space." University Business 19.1 (2016): 58
60. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Mar. 2016